Transfer of Information and Knowledge in the Project Management

Success and failure in information technology (IT) projects depend on many factors. Based on the analysis of literature as well as the author’s research and experience, we can build a working hypothesis of a significant influence of the communication system on a final project outcome in the context of: • Communication between the project team and the outside world (users, suppliers, other project teams, etc.) • Communication within a project team In project management literature, communication occupies a significant position (Candle & Yeates, 2003; Maylor, 2003). Most research projects, however, are focused on the analysis of communication between the project team and the outside world while communication within the project team seems to take a second place. From the literature dealing with building effective project teams, research carried out by Mullins (2001) deserves a closer look. Mullins researched the key contradiction within a project team; he discovered that project leaders demand from their team members the willingness to compromise and subordinate while at the same time they promote individualism and want to foster creativity. Chaffe (2001), on the other hand, concluded that most people during their professional career lose both their creativity and individualism and prefer to conform to the existing standards. This is the very reason why some leaders prefer to build their teams from young people knowing that they lack experience. By doing that, they realize they increase the risk of not achieving their goals. Therefore, the IT leaders need to combine these conflicting trends and build the project team to ensure the overall success of the project. Adair (1999) indicates three criteria that need to be taken into consideration when evaluating potential team members: competence, motivation, and personal traits. The subject of this article is to prove the hypothesis that the communication system within the team significantly influences the its effectiveness. The key question that needs to be answered is: what conditions does the project leader need to create in order to maximize the positive and minimize the negative effects of teamwork? While at first glance this hypothesis might seem obvious, detailed analysis does not lead to decisive conclusions. While executing the project, teams could use different communication methods to both define the project tasks as well as evaluate results. The effectiveness of various communication methods can be very different; therefore, we want to prove the hypothesis that:

Knowledge Management in Civil Infrastructure Systems

This article reviews current research and practice of knowledge management (KM) in the management of Civil infrastructure systems. Civil infrastructure systems, such as energy systems (electric power, oil, gas), telecommunications, and water supply, are critical to our modern society. The economic prosperity and social well being of a country is jeopardized when these systems are damaged, disrupted, or unable to function at adequate capacity. The management of these infrastructure systems has to take into account critical management issues such as (Lemer, Chong & Tumay, 1995): • the need to deal with multiple, often conflicting objectives; • the need to accommodate the interests of diverse stakeholders; • the reliance of decision making on uncertain economic and social issues; • the constraints in data availability; and • the limitations posed by institutional structure.

International Knowledge Transfer as a Challenge for Communities of Practice

Knowledge is widely recognized as a primary resource of organizations (Drucker, 1992). Some authors propose that knowledge is a company’s only enduring source of advantage in an increasingly competitive world (Birkinshaw, 2001). The problem and challenge companies encounter is managing it in an effective way to increase their competitive advantages. Knowledge management is therefore concerned with various aspects of creating, examining, distributing, and implementing knowledge. But knowledge management theory often leaves us with the impression that knowledge can be as easily managed like products and commodities (Shariq, 1999). This Cognitive Model of Knowledge Management (p. 82) is founded on the belief that knowledge is an asset that needs to be managed, but is strongly contrasted by the Communities in Practice Model of Knowledge Management (p. 83), which looks at knowledge managment and transfer from a sociological perspective (Kakabadse, Kakabadse & Kouzmin, 2003). In fact, the transfer of knowlege happens between individuals; it is a mainly human-to-human process (Shariq, 1999). Knowledge has no universal foundation; it is only based on the agreement and the consensus of communities (Barabas, 1990), which make people and communities the main players in the knowledge transfer process. They can share or conceal knowledge; they may want to know more and want to learn. For knowledge transfer on an individual as well as on a corporporate level, there “has to be a voluntary action on behalf of the individual” (Dougherty, 1999, p. 264). Knowledge transfer happens for individuals and is conducted by individuals. The base of knowledge transfer is therefore a simple communication process transferring information from one individual to another. Two components of the communication are essential: The source (or sender) that sends the message and the receiver to receive the message. Person A (sender) intends to send information to person B (receiver). Person A codifies the information into a suitable form and starts the process of sending the information or knowledge to B. This can take place via talking or writing. The channel which transmits the information might influence the flow of the message and its reception. Receiver B receives the information and decodes it. After this, B tries to understand the information received in his/her context and implements the knowledge in the surrounding environment. The communication model also includes the feedback of the receiver. B starts the whole process again and codifies and sends information back to A. A receives, decodes, and interprets the information or knowledge received. A prerequisite for effective knowledge transfer is a high level of trust among the individuals and work groups and a strong and pervasive culture of cooperation and collaboration. This trust is developed through work practices that encourage and allow individuals to work together on projects and problems (Goh, 2002). Knowledge transfer is thus performed by communities of practice, which are described as groups of professionals informally bound to one another through exposure to a common class of problems, common pursuit of solutions, and thereby embodying a store of knowledge (Manville & Foote, 1996). Their members show a collectively developed understanding of what their community is about. They interact with each other, establishing norms and relationships of mutuality that reflect these interactions. Communities of practice generally produce a shared repertoire of communal resources, for example, language, routines, sensibilities, artifacts, tools, stories, and so forth. Members need to understand the community well enough to be able to contribute to it. They furthermore need to engage with the community and need to be trusted as a partner. Finally, they need to have access to the shared communal resources and use them appropriately (Wenger, 2000). Communities of practice develop strong routines for problem solving via communication and knowledge exchange. If knowledge is transferred within communities of practice, both sender and receiver have a common understanding about the context, the way knowledge is transmitted, its relevance, and integration into the knowledge base of the corporation. Accordingly, communities of practice are generally agreed on to have a positive influence on knowledge transfer processes. Members of a community of practice are informally bound by the gains they find when learning from each other and by efficient problem-solving activities via communication (Wagner, 2000).

