Knowledge Economy for Innovating Organizations

Today’s knowledge economy is dynamic, complex, and global. Every organization faces numerous challenges in trying to survive let alone thrive in such an environment. It is essential for innovating organizations to understand the key drivers of the knowledge economy so that they can better position themselves and thereby reap the rewards of a sustainable competitive advantage. The following addresses this by discussing knowledge and the key drives of the knowledge economy.

Further Directions in Cognitive Rehabilitation in Community- and Home-based Daily Trainings in Clients with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Community- and home-based daily intense cognitive rehabilitation (CR) of traumatic brain injury (TBI) clients was initiated on the basis on knowledge mentioned in Chapter 17. In the CR, statistically significant changes were demonstrated in attention and reading abilities in sixteen severe TBI clients by one-year daily CR. Improvement of memory and executive functions required more training periods as shown later. The temporary minimum scores of four neuropsychological tests required for social reentry, namely, 50 in TEA, 15 in RBMT, 80 in BADS and 40 in JART, were determined as a goal of our CR. In addition to the drill (pen and paper) method mainly using workbooks, a more advanced program for CR, particularly in clients who reached the required level, was developed together with the clients.

Roles of Home Care and Rehabilitation Equipment for the Aged Who Need Care in Improving Performance

In this chapter, some countermeasures are shown for the aged who need care to be able to live their own daily life not only at home, but also in the community, under the situation of worldwide aged society. At first we survey the present situation of the aging in the world. Next, it is explained what human functions are, and how they change by the aging with some research findings. Because of the fall of functions, the barrier often occurs that the aged cannot perform an objective daily life activity. Therefore, the methods to remove the barrier are examined. In the removal methods of the barrier, the commentaries are focused to the support technology, such as home care and rehabilitation tools which utilize survival functions effectively. Furthermore, the research is introduced on satisfaction and well-being of users of rehabilitation facility service of day care, and it is pointed out that kind of service as a social resource is important for the aged who need care to support the independence and well-being in daily life. Effective use of social resources is required to facilitate knowledge management in community life.

The First Attempt of Intensive Approaches in Cognitive Rehabilitation in Clients with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Cognitive rehabilitation (CR) was undertaken by two clients, A and B, using pen and paper method by an exclusive and intensive approach. Client A with very severe TBI showed improved attention and memory deficits and after undergoing a step-by-step trial, he finally landed a satisfactory job and maintained it, with the support of a large organization. Client B underwent CR with considerable effort by himself and attained a normal cognitive level but was still half way to the satisfactory social integration owing to an insufficient support system. Through the long process undergone by the two clients, it was suggested that environmental factors (support system) are extremely important for a satisfactory social life in severe TBI clients, together with the recovery of cognitive functions by CR.

Causal Relationship among Perceived Organizational Environment, Leadership, and Organizational Learning in Industrial Workers

It does not seem that recent social events occur simply due to the inappropriateness of a particular individual human action or a particular technological system. Most social events are caused largely by insufficient organizational management and inappropriate organizational climate in which the participants are scarcely motivated to develop them and to continue their work in a discretionary manner. Organizational performance is improved by designing the organizational environment where the participants are inspired to work in a recursive learning process underpinned by innovative operations management on the basis of systemic thinking. The purpose of this chapter is to present empirical evidence on organizational learning type shaped by strategic business unit (SBU) in industry and to compare organizational performance representing self-discretion, team reciprocity by learning type, and also to identify multiple causations among the structural variables of predictors,

Interference of Mood States at Work with Perceived Performance, Perceived Efficacy, and Perceived Health

The competencies of self-management and interpersonal relationship management play a crucial role in improving individual and organizational performance. Interference of mood states at work with perceived performance, perceived efficacy, and perceived health of individual workers needs to be clarified in redesigning an organizational environment which has an effect on enhancing the competence of individual self-management and interpersonal relationship management. This chapter provides some evidence on the relationship of mood states at work with perceived performance, perceived efficacy, and perceived health of the workers employed in beverage manufacturing plants and lapping chemicals manufacturing plants. The perceptions of performance, self-efficacy, and health status significantly differed among mood states at work. Vigorous mood at work gives positive effect on work perception which in turn leads to the enhancement of work ability and of interpersonal management competence. Vigorous mood at work gave effective power in changing organizational environment and in building in credibility among the participants, which promises a gain in intangible human assets in addition to tangible and extrinsic assets in redesigning innovative organization model.

