Digital Knowledge Repositories Research Articles

Water Management Digital Knowledge Repository as an Online Tool to Preserve, Maintain and Develop Technical Heritage of Water Sciences

Water Management Digital Knowledge Repository presented in this article is unique in the sense that it helps to preserve the heritage of water profession and facilitates access to the latest information for a wider public. This is particularly important in a country where water-related disasters have not only threatened the people in the past but unfortunately, they need to be prepared for such events in the future, too. Therefore, the digital knowledge repository, based on six pillars (eLearning, Photos, Videos, Journals, Textbooks, Glossary), plays a valuable and important role in Hungary.

Untangling cross-border interfirm effects in SMEs’ working capital financing: A cyber-behavioral signaling perspective

This study analyzes the intricate dynamics of cross-border interfirm interactions in the working capital financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by using a novel cyber-behavioral signaling perspective. It emphasizes the pivotal role played by the generation and transmission of credible signals to mitigate informational disparities inherent in SME finance. While extant literature predominantly focuses on physical-centric signal types, our work sheds light on SMEs’ strategic use of behavioral factors in the network ecology to generate and transmit signals. Grounded in signaling theory and informed by network ecology, we propose that network ecology constitutes a fertile environment for SMEs to effectively communicate their creditworthiness through high-quality signals. Using survey data from 276 Chinese SMEs, our empirical analysis reveals that cross-border interfirm effects—both unintentional network spillover and intentional network transitivity—significantly bolster SME financing outcomes. Leveraging digital knowledge repositories mediates the strength and effectiveness of these signals, and exerts an even stronger positive impact on SME working capital financing in the absence of well-established normative mechanisms in the wider business ecosystem. By integrating a cyber-behavioral dimension into signaling theory within the SME financing domain, this research offers new understanding on how SMEs can harness the untapped power of their interconnected relationships to secure external capital. The study contributes to theory and practice by elucidating pathways for SMEs to navigate complex interfirm linkages to facilitate improved access to working capital.

User-Centered Digital Knowledge Repository of Jin Dynasty Costumes as a Learning Tool for Cultural Experience

User-Centered Digital Knowledge Repository of Jin Dynasty Costumes as a Learning Tool for Cultural Experience

Fair trade in building digital knowledge repositories: the knowledge economy as if researchers mattered

Both a significant body of literature and the case study presented here show that digital knowledge repositories struggle to attract the needed level of data and knowledge contribution that they need to be successful. This happens also to high profile and prestigious initiatives. The paper argues that the reluctance of researchers to contribute can only be understood in light of the highly competitive context in which research careers need to be built nowadays and how this affects researchers’ quality of life. Competition and managerialism limit the discretion of researchers in sharing their results and in donating their working time. A growing corpus of research shows that academic researchers are increasingly overworked and highly stressed. This corroborates the point that the room for undertaking additional tasks with future and uncertain benefits is very limited. The paper thus recommends that promoters of digital knowledge repositories focus on the needs of the researchers who are expected to contribute their knowledge. In order to treat them fairly and to ensure the success of the repositories, knowledge sharing needs to be rewarded so as to improve the working conditions of contributors. In order to help implementing this researcher-centred approach, the paper proposes the idea of expediential trust: rewards for contributing should be such that rational, self-interested researchers would freely decide to contribute their knowledge and effort trusting that this would make them better off.

Silencing trust: confidence and familiarity in re-engineering knowledge infrastructures

In this paper, we tell the story of efforts currently underway, on diverse fronts, to build digital knowledge repositories (‘knowledge-bases’) to support research in the life sciences. If successful, knowledge bases will be part of a new knowledge infrastructure—capable of facilitating ever-more comprehensive, computational models of biological systems. Such an infrastructure would, however, represent a sea-change in the technological management and manipulation of complex data, inducing a generational shift in how questions are asked and answered and results published and circulated. Integrating such knowledge bases into the daily workflow of the lab thus destabilizes a number of well-established habits which biologists rely on to ensure the quality of the knowledge they produce, evaluate, communicate and exploit. As the story we tell here shows, such destabilization introduces a situation of unfamiliarity, one that carries with it epistemic risks. It should elicit—to use Niklas Luhmann’s terms—the question of trust: a shared recognition that the reliability of research practices is being risked, but that such a risk is worth taking in view of what may be gained. And yet, the problem of trust is being unexpectedly silenced. How that silencing has come about, why it matters, and what might yet be done forms the heart of this paper.