Exploring the Role of Communities of Practice in Regional Innovation Systems

In the past two decades, the related concepts of regional innovation systems and clusters have become widely circulated in both academic and policy circles. Both concepts depart from the idea that innovations predominantly occur as a result of interactions between various actors, rather than as a result of a solitary genius (Håkansson, 1987; von Hippel; 1988; Lundvall, 1992), and that innovation and industrial transformation result from interactions across sets of actors within a spatially defined territory (e.g., countries, regions). Researchers within this field posit that most innovations are based on some form of problem solving in which someone generally perceives a problem and turns to someone else for help and advice (Teigland, Lindqvist, Malmberg & Waxell, 2004), and that spatial proximity seems to enhance the processes of interactive learning and innovation (Malmberg & Maskell, 2002). These assumptions draw striking parallels to the traditional concept of communities of practice (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Orr, 1990; Wenger, 1998), which are emergent groups of people who know each other relatively intimately and who primarily work together directly in face-to-face situations since learning and knowledge are situated within a physical setting (Teigland, 2003). Thus, the purpose of this short article is to provide a brief discussion of clusters and regional innovation systems, and propose broad areas of future research in which the community of practice concept can contribute to our understanding of clusters and regional innovation systems.

Communities of Practice and Critical Social Theory

In philosophical terms, a key issue of communities of practice (CoPs) can be located within one of the key philosophical debates. The need for CoPs is traceable to the inadequacy in certain contexts of the so-called scientific or problem-solving method, which treats problems as independent of the people engaged on them. Examples of this can be drawn from the management domains of information systems development, project management, planning, and many others. In information systems development, for example, the whole basis of traditional systems analysis and design requires such an approach. In essence, in undertaking problem solving, the world is viewed as though it is made up of hard, tangible objects, which exist independently of human perception and about which knowledge may be accumulated by making the objects themselves the focus of our study. A more human-centered approach would, by contrast, see the world as interpreted through human perceptions: the reason why the problem cannot be solved is precisely because it lacks the objective reality required for problem solving. In taking this perspective, it may or may not be accepted that there exists a real world “out there”, but in any event, the position adopted is that our world can be known only through the perceptions of human participants. This question of objective reality is one with which philosophers have struggled for at least 2,500 years, and an understanding of it is essential to determining the need for, and purpose of, CoPs. The next section therefore discusses some of the philosophical issues relevant to the subjective-objective debate: a search for what, in these terms, it is possible for us to know and how we might know it.

Communities of Learners in Paleography and ICT

Mankind studied and analyzed knowledge and learning since its first history and two main ways of thinking imposed very early: idealism, interpreting reality as the construction of human mind, and empiricism, looking at knowledge as the effect of the human-reality interaction. Recently three ways of interpreting thinking and knowledge intervened in changing the above perspective: relativism (it is impossible to objectively, universally, and absolutely know), critical theory (knowledge is mediated by social, political, cultural, economical, ethnical, and gender agents), and constructivism (knowledge is built by individuals and groups, and it is socially and experientially founded). Among the above theories, constructivism played a great role in interpreting both individual and social learning and had a great influence on hypotheses explaining knowledge construction and evolution in communities, including communities of practice. The bases for today’s constructivist theories can be found in many studies. Dewey (1949), for example, was the first scientist looking at the teaching-learning process in a pragmatic way. The inquiry was for Dewey the essential element of the subject-reality interaction; the experimental method had to guide teachers’ work and students’ learning, and at the basis of the knowledge process, there had to be the theory of research. Individuals’ knowledge was continuously developing from common sense (traditions, popular misconceptions, etc.) to scientific knowledge. Main consequences of Dewey’s educational project were activism with school-laboratories and active schools. Dewey’s ideas were collected and amplified by Kilpatrick, who introduced the project as a general method of learning (i.e., problem-finding had to be used together with problem-solving in everyday teaching). The hypotheses of Dewey and Kilpatrick were born in North America, but soon spread in Europe, where they found a rich soil and differentiated in at least two threads. Binet, Decroly, and Claparède privileged the psychological aspects of activism; on the contrary, Freinet and Freinet favored its social aspects (Varisco, 2002). “Modern School” was the name that Freinet and Freinet gave to their educational project; they hypothesized the creation of a cooperative school within which the social techniques and practices—like typography, correspondence, and cooperative catalogues—had a special relevance (their experiences had counterparts in many countries, and the case of don Milani in Italy is just an example for them).