Key Considerations for the Adoption and Implementation of Knowledge Management in Healthcare Operations

The importance of knowledge management (KM) to organizations in today’s competitive environment is being recognized as paramount and significant. This is particularly evident for healthcare both globally and in the U.S. The U.S. healthcare system is facing numerous challenges in trying to deliver cost effective, high quality treatments and is turning to KM techniques and technologies for solutions in an attempt to achieve this goal. While the challenges facing the U.S. healthcare are not dissimilar to those facing healthcare systems in other nations, the U.S. healthcare system leads the field with healthcare costs more than 15% of GDP and rising exponentially. What is becoming of particular interest when trying to find a solution is the adoption and implementation of KM and associated KM technologies in the healthcare setting, an arena that has to date been notoriously slow to adopt technologies and new approaches for the practice management side of healthcare. We examine this issue by studying the barriers encountered in the adoption and implementation of specific KM technologies in healthcare settings. We then develop a model based on empirical data and using this model draw some conclusions and implications for orthopaedics.

Perceived Organizational Environment and Performance Reliability in the Case of Hospital Nurses

Most hospital organizational environments in Japan are required to redesign the current organization into a new type of organization, namely a knowledge-based or an intelligent organization. Team care formation, for instance, which forms a hierarchy with medical doctors having an initiative, and simply gathering some disciplinary staff in plural areas, is not adequate. Redesigning an innovative organization is not possible without appropriate transformation into a flexible and resilient organization that can cope with the contingency of complex social environment. Professional staff in hospitals need to develop their work organization to be more flexible and adaptive to the changes in society. The accidental events which happen in hospitals are rarely controlled only by technical countermeasures or by traditional human resource management, but can be purposefully aligned by the appropriate application of knowledge management methodologies. Accuracy of human action is not merely acquired by avoiding erroneous behavior, rather it is ensured by continuously redesigning work organizational climate for the participants to take an autonomic action with the sense of organizational citizenship and social responsibility. The focus in this chapter is placed on the current situations of work organization of hospitals in Japan and on the comparison of perceived nursing work, incidence rates during 24 hours of nursing care work, and reduced reliability among four control modes of organizational environment, such as strategic, tactical, opportunistic, and scrambled. This study suggests that cognitive reliability on work conditions and on perceived work environment plays a critical role in improving performance reliability and in reducing human errors in order to provide a high quality of nursing care.

Roles of Interpersonal Relationships in Improving Organizational Performances in the Case of Hospital Nurses

In this chapter, a comparison of organizational performances representing team reciprocity, communication accuracy, and performance reliability was made with participants’ competence of emotional regulation, communication type, and also with the appreciation level of professional work based on our empirical studies on healthcare organization. The results in case study 1 suggest that team reciprocity is significantly influenced by the type of communication, face–to–face (FTF) and computer mediating communication (CMC). The results in case study 2 suggest that interpersonal relationship management played important roles in giving critical effects on organizational performance of team reciprocity, communication accuracy, and performance reliability. The results in case study 3 suggest that appreciation degree of team and organization goals gave significant effects on team reciprocity and performance reliability. Causal relationships among structural variables on work environment, communication, and organizational performances in case study 1, and causal relationships among work demand, organizational environment, and fairness in case study 3, were discussed. Quality of healthcare evaluated by organizational performance is influenced by the condition of how interpersonal relationship plays a role in managing emotional regulation, communication, and appreciation of the work environment. Most of the organizational issues are related with loss of con- fidence and trust among the participants of the organization, which stems largely from inappropriate alignment of interpersonal relationships.

Conceptual Levels of Information Processing and Information Interpretation in Knowledge Management

In managing knowledge, conceptual confusion on information arises frequently among researchers in different disciplines. The term of information is defined at least into four: data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. Procedural ways of information are different among disciplines even when the definition is similar. Interpretation of information varies in accordance with its meaning or its value for the receivers. Most of the misalignment in the field stems from different interpretations and the different procedural ways of the information presented. In this chapter, first, information processing levels in knowledge management and second, three levels in cognition-action reflective process are described. Thirdly, information interpretation in internal world, and finally juxtaposition of scientific and interpretive perspectives are discussed for developing organizational learning and organizational resilience and for building common ground for productive and constructive dialogue between and within disciplinary fields.