Give or keep A transactive memory approach to understanding knowledge hoarding on the organisational digital knowledge repository

The goal of this research is to apply and extend transactive memory systems (TMS) theory to investigate the individual and social network factors that influence organisational members' knowledge hoarding on the digital knowledge repository. Specifically, this study examines how key mechanisms in the organisational TMS development, including personal expertise, accuracy in expertise recognition, social network centralities and individual perceptions of other members' knowledge hoarding behaviours, could promote or demote knowledge hoarding on the digital knowledge repository. Survey data were collected from 110 employees working in nine consulting teams. Results showed that team members' knowledge hoarding on the digital knowledge repository was negatively influenced by one's expertise level, but positively influenced by one's betweenness centrality in the social network and one's perception of other team members' knowledge hoarding on the digital knowledge repository. This research offers theoretical and pragmatic implications for effective utilisation of digital knowledge repositories in organisational settings.

Give or keep A transactive memory approach to understanding knowledge hoarding on the organisational digital knowledge repository

Give or keep A transactive memory approach to understanding knowledge hoarding on the organisational digital knowledge repository

From Ignorance Map to Informing PKM4E Framework: Personal Knowledge Management for Empowerment

Aim/Purpose: The proposed Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) for Empowerment (PKM4E) Framework expands on the notions of the Ignorance Map and Matrix to support the educational and informing concept of a PKM system-in-progress. Background: The accelerating information abundance is depleting the very attention our cognitive capabilities are able to master, contributing to widening individual and collective opportunity divides. Support is urgently needed to benefit Knowledge Workers irrespective of space (developed/developing countries), time (study or career phase), discipline (natural or social science), or role (student, professional, leader). Methodology: The Design Science Research (DSR) project conceptualizing the PKM System (PKMS) aims to support a scenario of a ‘Decentralizing KM Revolution’ giving more power and autonomy to individuals and self-organized groups. Contribution: The informing-science-related approach synthesizes and visualizes concepts related to ignorance and entropy, learning and innovation, chance discovery and abduction to inform diverse audiences and potential beneficiaries. Findings: see Recommendation for Researchers Recommendations for Practitioners: The PKM4E learning cycles and workflows apply ‘cumulative synthesis’, a concept which convincingly couples the activities of researchers and entrepreneurs and assists users to advance their capability endowments via applied learning. Recommendation for Researchers: In substituting document-centric with meme-based knowledge bases, the PKMS approach merges distinctive voluntarily shared knowledge objects/assets of diverse disciplines into a single unified digital knowledge repository and provides the means for advancing current metrics and reputation systems. Impact on Society: The PKMS features provide the means to tackle the widening opportunity divides by affording knowledge workers with continuous life-long support from trainee, student, novice, or mentee towards professional, expert, mentor, or leader. Future Research: After completing the test phase of the PKMS prototype, its transformation into a viable PKM system and cloud-based server based on a rapid development platform and a noSQL-database is estimated to take 12 months.

Why do group members provide information to digital knowledge repositories? a multilevel application of transactive memory theory

The proliferation of digital knowledge repositories (DKRs) used for distributed and collocated work raises important questions about how to manage these technologies. This study investigates why individuals contribute information to DKRs by applying and extending transactive memory theory. Data from knowledge workers (N = 208) nested in work groups (J = 17) located in Europe and the United States revealed, consistent with transactive memory theory, that perceptions of experts' retrieval of information were positively related to the likelihood of information provision to DKRs. The relationship between experts' perceptions of retrieval and information provision varied from group to group, and cross‐level interactions indicated that trust in how the information would be used and the interdependence of tasks within groups could explain that variation. Furthermore, information provision to DKRs was related to communication networks in ways consistent with theorizing regarding the formation of transactive memory systems. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, emphasizing the utility of multilevel approaches for conceptualizing and modeling why individuals provide information to DKRs.

