Effective Knowledge Integration Research Articles

Growth target as a barrier to knowledge integration and provision of alternative scenarios in urban planning

The complex task of urban planning requires multidisciplinary knowledge co-creation. Due to the urgency of climate change mitigation and the threats environmental changes pose to urban areas, effective knowledge integration is ever more important to understand the systemic effects of planning solutions. The findings of an interview study conducted in 2020-2021 suggest that many interrelated challenges and barriers hindering the co-creative knowledge production in planning practice exist. One barrier seems to be the time constraints the planners struggle with, which is connected to the strategic and political planning targets emphasising growth. In this paper, this concern is further explored: How have the planning targets of the City of Helsinki been formulated in three of the publicly available strategies and policy papers guiding urban development? Is the pressure to grow overriding the qualitative aims set for achieving the highly anticipated sustainability transformation? Conclusions indicate a need for an open discussion concerning the planning targets of cities: Is the target to produce detailed plans in high numbers, or to aim for the best quality in the urban living environment and to meet the ambitious sustainability goals?

Boundary objects, knowledge integration, and innovation management: A systematic review of the literature

Enabling collaboration across disciplines, business functions, departments, organizations, and industries is a critical innovation management challenge. Successful innovation depends on effective knowledge integration among diverse actors. The concept of boundary objects to achieve knowledge integration has gained increasing popularity within innovation management. Despite the growing relevance, existing literature reviews about boundary objects are sparse. This review examines how boundary objects enable knowledge integration through a systematic analysis. An integrating framework of the scholarship on boundary objects links existing contributions to key theoretical perspectives on the study of boundary spanning for knowledge integration. Relevant publications are identified through a systematic literature review and discussed according to three themes: information processing, cognitive, and learning perspective on knowledge integration. Potential contributions to broader theorizing are highlighted in relation to three innovation settings: cross-functional collaboration, open innovation, and staged product development processes.

Supporting reflection to improve learning from self-generated concept maps

Creating concept maps is considered to be a powerful means for learning. It requires students to systematically organize and integrate their knowledge, which can foster meaningful learning. However, students scarcely spontaneously engage in the (meta)cognitive processes necessary for effective knowledge integration, such as reflection, which can hamper the effectiveness of concept mapping for learning. This study explores the effect of additional support that stimulates reflection by means of expert examples, reflection prompts, and classroom discussion. First-year technical vocational students (N = 144, Mage = 17.5 years) studied electricity-related topics in an online learning environment and created concept maps about their knowledge. Students’ concept maps were supplemented with either (1) no support (control condition), (2) an expert example (a combined concept map, containing their own and an expert example concept map, with differences highlighted), (3) an expert example and reflection prompts students had to process individually, (4) an expert example and reflection prompts students had to process individually after a teacher-guided classroom discussion. Students in the classroom discussion condition showed higher learning gains compared to all other conditions. This can be explained by the quality of their reflection, which proved to be a significant predictor of learning gain.

Use of an in silico knowledge discovery approach to determine mechanistic studies of silver nanoparticles-induced toxicity from in vitro to in vivo