An Adaptive Multi-Agent Environment

This article aims to develop a new environment of collaborative learning, by taking into account the criteria of construction of knowledge by the apprentices and the adaptative management of that knowledge by artificial agents. The multi-agent technology has been chosen due to the possibility of having artificial agents with internal decision processes to help students in the construction of their own projects and enabling learning objects available in accordance with the cognitive characteristics of the students and of their group. In this multi-agent system, exchanges of messages between the agents can occur so that they can perform theirs tasks in the best possible way.

Inter-Organisational Knowledge Transfer Process Model

Knowledge management (KM) is an emerging discipline (Ives, Torrey & Gordon, 1997) and characterised by four processes: generation, codification, transfer, and application (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). Completing the loop, knowledge transfer is regarded as a precursor to knowledge creation (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995) and thus forms an essential part of the knowledge management process. The understanding of how knowledge is transferred is very important for explaining the evolution and change in institutions, organisations, technology, and economy. However, knowledge transfer is often found to be laborious, time consuming, complicated, and difficult to understand (Huber, 2001; Szulanski, 2000). It has received negligible systematic attention (Huber, 2001; Szulanski, 2000), thus we know little about it (Huber, 2001). However, some literature, such as Davenport and Prusak (1998) and Shariq (1999), has attempted to address knowledge transfer within an organisation, but studies on inter-organisational knowledge transfer are still much neglected. An emergent view is that it may be beneficial for organisations if more research can be done to help them understand and, thus, to improve their inter-organisational knowledge transfer process. Therefore, this article aims to provide an overview of the inter-organisational knowledge transfer and its related literature and present a proposed inter-organisational knowledge transfer process model based on theoretical and empirical studies.

Social Philosophy, Communities, and the Epistemic Shifts

It is critical to distinguish between mainstream traditional management theory and the myriad of complementary approaches that have contributed to the development of alternative approaches to organisational and management theory. The dominant stream of management theory is still largely influenced by the command and control paradigm developed over a century ago by early theorists such as Weber, Taylor, and Fayol. Though the control paradigm today is closely connected to a technocratic and functionalistic perspective of management science, there is a growing awareness of the dangers of assuming a reductive and limited view of organisational complexity. In other words, it is important to recognise the role of bureaucratic, functional, and procedural-like aspects of organisational life, though it is critical to complement these perspectives with richer and more human-centred interpretations of organisational reality. This critical role is performed by, among others, communities of practice theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1999; Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002; Brown & Duguid, 1991). In order to better understand the developments in terms of management thinking, it is relevant to revise the sequence of the different schools of thought that influenced the social sciences throughout the 20th century.

Shaping Social Structure in Virtual Communities of Practice

Practice, that is, the execution of work relevant tasks, can take two forms: actual and espoused practice (Brown & Duguid, 1991). Espoused practice is formally and deliberately planned: formal organizational structuring, product manuals, error detection, and correction procedures represent just a few examples. Actual practice represents the solutions to problems and the execution of tasks as they really happened in a given context. Processes of knowledge generation and transfer are different for espoused or actual practice (Orr, 1996). While traditional modes of organizing work practice focus on espoused practice, newer organizational forms focus on actual practice: Communities of practice are groups of people bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise on behalf of an organization (Wenger, 1998). To support effective work practices in an ever more distributed work environments, collocated CoPs are complemented by virtual communities of practice (VCoPs). Its members interact supported by collaborative technologies in order to bridge time and/or geographical distances. Toolkits of computer-mediated environments facilitate community building in addition to personal interaction (Hinds & Kiesler, 2002; Walther, 1995; Wellman et al., 1996). There is a shared understanding that VCoPs are an especially effective organizational form for knowledge creation both within companies (Kogut & Metiu, 2001; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; von Krogh, Spaeth & Lakhani, 2003) and between companies (Constant, 1987; Vincenti, 1990). Therefore, VCoPs are managerially desirable forms of virtual communities (Rheingold, 1993; Smith & Kollock, 1999; Wellman et al., 1996) in which learning in practice takes place; that is, professionals stick together because of exposure to common problems in the execution of real work. The “glue” which binds them together is a powerful mixture of shared expertise and experience, as well as the need to know what each other knows. Given that VCoPs offer such potential to enhance intellectual capital and to enrich social processes within companies, we look more closely at the social and knowledge generation processes within VCoPs from a managerial point of view. Viewed from this angle, VCoPs represent a difficult challenge for managers who want to profit from using them as an arena for desirable learning in practice. Although VCoPs are believed to be a desirable organizational form for knowledge generation, they are preferably modeled as a rather emergent phenomenon and believed to be only marginally manageable. Thus, on one hand, managers are urged to believe that VCoPs are something beneficial while, at the same time, they are told that VCoPs cannot be managed deliberately.