Journal of Knowledge Management

Dutta, Biswanath ; CHATTERJEE, USASHI ; Madalli, Devika P.

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-10-2014-0439

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a brand new ontology development methodology, called Yet Another Methodology for Ontology (YAMO) and demonstrate, step by step, the building of a formally defined large-scale faceted ontology for food. Design/methodology/approach – YAMO is motivated by facet analysis and an analytico-synthetic classification approach. The approach ensures quality of the system precisely; it makes the system flexible, hospitable, extensible, sturdy, dense and complete. YAMO consists of two-way approaches: top-down and bottom-up. Based on YAMO, domain food, formally defined as large-scale ontology, is designed. To design the ontology and to define the scope and boundary of the domain, a group of people were interviewed to get a practical overview, which provided more insight to the theoretical understanding of the domain. Findings – The result obtained from evaluating the ontology is a very impressive one. Based on the study, it was found that 94 per cent of the user’s queries were successfully met. This shows the efficiency and effectiveness of the YAMO methodology. An evaluator opined that the ontology is very deep and exhaustive. Practical implications – The authors envision that the current work will have great implications on ontology developers and practitioners. YAMO will allow ontologists to construct a very deep, high-quality and large-scale ontology. Originality/value – This paper illustrates a brand new ontology development methodology and demonstrates how the methodology can be applied to build a large-scale high-quality domain ontology.

Sinha, Bhaskar ; Chandra, Somnath ; Garg, Megha

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-10-2014-0441

Purpose – The purpose of this explorative research study is to focus on the implementation of semantic Web technology on agriculture domain of e-governance data. The study contributes to an understanding of problems and difficulties in implantations of unstructured and unformatted unique datasets of multilingual local language-based electronic dictionary (IndoWordnet). Design/methodology/approach – An approach to an implementation in the perspective of conceptual logical concept to realization of agriculture-based terms and terminology extracted from linked multilingual IndoWordNet while maintaining the support and specification of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard of semantic Web technology to generate ontology and uniform unicode structured datasets. Findings – The findings reveal the fact about partial support of extraction of terms, relations and concepts while linking to IndoWordNet, resulting in the form of SynSets, lexical relations of Words and relations between themselves. This helped in generation of ontology, hierarchical modeling and creation of structured metadata datasets. Research limitations/implications – IndoWordNet has limitations, as it is not fully revised version due to diversified cultural base in India, and the new version is yet to be released in due time span. As mentioned in Section 5, implications of these ideas and experiments will have good impact in doing more exploration and better applications using such wordnet. Practical implications – Language developer tools and frameworks have been used to get tagged annotated raw data processed and get intermediate results, which provides as a source for the generation of ontology and dynamic metadata. Social implications – The results are expected to be applied for other e-governance applications. Better use of applications in social and government departments. Originality/value – The authors have worked out experimental facts and raw information source datasets, revealing satisfactory results such as SynSets, sensecount, semantic and lexical relations, class concepts hierarchy and other related output, which helped in developing ontology of domain interest and, hence, creation of a dynamic metadata which can be globally used to facilitate various applications support.

Dasgupta, Subhasis ; Pal, Pinakpani ; Mazumdar, Chandan ; Bagchi, Aditya

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-10-2014-0435

Purpose – This paper provides a new Digital Library architecture that supports polyhierarchic ontology structure where a child concept representing an interdisciplinary subject area can have multiple parent concepts. The paper further proposes an access control mechanism for controlled access to different concepts by different users depending on the authorizations available to each such user. The proposed model thus provides a better knowledge representation and faster searching possibility of documents for modern Digital Libraries with controlled access to the system. Design/methodology/approach – Since the proposed Digital Library Architecture considers polyhierarchy, the underlying hierarchical structure becomes a Directed Acyclic Graph instead of a tree. A new access control model has been developed for such a polyhierarchic ontology structure. It has been shown that such model may give rise to undecidability problem. A client specific view generation mechanism has been developed to solve the problem. Findings – The paper has three major contributions. First, it provides better knowledge representation for present-day digital libraries, as new interdisciplinary subject areas are getting introduced. Concepts representing interdisciplinary subject areas will have multiple parents, and consequently, the library ontology introduces a new set of nodes representing document classes. This concept also provides faster search mechanism. Secondly, a new access control model has been introduced for the ontology structure where a user gets authorizations to access a concept node only if its credential supports it. Lastly, a client-based view generation algorithm has been developed so that a client’s access remains limited to its view and avoids any possibility of undecidability in authorization specification. Research limitations/implications – The proposed model, in its present form, supports only read and browse facilities. It would later be extended for addition and update of documents. Moreover, the paper explains the model in a single user environment. It will be augmented later to consider simultaneous access from multiple users. Practical implications – The paper emphasizes the need for changing the present digital library ontology to a polyhierarchic structure to provide proper representation of knowledge related to the concepts covering interdisciplinary subject areas. Possible implementation strategies have also been mentioned. This design method can also be extended for other semantic web applications. Originality/value – This paper offers a new knowledge management strategy to cover the gradual proliferation of interdisciplinary subject areas along with a suitable access control model for a digital library ontology. This methodology can also be extended for other semantic web applications.