BackgroundSilver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are considered a double-edged sword that demonstrates beneficial and harmful effects depending on their dimensions and surface coating types. However, mechanistic understanding of the size- and coating-dependent effects of AgNPs in vitro and in vivo remains elusive. We adopted an in silico decision tree-based knowledge-discovery-in-databases process to prioritize the factors affecting the toxic potential of AgNPs, which included exposure dose, cell type and AgNP type (i.e., size and surface coating), and exposure time. This approach also contributed to effective knowledge integration between cell-based phenomenological observations and in vitro/in vivo mechanistic explorations.ResultsThe consolidated cell viability assessment results were used to create a tree model for generalizing cytotoxic behavior of the four AgNP types: SCS, LCS, SAS, and LAS. The model ranked the toxicity-related parameters in the following order of importance: exposure dose > cell type > particle size > exposure time ≥ surface coating. Mechanistically, larger AgNPs appeared to provoke greater levels of autophagy in vitro, which occurred during the earlier phase of both subcytotoxic and cytotoxic exposures. Furthermore, apoptosis rather than necrosis majorly accounted for compromised cell survival over the above dosage range. Intriguingly, exposure to non-cytotoxic doses of AgNPs induced G2/M cell cycle arrest and senescence instead. At the organismal level, SCS following a single intraperitoneal injection was found more toxic to BALB/c mice as compared to SAS. Both particles could be deposited in various target organs (e.g., spleen, liver, and kidneys). Morphological observation, along with serum biochemical and histological analyses, indicated that AgNPs could produce pancreatic toxicity, apart from leading to hepatic inflammation.ConclusionsOur integrated in vitro, in silico, and in vivo study revealed that AgNPs exerted toxicity in dose-, cell/organ type- and particle type-dependent manners. More importantly, a single injection of lethal-dose AgNPs (i.e., SCS and SAS) could incur severe damage to pancreas and raise blood glucose levels at the early phase of exposure.

Perspectives on knowledge integration in cross-functional teams in information systems development

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into cross-functional team (CFT) members’ points of view on knowledge integration. Design/methodology/approach This study was conducted using Q methodology. The 22 respondents were members of CFTs in information systems development within 7 agencies of the Flemish Government administration. Findings The study resulted in three distinct perspectives. To the CFT player, the benefits and added value of information and knowledge diversity of CFTs outweigh the challenges of knowledge integration. By contrast, the CFT sceptic is doubtful that knowledge integration in CFTs can ever work at all. Finally, the organization critic highlights the lack of support from the organization for efficient and effective knowledge integration in CFTs. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study suggest that CFT configurations have important implications for the development of shared team mental models and for teams’ cognitive performance. Practical implications Making CFT members aware of their peers’ mental models, ways of working and priorities could help strengthen knowledge integration. To improve knowledge integration in teams, managers should reduce knowledge boundaries that are the result of organizational structuring and power play between departments. Originality/value By focusing on daily experiences with knowledge integration, this study reveals that members of CFTs in information systems development hold contrasting perspectives on, and diverging attitudes towards, knowledge integration.

The Effects of Training About Prevention of Factors Associated with Musculoskeletal Symptoms on Nursing Students Affectivity.

AIMThis study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of pedagogical training program for the prevention of musculoskeletal symptoms in affectivity of nursing students.METHODA quantitative, longitudinal, and quasi-experimental study, which included a pre-test, intervention, and a later test was conducted in a convenience sample of 21 students from the 4th year nursing degree at a private university in the region of Lisboa e Vale do Tejo. A total of 11 students were included in the experimental group and 10 were included in the control group. A multidisciplinary team conducted the musculoskeletal symptoms prevention program to the experimental group. Participants completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Scale before and after attending each of the 6 program sessions that took place between February and April 2019. Each session lasted for about 120 minutes.RESULTSBefore implementing the program, the groups did not reveal any statistically significant differences in positive and negative affectivities. However, after the program, there were statistically significant differences observed in positive affectivity, showing gains in the experimental group, and a decrease in negative affectivity was observed in the experimental group. A significant increase in positive affectivity was observed in psychotherapeutic techniques.CONCLUSIONIs essential the nursing schools provide learning experiences with an impact on students’ affectivity to allow a better and more effective integration of knowledge and skills in their training path.

Opportunities for the use of health information technology to support research

In the last decade, expanding use of health information technology (IT) across the United States has created opportunities for use of electronic health data for health services and biomedical research, but efforts may be hampered by limited data access, data quality, and system functionality. We identify five opportunities to advance the use of health IT for health services and biomedical research, which informed a federal government-led, collaborative effort to develop a relevant policy and development agenda. In particular, the health IT infrastructure should more effectively support the use of electronic health data for research; provide adaptable technologies; incorporate relevant research-related functionality; support patient and caregiver engagement in research; and support effective integration of knowledge into practice. While not exhaustive, these represent important opportunities that the biomedical and health informatics communities can pursue to better leverage health IT and electronic health data for research.

