Personal Knowledge Management System Research Articles

Gifts, Contexts, Means, and Ends Differing: Informing Task Scenarios to Serve Knowledge Workers’ Needs in Dynamic Complex Settings

Aim/Purpose: As traditional Knowledge Management (KM) struggles to support the personal needs of knowledge workers in a new era of accelerating information abundance, we examine the shortcomings and put forward alternative scenarios and architectures for developing a novel Personal KM System (PKMS). Background: While prior publications focused on the complementing features compared to conventional dynamic KM models, our emphasis shifts to instantiating a flourishing PKMS community supported by a Digital Platform Ecosystem. Methodology: Design science research focusing on conceptual analysis and prototyping. Contribution: The PKMS concept advances the understanding of how digital platform communities may serve members with highly diverse skills and ambitions better to gainfully utilize the platform’s resources and generative potential in their personal and local settings. Findings: We demonstrate how the needs to tackle attention-consuming rising entropy and to benefit from generative innovation potentials can be addressed. Future Research: As this article has iteratively co-evolved with the preparing of a PKMS implementation, business, and roll-out plan, the prototype’s testing, completion, and subsequent migration to a viable system is of primary concern.

Synthesizing Design and Informing Science Rationales for Driving a Decentralized Generative Knowledge Management Agenda

Aim/Purpose: In a world of rapidly expanding complexity and exponentially increasing data availability, IT-based knowledge management tools will be needed to manage and curate available information. This paper looks at a particular tool architecture that has been previously proposed: The Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS). The specific focus is on how the proposed architecture conforms to design science principles that relate to how it is likely to evolve. Background: We first introduce some recent informing science and design science research frameworks, then examine how the PKMS architecture would conform to these. Methodology: The approach taken is conceptual analysis. Contribution: The analysis provides a clearer understanding of how the proposed PKMS would serve the diverse-client ambiguous-target (DCAT) informing scenario and how it could be expected to evolve. Findings: We demonstrate how the PKMS informing architecture can be characterized as a “social machine” that appears to conform to a number of principles that would facilitate its long-term evolution. Future Research: The example provided by the paper could serve as a model future research seeking to integrate design science and informing science in the study of IT artefacts.

Rationalizing a Personalized Conceptualization for the Digital Transition and Sustainability of Knowledge Management Using the SVIDT Method

The objective of a current design science research (DSR) undertaking is responding to the call for a decentralizing Knowledge Management (KM) revolution by conceptualizing a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system. The rationale is rooted in today’s accelerating information abundance and lack of adequate tools which signify—in the author’s view—the presently emerging and most crucial barriers to individual and collective development. For validation, it employs prototyping and verifies its design decisions against DSR guidelines and KM-related methodologies and practices. For the latter purpose, this article employs the SVIDT methodology (Strengths, Vulnerability, and Intervention Assessment related to Digital Threats) by adopting a hindsight reverse-engineered logical perspective in order to present the line of reasoning from the proposed technologies back to the underlying motivations. Its focus is the sustainability of PKM systems, processes, and outcomes combined with SVIDT’s concerns with goals and environments, actors and affiliations, strengths and weaknesses, threat and intervention scenarios, and synergies and strategies. In following the SVIDT’s nine steps, the broad span of the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) concept’s “wicked” problem space is presented. The results reaffirm the DSR concept of theory effectiveness in terms of the system’s utility and communication, and present the PKM concept and system as sustainable interventions to confront opportunity divides independent of space (e.g., developed/developing countries), time (e.g., study or career phase), discipline (e.g., natural or social science), or role (e.g., student, professional, or leader).

Prototype of Personal Knowledge Management on Higher Education

This study proposed a prototype of personal knowledge management system on higher education. Personal knowledge management system is a method that used by person to manage his own knowledge. The knowledge will be classified and stored in the databases system and retrieved when needed. This study is focused for the students who take courses during undergraduate program period. All academics activities will be recorded in the system and published as portfolio on the end of study as a complementary document along certificate and transcript. This prototype offers the students to manage their knowledge from their projects, prototypes, patents, researches, seminars and work experiences.