Evaluate Student Satisfaction for Social Learning Network at King Abdulaziz University

The new Web 2.0 trends have offered new tools to connect people not only to digital knowledge repositories but also to other people, in order to share ideas, collaboratively create new forms of dynamic learning content, get effective support, and learn with and from peers. Different types of collaborative content applications, such as blogs and wikis, are used by people of all ages, supporting the collaborative creation and sharing of knowledge among young and old, students and experts, inside and outside organizations and educational institutions. This research investigates the effects of Web 2.0 and social networks on students’ performance in online education which uses networking as an adjunct mode for enhancing traditional education in King Abdulaziz University.

Constructing a gamed-based learning website for children

To realise the of promotion and sustainable development for the digital archives programme, the National Museum of Natural Science (NMNS) developed a game-based learning website for children with knowledgeable, storytelling, explorative learning, joyful and personalised characteristics. This website applied design principles including interdisciplinary island maps for exploration, theme-based design with learning content and games, multi-user interactive learning environments, good use of digital archives knowledge repositories, supporting school teaching and learning and personalised membership service. Some game factors were also infused into the website including curiosity, fantasy, self value, challenge, sense of control, exploring experience, sense of achievement, competitiveness, interpersonal interaction and virtual socialisation. An evaluation result indicates that the game-based learning website can inspire learning motivation and enhance learning effectiveness for children. In the near future a virtual-and-physical blended learning service model will be delivered to children by creating personalised and collaborative learning services across onsite and online spaces.

Who Knows Who Knows What in the Group? The Effects of Communication Network Centralities, Use of Digital Knowledge Repositories, and Work Remoteness on Organizational Members’ Accuracy in Expertise Recognition

Organizational members vary in their ability to accurately recognize each other’s expertise. The goal of this study is to extend transactive memory theory to understand how organizational group members develop accurate perceptions of others’ knowledge through a multidimensional access to expertise cues. Specifically, this study examines how a group member’s accuracy in expertise recognition is influenced by one’s centralities in the communication network, use of digital knowledge repositories, and work remoteness. By analyzing data collected from 208 individuals from 17 organizational groups, this study found that a member’s accuracy in expertise recognition was positively influenced by one’s degree centrality in the communication network and negatively influenced by the extent to which one’s work was done remotely. Furthermore, there was an interaction effect between work remoteness and use of digital knowledge repositories such that the negative influence of work remoteness on expertise recognition was weaker when members used digital knowledge repositories.

A multidimensional network approach to studying team members' information seeking from human and digital knowledge sources in consulting firms

The goal of this study is to understand how consultants' information seeking from human and digital knowledge sources is influenced by their relationships with both types of knowledge sources and the characteristics of the knowledge domain in which information seeking takes place. Grounded on and extending transactive memory theory, this study takes a multidimensional approach to predict consultants' information seeking based on expertise recognition, source accessibility, peer information-seeking behaviors, knowledge complexity, and codifiability. Using data collected from 110 consultants across 9 project teams from 2 multinational consulting firms, this study found that consultants' information seeking from human knowledge sources was mostly driven by the expertise and accessibility level of their team members, whereas their information seeking from digital knowledge repositories was strongly influenced by how much information the digital knowledge source had and whether colleagues with whom they had strong social communication ties were seeking information from the digital source. Finally, knowledge complexity had a negative influence on consultants' information seeking from digital knowledge repositories, but knowledge codifiability had no significant effects on information seeking from either knowledge source. This study demonstrates the importance and viability of using a multidimensional network approach to advancing transactive memory theory to study consultants' information-seeking practices. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.