A Context-Based Approach for Supporting Knowledge Work with Semantic Portals

Author(s):  
Thomas Hädrich ◽  
Torsten Priebe

Knowledge work can be characterized by a high degree of variety and exceptions, strong communication needs, weakly structured processes, networks and communities, and as requiring a high level of skill and expertise as well as a number of specific practices. Process-oriented knowledge management suggests to focus on enhancing efficiency of knowledge work in the context of business processes. Portals are an enabling technology for knowledge management by providing users with a consolidated, personalized interface that allows accessing various types of structured and unstructured information. However, the design of portals still needs concepts and frameworks to guide their alignment with the context of persons consigned with knowledge-intensive tasks. In this context the concept of knowledge stance is a promising starting point. This paper discusses how knowledge stances can be applied and detailed to model knowledge work and support to support it with semantic context-based portals. We present the results from implementing a portal prototype that deploys Semantic Web technologies to integrate various information sources and applications on a semantic level and discuss extensions to this portal for the support of knowledge stances.

Author(s):  
Vili Podgorelec ◽  
Boštjan Grašič

In this chapter, a Semantic Web services-based knowledge management framework that enables holistic knowledge management in organizations is presented. As the economy is becoming one single global marketplace, where the best offer wins, organizations have to search for competitive advantage within themselves. With the growing awareness that key potentials of an organization lie within its people and their knowledge, efficient knowledge management is becoming one of key focuses in organizational activities. The proposed knowledge management framework is based on Semantic Web technologies and service-oriented architecture, supporting the operational business processes as well as knowledge-based management of services in service-oriented architecture.


Author(s):  
Carlos M. Toledo ◽  
Omar Chiotti ◽  
María R. Galli

This chapter presents an agent-based architecture for integrating organizational knowledge repositories and business processes orchestrated by a workflow management system. This architecture proactively provides relevant knowledge to workflow tasks considering their context, and stores the information generated by its execution for future requirements. It describes components of the architecture, models a multi-agent system that enables the integration, presents a strategy to annotate and retrieval knowledge of non-structured information sources, and defines a new workflow pattern to be used in knowledge intensive tasks in order to make possible the knowledge provision. This architecture allows workers to count, in a proactive way, with all necessary information for the task executions without suspending their activities to retrieve information scattered in the organization. It reduces the wasted time in manual knowledge searches included in mostly knowledge management approaches.


Author(s):  
Rezvan Hosseingholizadeh ◽  
Hadi El-Farr ◽  
Somayyeh Ebrahimi Koushk Mahdi

Knowledge-work is a discretionary behavior, and knowledge-workers should be viewed as investors of their intellectual capital. That said, effective knowledge-work is mostly dependent on the performance of individual knowledge-workers who drive the success of knowledge-intensive organizations. Therefore, the study takes the perspective of personal knowledge management in enforcing the effectiveness of knowledge-work activities. This study empirically demonstrates that knowledge-workers' behaviors are dependent on their motivation, ability and opportunity to perform knowledge-work activities. This study provides insights and future directions for research on knowledge-work as a discretionary behavior in organization and the factors influencing it. Scholars can investigate the effect of empowerment of individuals on their tendency to knowledge-creation, knowledge-sharing and knowledge-application. Since personal-knowledge often raise the issue of knowledge ownership, further attention to ethical issues may bring valuable insights for KM in organizations.


Author(s):  
Petter Gottschalk

A stage model for knowledge management systems in policing financial crime is developed in this chapter. Stages of growth models enable identification of organizational maturity and direction. Information technology to support knowledge work of police officers is improving. For example, new information systems supporting police investigations are evolving. Police investigation is an information-rich and knowledge-intensive practice. Its success depends on turning information into evidence. This chapter presents an organizing framework for knowledge management systems in policing financial crime. Future case studies will empirically have to illustrate and validate the stage hypothesis developed in this paper.