A Participatory Group Process within a Health Collaborative to Collect and Disseminate Needs Assessment Data.

Inclusion of community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles within an epidemiological study design is anticipated to promote the effective integration of knowledge derived from research data collection into the strategic planning and collaborative effort of a group focused on improving community-based health outcomes. This article describes how CBPR principles were used throughout survey design, data collection, analyses and results dissemination. A health needs assessment survey was developed as a partnership between an academic research group from the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), a neighborhood-level health and wellness collaborative, and community residents. Survey development, pilot testing, data collection, results dissemination, and action among the health collaborative members were carried out using CBPR principles. Feedback from participants at each stage was collected to improve the overall process of data use within the collaborative. Data from 1,064 adult participants living in the East End of Richmond, Virginia, were collected. The use of CBPR and epidemiological approaches was successful in promoting effective collaborative efforts, as indicated by 1) sustained organization-level partner participation in the development of survey items and donation of participant incentives; 2) positive feedback from resident- and organization-level participants in a preliminary data dissemination event; 3) strong resident participation at community-wide dissemination events; 4) increases in survey-related blog traffic occurring in conjunction with community-wide dissemination events; and 5) the use of process protocols and results within similar collaboratives across the city. Use of CBPR principles with epidemiological methods is a powerful tool for facilitating effective community-level strategic planning within health collaboratives.

Subjective interdependencies in knowledge integration

ABSTRACT The main challenge to integrating the knowledge of diverse teams lies in clarifying the connections between their members’ individual knowledge. Existing research suggests that teams can overcome it by making knowledge-dependence clear, such that seemingly incompatible knowledge is transformed into a useable form. However, evaluating relevance is often subjective, and little is known about how teams decide which knowledge is relevant. The purpose of this paper is therefore to address this absence by developing a model of knowledge integration that takes subjectivity into account. This model holds that planned dependencies and boundary-related cues both shape subjective dependencies, and provides possible explanations for prior findings that effective knowledge integration is not a sufficient condition for making knowledge explicit. It also sheds some light on the reasons that teams sometimes manage knowledge effectively and sometimes fail to do so.

The Multiple Roles of ICLEI: Intermediating to Innovate Urban Biodiversity Governance

The increasing relevance of cities as transnational actors raises the need to align strategic environmental planning at local levels with the implementation of global goals. To bridge this gap, several transnational city networks have appeared over the years. This paper focuses on ICLEI, the global network of local governments for sustainability. This and other intermediary urban agents support cities through coordination, alignment, knowledge sharing and aggregation, and are instrumental in progressing urban agendas. Despite their recognised functions, their specific roles and practices have only been explored to a limited extend. We address this gap by first, having a closer look at the roles and activities of ICLEI applying role theory for the role conceptualisations and second, by discussing how it links cities and global arenas by supporting urban biodiversity. We assert that ICLEI covers a wide spectrum of roles and activities. With our research, we identified three role patterns that ICLEI fulfils: knowledge roles (translator, educator and integrator), relational roles (connector and mediator) and game-changing roles (path breaker and co-creator). ICLEI and other transnational city networks orchestrate information flows and knowledge aggregation across levels, resulting in more effective knowledge integration in cities and advancing agendas on urban biodiversity.

