Knowledge And Information Management Research Articles

The Development of a KIM Behavioural Framework to Support Science and Technology Knowledge Transfer in the UK Defence Sector. A Case Study Approach

A framework is presented for investigating and understanding human behaviour connected with knowledge and information management (KIM), developed from a case study in the UK defence sector. Qualitative research was undertaken in three organisations within the wider defence and security sector. The research showed that particular areas of sensitivity leading to resistance to change when KIM systems were introduced include a perceived lack of usability of KIM IT systems, the length of time required to learn how to use them, their perceived lack of reliability and the users’ consequent lack of trust in them. These issues led to the widespread use of “work arounds” to cope with the demands of the job without using the KIM systems as designed. The framework’s purpose is to contribute to the current field of knowledge about how organisations can best approach and implement required KIM changes, taking these human issues into account.

A novel approach for automatic extraction of semantic data about football transfer in sport news

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose an automatic method to generate semantic annotations of football transfer in the news. The current automatic news integration systems on the Web are constantly faced with the challenge of diversity, heterogeneity of sources. The approaches for information representation and storage based on syntax have some certain limitations in news searching, sorting, organizing and linking it appropriately. The models of semantic representation are promising to be the key to solving these problems. Design/methodology/approach – The approach of the author leverages Semantic Web technologies to improve the performance of detection of hidden annotations in the news. The paper proposes an automatic method to generate semantic annotations based on named entity recognition and rule-based information extraction. The authors have built a domain ontology and knowledge base integrated with the knowledge and information management (KIM) platform to implement the former task (name...

Applying taxonomies through auto-classification

This article follows two previous articles by Alan Flett published in Business Information Review. It considers why auto-classification is so important to ensuring effective access to information and needs to be a fundamental component of contemporary Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) strategies and architectures. In doing so it considers the predicament of knowledge workers faced with the challenge of publishing findable information and presents the auto-classification principles and techniques that make this possible. Practical solutions are demonstrated with reference to Smartlogic’s Semaphore product.

Information Audit: Towards common standards and methodology

This article further analyses a number of issues highlighted in a previous discussion of the current state of Information Audit (IA), and offers a graphical representation of the IA landscape. Library and Information Science (LIS) struggles to establish its ‘soft’ approach to IA as the leading methodology despite repeated endorsement by authors in other professional groups with some kind of interest in information management. They have found the LIS IA methodology using analysis of information needs and flows to be a useful analytical tool that allows them to evaluate information assets and to demonstrate compliance in asset management – whether those assets are financial, documentary or intangibles such as know-how. Since the implementation of Freedom of Information legislation, records management has espoused a strong focus on compliance and the avoidance of penalties for data protection breaches, but recent publications suggest that organizations of all kinds are adopting this finance- and accountancy-driven approach to information audit. This may be because it is seen as best able to manage the growing complexity of regulation and legislation (local, national and international) that affects information management. Forming strategic alliances with other players, the information profession must take the lead in establishing standard IA procedures and definitions drawing on its own praxis, which is widely accepted by other disciplines. There needs to be a single point of call for standardizing and accrediting IA skills, with the creation of a supporting body of knowledge whose evidence base goes beyond standard journal literature and monographs to include the now considerable corpus of unpublished theses as well as papers in languages other than English. As IA is adopted by a growing number of professional disciplines, LIS and KIM (Knowledge and Information Management) professionals – and also some finance professionals – can now find and seize opportunities beyond the boundaries of more traditional information work.

Improving reuse of in‐service information capture and feedback

PurposeThe adoption of the product‐service system business model means that the designing company has greater scope and motivation to learn from experience of its products in use to improve their core design and engineering capabilities. Continuous improvement, however, depends crucially upon the implementation of effective knowledge and information management (KIM) systems within a dynamic learning environment that impinge on diverse communities throughout the product lifecycle. This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachThis paper consolidates literature reviews and presents empirical observations relating to the current KIM systems and practices within large aerospace and manufacturing companies. In particular, experiences from a case study to enhance reuse of in‐service feedback conducted with an aerospace company are reported.FindingsThe empirical observations suggest that the feedback processes rely on a combination of formal and informal personalization and codification approaches, but companies are placing greater emphasis on the development of information systems to support learning from in‐service experience. It is argued that greater value could be realized from collective reuse of in‐service information but should be considered from the outset such that its content and representation could be made more amenable to computational analysis and organization for knowledge discovery.Research limitations/implicationsTo achieve the full aspirations of learning from in‐service experience, issues and challenges of KIM need to be addressed. These are summarized as strategies to promote success of codification approaches.Originality/valueThe initial value of the techniques for improving in‐service information reuse has been demonstrated to the industrial collaborator.

A systems approach to supporting decisions for the product to service shift

This paper reports on work completed as part of the knowledge and information management (KIM) – through life grand challenge. The research presents a prototype tool (tool for the assessment of decision making systems (ToADS) that provides a decision support function through aiding configuration of decision making systems (DMS) within an organisation. The prototype tool has been validated and found to be of use in a series of industrial case studies. These studies are outlined, along with a summary of findings pertaining to both the tool development and wider implications for decision support. Not least among these is the fact that many decisions are not consciously made, meaning any decision support must be implicit rather than explicit if they are to be implemented and used successfully.