Journal of Systems and Information Technology

Truch, Edward; Ezingeard, JeanNoel; Birchall, David W.

2000 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260080000752

The diversity and sometimessporadic nature of research in the area of knowledge management KM points towards the need for a better understanding of the underlying framework of issues and potential research topics. This paper describes the search for a research agenda in this fast developing area. Important issues were identified through a general review of the KM literature followed by a survey of business practitioners, consultants and academics at a oneday conference dedicated to the subject. The investigation was carried out in the context of a feasibility study for a proposed KM Centre at Henley Management College in the UK. The survey followed an interpretivist approach employing openended questions that sought to establish important issues in KM and to examine the benefits that participants would seek from a such a forum of practitioners and academics. A conceptual framework of disciplines and key topics was developed from the literature review and applied to the issues identified in the survey. The results point towards three areas of significant interest, namely i implementation issues, ii best practice, and iii measurement. Additionally, the nature of the fast evolving field of knowledge management points to the need for more interactive research that brings together the different players in the field into a tighter and faster learning cycle.

Meier, Marco; Mertens, Peter

2000 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260080000753

In order to improve decision support through knowledge management it is becoming increasingly important to combine internal and external as well as quantitative and qualitative management information. The Internet is already one of the most important media for accessing external data and it might continue to grow in significance. The article describes the concept and prototype of an Editorial Workbench that helps to manage knowledge spread in internal and external sources in order to distribute the right information to the responsible decision maker in time. SAP decided to use parts of the prototype for the development of their new product SAP Strategic Enterprise Management SAP SEMTM.

Viktor, Herna L; Arndt, Heidi

2000 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260080000754

A major challenge facing management in developed countries is improving the performance of knowledge and service workers, i.e. the decision and policy makers. In a developing country such as South Africa, with a welldeveloped business sector, this need, especially in government, is even more crucial. South Africa has to face many new challenges in the 21st century growing environmental concerns, massive social and economic inequalities, high occurrences of HIV, low productivity, massive unemployment and the nations evolving role in Africa, amongst others. The importance of a sound science and technology policy framework to address these pressing issues cannot be overemphasised This paper discusses the construction of a knowledgebase from a data repository concerning a South African National Research and Technology NRT Audit. This knowledgebase is to be used as an aid when developing a science and technology policy framework for South Africa. The knowledgebase is constructed using the cooperative inductive learning team CILT approach, which combines diverse data mining tools and human expertise into a cooperative learning system. In this approach, each data mining tool constructs a model of the knowledge as contained in the data repository, thus providing an automated tool to make sense of the knowledge embedded therein. That is, the data mining tools learn from the data in order to obtain new insights. The system also incorporates human domain expertise through the computational modelling of the human subject knowledge. The knowledge, as obtained during team learning, is stored in a team knowledgebase. Results indicate that the CILT learning team approach can be successfully used to make sense of the vast amounts of data collected and provide a knowledge repository for further decision making and policy formulation.

Blakey, Peter; Phillips, Chris; Bunnell, Julie

2000 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260080000755

Training is a critical factor in enabling users to make effective use of their computers. A variety of training methods have been proposed in the literature. These training methods will be considered within the framework of procedural and conceptual training, with special reference to their application in the training of novice end users in the use of applications software. The impact of learning styles and other user characteristics on the selection of training methods for use in this area is discussed. Finally, a current research programme to explore the effectiveness of training methods for novice end users is briefly described.

Pendharkar, Parag C.; Rodger, James A.

2000 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260080000756

clientserverCS systems have revolutionized the systems development approach. Among the drivers of the CS systems is the lower priceperformance ratio compared to the mainframebased transaction processing systems. Data mining is a process of identifying patterns in corporate transactional and operational databases also called data warehouses. As most Fortune 500 companies are moving quickly towards the client server systems, it is increasingly becoming important that a data mining approaches should be adapted for CS systems. In the current paper, we describe different data mining approaches that are used in the CS systems.