Trans-Disciplinary Education for Sustainable Marine and Coastal Management: A Case Study in Taiwan

The present study aims to investigate the effect of a trans-disciplinary design of curricula, deemed a powerful tool for teaching and research on complex environmental problems, with a goal to help solve the real problems that climate change has brought to the coastal environment in Taiwan. Three major real-life problems in southern Taiwan—declining mullet fisheries, flooding, and coral bleaching—were integrated into four courses. Adopting a qualitative case study method, the researchers investigated the student perceptions of the trans-disciplinary learning experiences, their attitudes toward marine and coastal environmental protection, and their capability of solving the problems related to marine and coastal environments. The researchers employed various methods to analyze the student reflection reports, student self-evaluation forms, and the tape-recorded class meetings. The findings suggest the following: the trans-disciplinary curriculum stands to be an innovative yet indispensable design for coastal management education; such a curriculum benefits students by equipping them with essential knowledge and skills to succeed in future marine conservation; action learning for marine and coastal sustainability serves as the final goal of trans-disciplinary learning project; a trans-disciplinary case study on the design of curricula provides effective knowledge integration of marine and coastal sustainability.

A retrospective of knowledge graphs

Information on the Internet is fragmented and presented in different data sources, which makes automatic knowledge harvesting and understanding formidable for machines, and even for humans. Knowledge graphs have become prevalent in both of industry and academic circles these years, to be one of the most efficient and effective knowledge integration approaches. Techniques for knowledge graph construction can mine information from either structured, semi-structured, or even unstructured data sources, and finally integrate the information into knowledge, represented in a graph. Furthermore, knowledge graph is able to organize information in an easy-to-maintain, easy-to-understand and easy-to-use manner. In this paper, we give a summarization of techniques for constructing knowledge graphs. We review the existing knowledge graph systems developed by both academia and industry. We discuss in detail about the process of building knowledge graphs, and survey state-of-the-art techniques for automatic knowledge graph checking and expansion via logical inferring and reasoning. We also review the issues of graph data management by introducing the knowledge data models and graph databases, especially from a NoSQL point of view. Finally, we overview current knowledge graph systems and discuss the future research directions.

Modeling Soil Processes: Review, Key Challenges, and New Perspectives

Core Ideas A community effort is needed to move soil modeling forward. Establishing an international soil modeling consortium is key in this respect. There is a need to better integrate existing knowledge in soil models. Integration of data and models is a key challenge in soil modeling. The remarkable complexity of soil and its importance to a wide range of ecosystem services presents major challenges to the modeling of soil processes. Although major progress in soil models has occurred in the last decades, models of soil processes remain disjointed between disciplines or ecosystem services, with considerable uncertainty remaining in the quality of predictions and several challenges that remain yet to be addressed. First, there is a need to improve exchange of knowledge and experience among the different disciplines in soil science and to reach out to other Earth science communities. Second, the community needs to develop a new generation of soil models based on a systemic approach comprising relevant physical, chemical, and biological processes to address critical knowledge gaps in our understanding of soil processes and their interactions. Overcoming these challenges will facilitate exchanges between soil modeling and climate, plant, and social science modeling communities. It will allow us to contribute to preserve and improve our assessment of ecosystem services and advance our understanding of climate‐change feedback mechanisms, among others, thereby facilitating and strengthening communication among scientific disciplines and society. We review the role of modeling soil processes in quantifying key soil processes that shape ecosystem services, with a focus on provisioning and regulating services. We then identify key challenges in modeling soil processes, including the systematic incorporation of heterogeneity and uncertainty, the integration of data and models, and strategies for effective integration of knowledge on physical, chemical, and biological soil processes. We discuss how the soil modeling community could best interface with modern modeling activities in other disciplines, such as climate, ecology, and plant research, and how to weave novel observation and measurement techniques into soil models. We propose the establishment of an international soil modeling consortium to coherently advance soil modeling activities and foster communication with other Earth science disciplines. Such a consortium should promote soil modeling platforms and data repository for model development, calibration and intercomparison essential for addressing contemporary challenges.

