How Web 2.0 Shapes Patient Knowledge Sharing

Web 2.0 has totally changed the health communication world. In particular, it has reconfigured peer exchanges about health. These exchanges are important because they allow knowledge sharing and construction between patients, in particular chronic patients. Although their importance is well established, this field of study brings together a variety of theories not uniformly shared or understood. It is not clear how patients use Web for knowledge processes: what kind of knowledge processes happen in Web 2.0 between patients? How does Web 2.0 sustain or impede these processes? The aim of this research is to map virtual exchanges about diabetes in Italy by developing a systematic exploration of Web using the main search engines (Google, Yahoo) and analyzing the site that hosts posts and exchanges about diabetes. According to a psychosocial perspective, findings highlight the main features of online knowledge processes among patients.

A Conceptual Proposition

This conceptual paper proposes social capital as a possible moderator of the relationship between commonly identified knowledge sharing enablers in the literature and knowledge sharing (KS). A literature review was carried out to determine the contextual influence of the level of social capital within communities of practice (CoPs). Propositions were developed based on a review of past studies addressing KS enablers and KS. The literature review revealed that prior studies built on resource-based theory (RBT) and knowledge-based view of the firm (KBV) focused on organizational enablers of KS without any concern for the contextual influence such as the level of social capital of CoPs. Further analysis indicated that social capital could possibly moderate the impact of commonly identified KS enablers. These insights are presented as propositions in this conceptual paper. This paper addresses a gap in the area of KS. It questions the results of past studies and proposes the needs to consider the level of social capital when identifying appropriate KS enablers.

Rethinking Knowledge Sharing Barriers

The current work force will not only lose 3.6 million “baby boomers” by 2020, but also a substantial organizational knowledge. Presently, there is a gap in understanding how to promote effective organizational knowledge sharing due to the limited awareness of factors that inhibit knowledge sharing behaviors. The focus of this article is to explore the most commonly noted barriers to employees' knowledge seeking and knowledge contributing practices and extract potential factors that influence these barriers. A content analysis study is performed on 103 knowledge management articles from ten computer and information science databases. The results demonstrate a clear division between the barriers limiting each specific behavior: knowledge seeking behaviors depend largely on the time availability of knowledge seekers, while poor communication skills and lack of trust appear to be the major inhibitors to knowledge contribution. Three main factors were found to influence these barriers: role conflict, role ambiguity and locus of control. The findings are consistent with the information foraging and social exchange theories. Implications for future research are proposed.

Knowledge Sharing between Local Government and Rural Remote Communities in Tanzania

Social, economic, and cultural factors are known to influence the knowledge sharing process between governments and rural communities. There is evidence that the success of ICT for development partnerships depends on a broadly identified “local context” and involvement of local communities. This chapter describes a survey of citizens about their information needs and modes of reception as well as a pilot study of Village Information Officers. Utilizing new technologies such as mobile phone communication and community radio broadcasting in local languages is identified by remote and rural study and survey participants as a valuable alternative to traditional government methods for communicating with citizens. Rural people identified gaps in knowledge related to health, education, and economic activities. These three broad categories of knowledge are important for effective poverty reduction efforts of government. Due to the poor reach of newspapers or other forms of print and broadcast media, face-to-face communication and cell phones were mentioned by more than 60% of the respondents in Kilosa district as techniques used in accessing government information. The positive results achieved by Village Information Officers in responding to gaps in knowledge regarding government services and support for development efforts has led to further demand for replication of the pilot study to support pastoralists, emergency preparedness, and wildlife conservation.

Effect of Knowledge Sharing and Supply Chain Management on Organizational Performance

Low priced and attainable information technology has made it possible to connect critical and proprietary information with supply chain partners, because of ever growing size, complexity, 7/24 system ability, evolved production processes etc. need flow of knowledge continuously. The knowledge integrated in the supply chain management (SCM) systems affects both supply chain and organizational performance. But since there is no single entity on performance an effective systematically approach to performance measurement could not be established. Generally in previous studies, organizational performance hasn`t been measured within the terms of SCM but if integral unit endeavor performance can be judged by so the overall performance can be judged by its departments` efforts. So SCOR model is chosen because important supply chain characteristics and their associated interactions aren't ignored. And organizational performance is reciprocal that performance measurement is taken a system for integrating the management of supply chain and knowledge. Therefore the objectives of the study were appeared to be correlation levels and relationships between knowledge sharing, SCM and organizational performance. This study is unique in terms of the dimensions that are being investigated in Turkey. While there are studies on SCM and knowledge sharing, each examined alone, this study tried to undercover the relationships between these two terms.