Supporting the Sustainable Growth of SMEs with Content- and Collaboration-based Personal Knowledge Management Systems

Personal knowledge management (PKM) has been envisaged as a decentralising revolution and as the most important educational concern. Its root objective aims for highly knowledgeable individuals acting competently in their daily lives, as part of the workforce, and as public citizens. However, such a promising state of knowledge management (KM) has not emerged yet.Over the past four years, the ongoing development of a PKM concept and prototype system has been accompanied by over 30 multidisciplinary peer-reviewed publications. To verify the undertaking, dedicated articles have applied accepted general design science research (DSR) guidelines aimed at creating innovative IT artefacts (that extend human and social capabilities and meet desired outcomes), at validating design processes (as evidence of their relevance, utility, rigor, resonance and publishability) and at ensuring theory effectiveness (a matter of purposeful utility, content, communication and presentation).Based on the formation of individuals’ autonomous PKM capacities and personal devices nourished by networked creative conversations, the novel PKM approach, on the one hand, aims at advancing lifelong PKM support and academic and professional growth benefiting individuals as contributors and beneficiaries of institutional and societal performance. On the other hand, the scope of anticipated outcomes also offers appealing opportunities for further stakeholders engaged in the context of curation, education, research, development and business. In the latter context, prior papers have looked at the impact for large enterprises in regard to organizational knowledge management (OKM) system generations, the potential of a fruitful OKM–PKM–Co-evolution, and the promises for strengthening organisational capabilities of innovativeness and leadership.The focus of this article shifts to the collaborative and growth-related challenges of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It pinpoints the entrepreneurial barriers of organisational development, and how the PKM concept and its technological and educational devices are able—as any SME moves through its dynamic stages of growth, predicaments or decline—to guide and rectify the associated tasks and problems. These demands necessitate performing effectively under growing pressures and communicating with rising numbers of internal and external stakeholders, as affirmed in Garnsey’s resource-based notion of new firm growth, Greiner’s evolution–revolution-based stage-growth model, and Levie’s and Lichtenstein’s dynamic states approach to entrepreneurship.

Devising Enabling Spaces and Affordances for Personal Knowledge Management System Design

Aim/Purpose: Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) has been envisaged as a crucial tool for the growing creative class of knowledge workers, but adequate technological solutions have not been forthcoming. Background: Based on former affordance-related publications (primarily concerned with communication, community-building, collaboration, and social knowledge sharing), the common and differing narratives in relation to PKM are investigated in order to suggest further PKM capabilities and affordances in need to be conferred. Methodology: The paper follows up on a series of the author’s PKM-related publications, firmly rooted in design science research (DSR) methods and aimed at creating an innovative PKM concept and prototype system. Contribution: The affordances presented offer PKM system users the means to retain and build upon knowledge acquired in order to sustain personal growth and facilitate productive collaborations between fellow learners and/or professional acquaintances. Findings: The results call for an extension of Nonaka’s SECI model and ‘ba’ concept and provide arguments for and evidence supporting the claims that the PKM concept and system is able to facilitate better knowledge traceability and KM practices. Recommendations and Impact on Society: Together with the prior publications, the paper points to current KM shortcomings and presents a novel trans-disciplinary approach offering appealing opportunities for stakeholders engaged in the context of curation, education, research, development, business, and entrepreneurship. Its potential to tackle opportunity divides has been addressed via a PKM for Development (PKM4D) Framework. Future DSR Activities: After completing the test phase of the 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.