Linking Quality Management Practices and Effective Knowledge Integration to New Product Development (NPD): An Empirical Study of Saudi-firms

This paper investigates the effects of some quality management practices (cross functional teamwork, employee participation, and reward & recognition) and effective knowledge integration on new product development (NPD). Building upon the knowledge-based view of the firm, this paper argues that cross-functional teamwork, employee participation and reward & recognition are three knowledge generation practices that contribute to enhance the performance of the knowledge integration capability. Knowledge integration, in turn, leads to successful new product development. This research employs structural equation modeling to empirically examine the impacts of some quality management practices on new product development, mediated by knowledge integration, using a survey data collected from 167 Saudi firms which are listed at Saudi stock exchange (Tadawul). The findings suggest that the capability of producing new products and / or services in the Saudi firms is positively affected by the cross-functional teamwork, employee participation and reward & recognition. It is also revealed that these three practices are drivers for integration knowledge in the firms.

Organizational drivers that strengthen adaptive capacity in the coastal zone of Australia

Governance has long been identified as a crucial part of solving environmental problems. Effective governance supports and encourages adaptive capacity to maintain or improve the conditions of socio-ecological systems. As coastal zones are among the most vulnerable systems to climate change impacts (e.g. sea-level rise), the adaptive capacity of coastal communities to climate change threats will be critical. Human populations will respond both directly and indirectly to these threats and impacts; for instance by adapting resource use and practices (e.g. changing fish targets). In this paper, we apply definitions of resilience, adaptive capacity and vulnerability to the coastal zone socio-ecological system. We focus on organizations and management aspects of governance in coastal Australia. Our approach combines a literature review that highlights key organizational drivers that supports adaptive capacity with interview data from senior resource managers from organizations from across Australia to test the validity of such drivers. The key drivers related to organizational and management issues that are required to build and strengthen the adaptive capacity of Australian coastal communities are: (a) Leadership; (b) Clear responsibilities and flexible organizational framework; (c) Effective integration of knowledge and insights; (d) Learning approach to natural resource management; and (e) Human capacity and coordinated participation in decision-making. Our study showed that natural resource management organizations are clearly concerned about future changes and uncertainties and recognize the need for cooperation and good organizational drivers. However, integration of knowledge and long-term planning to deal with predicted changes in climate is largely lacking; and mismatches between management, organizational and ecosystem boundaries and processes also exist.

Facilitating generation of local knowledge using a collaborative initiator: A NIMBY case in Guangzhou, China

This study claims that the synergic effects of collaborative governance and effective knowledge integration can solve the wicked policy issues. The function of collaborative initiators (CIs) is studied and defined. The mindset of leaders and entrepreneurs as CIs is generally different from that of public managers. Such mindset helps facilitate collaborative dynamics integrating otherwise distributed capacities and knowledge within policy networks. This study examines a case with reference to the site selection of a waste incineration power plant in Guangzhou, China. A unilateral process emerges among the residents of the district to accumulate the self-qualified knowledge before a general discussion was put forward. “Explicit knowledge” intensifies the hostile situation between the public and officials although such knowledge can be easily accessed through an Internet search. A general discussion reveals the potential for generating local knowledge conducive to abolishing the not-in-my-backyard mentality and prompting collaborative problem solving. District government officials are potential CIs whose roles remain in their infancy. This study finds that a collaborative initiator lacks entrepreneurship when faced with an influx of public opinions. The Chinese CIs vacillate between a rule-dominated manager and a policy entrepreneur with the evolution of China into a more diversified society.

A novel method for combining Bayesian networks, theoretical analysis, and its applications