The Influence of Individual Characteristics on Knowledge Sharing Practices, Enablers, and Barriers in a Project Management Context

The knowledge management (KM) literature in general is short on field evidence concerning knowledge sharing (KS) practices in project management settings, where knowledge occupies a central place. In addition, research on KS enablers and barriers has largely overlooked the fact that individual characteristics may influence the choice to share knowledge. This research explored departmental KS practices, enablers and barriers at a Middle-Eastern project management company. It also investigated the influence of a number of individual characteristics on KS, enablers and barriers. The findings confirm that Knowledge is partially shared within departments, and the employees have varying views on KS enablers and barriers. Although many do not perceive organizational enablers as catalysts for KS, they somewhat believe that the information technology (IT) enablers do facilitate KS. The employees, however, do not believe that the identified individual, organizational and IT barriers hinder KS. In addition, gender, age, department type and job type have varying effects on the perceived KS practices, organizational enablers, and IT enablers and barriers. These findings and their implications are further discussed in the paper.

Customer Relationship Management and Data Mining

In the global market of today, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plays a fundamental role in market-oriented companies to understand customer behaviors, achieve and maintain a long-term relationship with them, and maximize the customer value. Moreover, the digital revolution has made information easy and fairly inexpensive to capture. Thus, companies have stored a large amount of data about their current and potential customers. However, this data is often raw and meaningless. Within the CRM framework, Data Mining (DM) is a very popular tool for extracting useful information from this data and for predicting customer behaviors in order to make profitable marketing decisions. This research aims to demonstrate the classification decision tree as one of the main computational data mining models able to forecast accurate marketing performance within global organizations. Particular attention is paid to the identification of the best marketing activities to which firms should concentrate their future marketing investments. The criteria is based on the loss functions that confirm the accuracy of this model.

Applying the K-Means Algorithm in Big Raw Data Sets with Hadoop and MapReduce

Big data refers to data sets whose size is beyond the capabilities of most current hardware and software technologies. The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework for distributed processing of large data sets, while HDFS is a distributed file system that provides high-throughput access to data-driven applications, and MapReduce is software framework for distributed computing of large data sets. Huge collections of raw data require fast and accurate mining processes in order to extract useful knowledge. One of the most popular techniques of data mining is the K-means clustering algorithm. In this study, the authors develop a distributed version of the K-means algorithm using the MapReduce framework on the Hadoop Distributed File System. The theoretical and experimental results of the technique prove its efficiency; thus, HDFS and MapReduce can apply to big data with very promising results.

Assessing the Usefulness of Testing for Validating and Correcting Security Risk Models Based on Two Industrial Case Studies

The authors present the results of an evaluation in which the objective was to assess how useful testing is for validating and correcting security risk models. The evaluation is based on two industrial case studies. In the first case study the authors analyzed a multilingual financial Web application, while in the second case study they analyzed a mobile financial application. In both case studies, the testing yielded new information which was not found in the risk assessment phase. In particular, in the first case study, new vulnerabilities were found which resulted in an update of the likelihood values of threat scenarios and risks in the risk model. New vulnerabilities were also identified and added to the risk model in the second case study. These updates led to more accurate risk models, which indicate that the testing was indeed useful for validating and correcting the risk models.

A Tool for GIS Based Risk Analysis for Transportation of Dangerous Goods on Road (the RAGISADR)

In this study, an environmental risk analysis model is developed as a decision support system (the RAGISADR) in order to assess environmental risks for transportation of dangerous goods. Transport of dangerous goods needs to be regulated to prevent accidents. Moving dangerous goods by road is governed by international regulations. GIS are used to quantify the factors on each link in the network that contribute to each of the evaluation criteria for a possible route. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to assign weights to factors. The priority weights of each environmental criteria is calculated by using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) before risk models are implemented in the road network of Izmir-Manisa-Aydin-Mugla-Denizli (Aegean Region of Turkey). The most convenient route according to the criteria set is determined. The results give decision maker the possibility to choose the best alternative among possible routes according to certain criteria.