Personal Knowledge Management for Development (PKM4D) Framework and its Application for People Empowerment

Recent suggestions urge advancing Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) to provide the overdue support tools for individuals in the envisaged Knowledge Societies. To point out essential issues to be addressed, the paper proposes a PKM for Development (PKM4D) framework as a substantial extension of a current framework focusing on ICT4D (Information and Communications Technologies for Development). Closely aligned to Maslow's Extended Hierarchy of Needs, it allows for a differentiated assessment of knowledge management related innovations and interventions and their impact on six ecosystems related to technology, extelligence, society, knowledge workers, institutions, and the ideosphere. The framework is a spin-off of a design science research project aiming to introduce a novel PKM concept and system. The objective of this paper is to provide a motivation and more general narrative for employing the PKM4D framework in other developmental contexts in order to address opportunity divides independent of space (e.g. developed/developing countries), time (e.g. study or career phase), discipline (e.g. natural or social science), or role (e.g. student, professional, or leader).With a prototype about to be converted into a viable PKM system (PKMS) and in following up on prior concept and design related articles, the PKMS is not the prime focus of attention but serves as an example case of a novel intervention to be assessed and validated by applying the PKM4D framework and its twelve criteria.

Tools for Exploration and Exploitation Capability: Towards a Co-evolution of Organizational and Personal Knowledge Management Systems

Tools for Exploration and Exploitation Capability: Towards a Co-evolution of Organizational and Personal Knowledge Management Systems

Putting Personal Knowledge Management under the Macroscope of Informing Science

The paper introduces a novel Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) concept and prototype system. The system’s objective is to aid life-long-learning, resourcefulness, creativity, and teamwork of individuals throughout their academic and professional life and as contributors and beneficiaries of organizational and societal performance. Such a scope offers appealing and viable opportunities for stakeholders in the educational, professional, and developmental context. To further validate the underlying PKM application design, the systems thinking techniques of the transdiscipline of Informing Science (IS) are employed. By applying Cohen’s IS-Framework, Leavitt’s Diamond Model, the IS-Meta Approach, and Gill’s and Murphy’s Three Dimensions of Design Task Complexity, the more specific KM models and methodologies central to the PKMS concept are aligned, introduced, and visualized. The extent of this introduction offers an essential overview, which can be deepened and broadened by using the cited URL and DOI links pointing to the available resources of the author’s prior publications. The paper emphasizes the differences of the proposed meme-based PKM System compared to its traditional organizational document-centric counterparts as well as its inherent complementing synergies. As a result, it shows how the system is closing in on Vannevar Bush’s still unfulfilled vison of the ‘Memex’, an as-close-as-it-gets imaginary ancestor celebrating its 70th anniversary as an inspiring idea never realized. It also addresses the scenario recently put forward by Levy which foresees a decentralizing revolution of knowledge management that gives more power and autonomy to individuals and self-organized groups. Accordingly, it also touches on the PKM potential in terms of Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions and Disruptive Innovations.

PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: ACCESSIBILITY, SHARING AND THE CORRECT SYSTEM ADDS VALUE TO KNOWLEDGE

Personal Knowledge Management Systems (PKMS) is a term that describes how personal information is controlled, the system that organizes and stores data. These systems provide a way for users to control their schedules, contacts, emails, plans/tasks and may assist in data sharing. PKMS organizes the personal data of the individual to incorporate shared data when needed. To understand how PKMS may benefit an organization or personal work flow, an understanding of what knowledge is and what Knowledge Management (KM) is and if there is a benefit to coordinating the systems used. By managing the information within an organization or for personal use, not only will the user find a higher level of accuracy, the information sharing capability should also enhance the productivity and effectiveness of the user.

Building Personal Knowledge Management Systems for College and University Chemistry Librarians Using XML

This article first offers two models typical of the working lives of many of today's college and university chemistry librarians: one of the expertise required by those in their field; the other of how incoming flows of new information help them update that professional knowledge. It then proposes that eXtensible markup language (XML) be used to construct a simple, flexible, and low-cost personal knowledge database of chemical information resources to assist them. The database-building process is then outlined in broad strokes to give the reader an idea of how the process might unfold for them.