Effective knowledge integration plays a very important role in knowledge engineering and knowledge-based machine learning. The combination of Bayesian networks (BNs) has shown a promising technique in knowledge fusion and the way of combining BNs remains a challenging research topic. An effective method of BNs combination should not impose any particular constraints on the underlying BNs such that the method is applicable to a variety of knowledge engineering scenarios. In general, a sound method of BNs combination should satisfy three fundamental criteria, that is, avoiding cycles, preserving the conditional independencies of BN structures, and preserving the characteristics of individual BN parameters, respectively. However, none of the existing BNs combination method satisfies all the aforementioned criteria. Accordingly, there are only marginal theoretical contributions and limited practical values of previous research on BNs combination. In this paper, following the approach adopted by existing BNs combination methods, we assume that there is an ancestral ordering shared by individual BNs that helps avoid cycles. We first design and develop a novel BNs combination method that focuses on the following two aspects: (1) a generic method for combining BNs that does not impose any particular constraints on the underlying BNs, and (2) an effective approach ensuring that the last two criteria of BNs combination are satisfied. Further through a formal analysis, we compare the properties of the proposed method and that of three classical BNs combination methods, and hence to demonstrate the distinctive advantages of the proposed BNs combination method. Finally, we apply the proposed method in recommender systems for estimating users' ratings based on their implicit preferences, bank direct marketing for predicting clients' willingness of deposit subscription, and disease diagnosis for assessing patients' breast cancer risk.

Factors Supporting Knowledge Integration in Global Innovation Projects: An Exploratory Study

This exploratory study identifies the factors which contribute to effective knowledge integration in global innovation projects through an in‐depth analysis of two case studies. Knowledge integration is analysed in two components: knowledge (individual expertise), and integration (working together). Our analysis highlights three distinct ways that individuals think about individual expertise: individual knowledge and competence; feeling valued; and unfamiliar areas. We also identify four ways in which individuals think about working together: good social relations; cultural distance; negotiation skills; and better results through working with others. Using examples from the case studies, we discuss how these factors enable knowledge integration in globally distributed innovation projects. We also propose a model indicating how these factors impact on knowledge integration and innovation performance. This study contributes towards management guidance, which is currently lacking in the area of knowledge integration.

Managing the knowledge interdependence with electronic medical record

PurposeThe aim of the paper is the study of information systems as mechanisms to manage existing and widespread knowledge in health care organizations; this is a platform that supports the processes of communication and knowledge sharing. The paper seeks to focus on the electronic medical record (EMR) as a tool to manage the integration of knowledge and operational information among health care through the coordination of the interdependencies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper develops a methodology characterized by a mixed theoretical and analyzing the key documents on the context and literature on health information systems and an empirical part based on the use of semi‐structured interviews and questionnaires to the working group responsible for the project “medical records”.FindingsThe contributions of research can be found in the descriptive analysis obtained by the process of implementation of integrated medical records (IMRs) within the structures investigated. This can lead to highlight possible areas for improvement in the management of the construction and operation of the EMR.Originality/valueThe originality lies in the possibility of verifying the conditions of effective integration of knowledge to manage health problems, through the use of IMR as a mechanism for additional information. Possible value added is the description and encoding of knowledge available within the health departments.

Control mechanisms and knowledge integration in exploitative project teams: a case study from the coal fired power plant industry

PurposeThis paper aims to deal with knowledge integration in projects, focusing on teams that deal with exploitative nature of knowledge work and implement standard solutions with minor refinements developed over time. In the research the authors seek to analyze how the organizational control mechanisms adopted within project teams that deal with exploitative nature of knowledge work influence knowledge integration outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThe research unfolded considering a single case study, as this approach was considered useful in gaining in‐depth, holistic understanding of the phenomenon studied. The authors started with a preliminary on‐site observation done with the aim of making subsequent interviews simpler and more productive. They therefore conducted semi‐structured interviews with the head of human resources and with two project managers and four members of two project teams.FindingsThe results show how in coherence with Grant's classification it is possible to argue that in this context the main control mechanism to integrate knowledge is provided by different forms of standardization. In the case of the company under investigation, formal control mechanisms based on a calculative approach are seen as a way to rule out the process of product delivery and enable effective knowledge integration by clarifying tasks and responsibilities.Originality/valueThis paper witnesses that, in exploitative project teams, formal control mechanisms may play the role of administering information exchange in order to achieve projects outcome and the desired level of knowledge integration.