2008 ◽  
pp. 1812-1821
Author(s):  
Eric Tsui

Organizations are increasingly turning to enterprise portals to support knowledge work. Portal deployment can be intradepartmental across several business units in one organization or even inter-organizational. Currently in the industry, most of these portals are purchased solutions (e.g., collaboration and smart enterprise suites) and many of these purchasing and selection decisions are primarily driven by the interest of a small group of stakeholders with strong influence from IT vendors. The true requirements for the portal as well as the strategy for its medium- to long-term phased deployment are, in general, poorly addressed. This, together with other reasons, has lead to many failures or to a low adoption rate of the enterprise portal by staff at various levels of an organization. Common problems that hinder portal adoption include lack of an overall governance model, mis-alignment with business processes, poor or non-existent content management (process, tools, and governance), and technical problems associated with the development and configuration of portlets. This article focuses on one critical issue that directly influences the success of an enterprise portal deployment, namely the correct elicitation of user requirements (which in turn lead to the chosen portal’s features and to the style of the portal interface). Taking into consideration the advancement and landscape of commercial portal vendors in the market, this article discusses a bottom-up approach to the identification of high-level drivers for portal usages for its users.


Author(s):  
Tom Butler ◽  
Ciaran Murphy

It is widely believed that knowledge work is a relatively new phenomenon and that it constitutes the main form of activity in post-industrial organizations. While the term remains undefined, knowledge work is taken to refer to the knowledge that individuals apply in performing role-related business activities in “knowledge-intensive” organizations. In this scheme of things, the conventional wisdom holds that the subjective knowledge of individual social actors is applied to “objectified” organizational knowledge (i.e., data held in various paper and electronic repositories) as the raw material of the production process. Thus, knowledge is considered to be both an input to, and an output of, business processes: It also is argued to underpin the process by which knowledge inputs are transformed to outputs.


Author(s):  
Thomas Hadrich ◽  
Ronald Maier

Modeling is a key task in order to analyze, understand, and improve business processes and organizational structures, and to support the design, implementation, and management of information and communication technologies in general and knowledge management systems (KMSs) in particular. Process-oriented knowledge management (Maier, 2004; Maier & Remus, 2003) is a promising approach to provide the missing link between knowledge management (KM) and business strategy, and to bridge the gap between the human-oriented and technology-oriented views (e.g., Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney, 1999; Zack, 1999). However, existing modeling approaches for business processes, including their extensions for KM, still lack concepts to support knowledge work, which is often unstructured, creative, and learning and communication intensive. Recently, the activity theory has been proposed to provide concepts to analyze knowledge work (e.g., Blackler, 1995), but it has not yet been integrated with business process modeling for designing KM initiatives and KMSs. The following sections analyze the characteristics of knowledge work, distinguish important perspectives for modeling in KM, and discuss extensions of process modeling approaches including activity modeling. Then, the process-oriented and the activity-oriented perspectives on knowledge work are compared and connected by means of the concept of knowledge stance.


2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petter Gottschalk

Knowledge management is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Knowledge embedded in an organization's business processes and an employee's skills provide a firm with unique capabilities for delivering a product or service to customers. Law firms represent an industry which seems very well suited for knowledge management investigation. Law firms are knowledge intensive and the use of advanced technology may transform these organizations in the future. To examine knowledge management in Norwegian law firms, a study which involved two phases of data collection and analysis was designed. The first phase was a field study of the largest law firm in Norway. The semi-structured interviews conducted in the initial field study documented a strong belief in the potential benefits from knowledge management. The second phase was a survey of Norwegian law firms. Firm culture, firm knowledge and use of information technology were identified as potential predictors of information technology support for knowledge management in law firms in Norway. The extent to which law firms in Norway use information technology to support knowledge management is significantly influenced by the extent firms generally use information technology.


Author(s):  
Hans Lehmann ◽  
Stefan Berger ◽  
Ulrich Remus

Today, many working environments and industries are considered as knowledge-intensive, that is, consulting, software, pharmaceutics, financial services, and so forth, and the share of knowledge work has risen continuously during the last decades (Wolff, 2005). Knowledge management (KM) has been introduced to overcome some of the problems knowledge workers are faced when handling knowledge, that is, the problems of storing, organizing, and distributing large amounts of knowledge and its corresponding problem of information overload and so forth (Maier, 2004).


Author(s):  
Tom Butler ◽  
Ciaran Murphy

It is widely believed that knowledge work is a relatively new phenomenon and that it constitutes the main form of activity in post-industrial organizations. While the term remains undefined, knowledge work is taken to refer to the knowledge that individuals apply in performing role-related business activities in “knowledge-intensive” organizations. In this scheme of things, the conventional wisdom holds that the subjective knowledge of individual social actors is applied to “objectified” organizational knowledge (i.e., data held in various paper and electronic repositories) as the raw material of the production process. Thus, knowledge is considered to be both an input to, and an output of, business processes: It also is argued to underpin the process by which knowledge inputs are transformed to outputs.


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