Competency-based continuing professional development

Competence is traditionally viewed as the attainment of a static set of attributes rather than a dynamic process in which physicians continuously use their practice experiences to “progress in competence” toward the attainment of expertise. A competency-based continuing professional development (CPD) model is premised on a set of learning competencies that include the ability to (a) use practice information to identify learning priorities and to develop and monitor CPD plans; (b) access information sources for innovations in development and new evidence that may potentially be integrated into practice; (c) establish a personal knowledge management system to store and retrieve evidence and to select and manage learning projects; (d) construct questions, search for evidence, and record and track conclusions for practice; and (e) use tools and processes to measure competence and performance and develop action plans to enhance practice. Competency-based CPD emphasizes self-directed learning processes and promotes the role of assessment as a professional expectation and obligation.Various approaches to defining general competencies for practice require the creation of specific performance metrics to be meaningful and relevant to the lifelong learning strategies of physicians. This paper describes the assumptions, advantages, and challenges of establishing a CPD system focused on competencies that improve physician performance and the quality and safety of patient care. Implications for competency-based CPD are discussed from an individual and organizational perspective, and a model to bridge the transition from residency to practice is explored.

Predictors of diverse usage behaviour towards personal knowledge management systems

PurposeThis paper aims to argue that individuals' use of personal knowledge management systems (PKMS) differs significantly as a result of their underlying innovativeness and involvement traits. Based on the literature, this paper seeks to propose that while more involved users utilise PKMS more frequently, more‐innovative users utilise more functions of PKMS.Design/methodology/approachA field survey was conducted to collect data. Correlation techniques and regression analysis were used to test the proposed relationship between constructs.FindingsThe findings indicated that while both traits were significantly associated with PKMS usage behaviours, users' involvement was the primary predictor of PKMS use frequency, while users' innovativeness predominated in the prediction of the number of PKMS functions they used. That is, although more involved users may use fewer functions compared with more innovative users, they are more likely to become long‐term supporters of PKMS because their use frequency is significantly higher than that of more innovative users.Practical implicationsThe paper informs scholars and managers that using a single approach – that is, only using frequency or the number of functions used – to evaluate the performance of a PKMS may lead to a biased result.Originality/valueAfter half a century of development of information technology, this paper addresses the importance of taking a step further and verifying the behaviours related to the use of PKMS with different approaches, such as use frequency and the number of functions used. In particular, the paper presents a pioneering piece of research in the information systems discipline, revealing that individuals' underlying innovativeness and involvement contribute to different PKMS use behaviours.

Knowledge distribution via shared context between blog-based knowledge management systems: A case study of collaborative tagging

Most of the existing personal knowledge management systems have been employing blogging services which is capable of providing various services (e.g., knowledge distribution and knowledge creation) to people. However, automated knowledge delivering service among the systems is difficult to take into account the corresponding context (or semantics) of the knowledge, so that the service can spread irrelevant information into knowledge management systems. In order to solve this problem, this study proposes a novel architecture, called blog context overlay network, to fulfill context matching between blog-based knowledge management systems. It is referred to as detecting ‘shared’ context between knowledge management systems. Thus, with respect to the contexts, we want to identify a community of practice (CoP) on a knowledge blogosphere where a set of blog-based knowledge management systems are incorporating with each other. As a result, newly generated knowledge can be proactively diffused to the blog-based knowledge management systems of which context is relevant to the knowledge, even before the bloggers’ queries are explicitly asked.

Personal knowledge management for knowledge workers using social semantic technologies

Knowledge workers have different applications and resources in heterogeneous environments for doing their knowledge tasks and they often need to solve a problem through combining several resources. Typical personal knowledge management (PKM) systems do not provide effective ways for representing knowledge worker's unstructured knowledge or idea. In order to provide better knowledge activity for them, we implement Wiki-based social Network Thin client (WANT) that is a wiki-based semantic tagging system for collaborative and communicative knowledge creation and maintenance for a knowledge worker. And also, we suggest the social semantic cloud of tags (SCOT) ontology to represent tag data at a semantic level and combine this ontology in WANT. WANT supports a wide scope of social activities through online mash-up services and interlink resources with desktop and web environments. Our approach provides basic functionalities such as creating, organising and searching knowledge at individual level, as well as enhances social connections among knowledge workers based on their activities.