Xu, Hao ; Giunchiglia, Fausto

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-11-2014-0452

Purpose – This paper aims to propose an entity-based scientific metadata schema, i.e. Scientific Knowledge Object (SKO) Types. During the past 50 years, many metadata schemas have been developed in a variety of disciplines. However, current scientific metadata schemas focus on describing data, but not entities. They are descriptive, but few of them are structural and administrative. Design/methodology/approach – To describe entities in scientific knowledge, the theory of SKO Types is proposed. SKO Types is an entity-based theory for representing and linking SKOs. It defines entities, relationships between entities and attributes of each entity in the scientific domain. Findings – In scientific knowledge management, SKO Types serves as the basis for relating entities, entity components, aggregated entities, relationships and attributes to various tasks, e.g. linked entity, rhetorical structuring, strategic reading, semantic annotating, etc., that users may perform when consulting ubiquitous SKOs. Originality/value – SKO Types can be widely applied in various digital libraries and scientific knowledge management systems, while for the existing legacy of scientific publications and their associated metadata schemas.

Pattuelli, M. Cristina ; Miller, Matthew

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-11-2014-0453

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel approach to the development and semantic enhancement of a social network to support the analysis and interpretation of digital oral history data from jazz archives and special collections. Design/methodology/approach – A multi-method approach was applied including automated named entity recognition and extraction to create a social network, and crowdsourcing techniques to semantically enhance the data through the classification of relations and the integration of contextual information. Linked open data standards provided the knowledge representation technique for the data set underlying the network. Findings – The study described here identifies the challenges and opportunities of a combination of a machine and a human-driven approach to the development of social networks from textual documents. The creation, visualization and enrichment of a social network are presented within a real-world scenario. The data set from which the network is based is accessible via an application programming interface and, thus, shareable with the knowledge management community for reuse and mash-ups. Originality/value – This paper presents original methods to address the issue of detecting and representing semantic relationships from text. Another element of novelty is in that it applies semantic web technologies to the construction and enhancement of the network and underlying data set, making the data readable across platforms and linkable with external data sets. This approach has the potential to make social networks dynamic and open to integration with external data sources.

Yao, Yuchun ; Wang, Yan ; Xing, Lining ; Xu, Hao

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-11-2014-0454

Purpose – This paper applies the knowledge-based genetic algorithm to solve the optimization problem in complex products technological processes. Design/methodology/approach – The knowledge-based genetic algorithm (KGA) is defined as a hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) which combined the GA model with the knowledge model. The GA model searches the feasible space of optimization problem based on the “neighborhood search” mechanism. The knowledge model discovers some knowledge from the previous optimization process, and applies the obtained knowledge to guide the subsequent optimization process. Findings – The experimental results suggest that the proposed KGA is feasible and available. The effective integration of GA model and knowledge model has greatly improved the optimization performance of KGA. Originality/value – The technological innovation of complex products is one of effective approaches to establish the core competitiveness in future. For this reason, the KGA is proposed to the technological processes optimization of complex products.

Chandra, Ramesh ; Iyer, Reethika S ; Raman, Ramakrishnan

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-11-2014-0455

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to understand the knowledge sharing in projects based on knowledge flow patterns. The impact of attrition, thereby leading to a loss of tacit knowledge, inability to capture and reuse knowledge and inability to understand the knowledge flow patterns, which leads to lack of structured workspace collaboration, are frequently faced challenges in organizations. The change in knowledge sourcing behaviors by the current generation workforce has a high reaching impact in driving collaboration among employees. Design/methodology/approach – This paper attempts to study this impact and identify means to improve the effectiveness of collective knowledge sharing via social computing platforms. As part of this study, customized solutions are devised based on knowledge flow patterns prevalent in teams. Knowledge network analysis (KNA), a socio-metric analysis, is performed to understand knowledge flow patterns among employees in a team which helps understand the relationships between team members with respect to knowledge sharing. KNA helps in understanding ties and interactions between human and system resources. Findings – Significant changes were observed in knowledge sourcing and sharing behaviors. Capture of the tacit knowledge of employees further resulted in reducing the impact of knowledge attrition. For instance, targeted communities of practice (CoPs) based on the presence of cliques within teams enabled teams to complete projects effectively and efficiently. Practical implications – The results are used to identify push and pull networks to enable effective knowledge management (KM). Results of this study reveal that analyzing knowledge flow patterns in a team and deploying a customized social computing platform that is tailored to address the needs of specific knowledge flow patterns within that team, significantly enhances collaborative sharing as opposed to a standardized “one-size-fits-all” platform. Originality/value – This paper is an original creation after research by the authors for a continuous assessment of KM within the organization.

Thienphut, Danai ; Jiamprachanarakorn, Suriya ; sirasirirusth, jirusth ; Boonloisong, Rachen

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-10-2014-0432

Purpose – This paper aims to study the key success factors (KSFs) that determine the direction and context of a new university, Suan Dusit Rajabhat University (SDU), to formulate strategic human capital management (SHCM) for the university, and also to recommend a proposal for the human resources (HR) structure and systems that supports SHCM for a new university. Design/methodology/approach – This study used mixed methods. There were four steps, including documentary research to develop a draft of SHCM prototype, in-depth interview and knowledge-sharing technique with 17 key informants to develop the underlying final SHCM prototype, collecting the quantitative data from a questionnaire to develop a prototype of SHCM, and validation and confirmation of the suitability and feasibility of SHCM for a new university by using a focus group and knowledge-sharing technique with 14 HR experts and re-confirm for practical implementation with SDU’s executive team. Findings – The four KSFs were university positioning, talent capability, harmonization, and transformation. The SHCM formulation was categorized into two sections: components including strategy on thinking and planning, implementation and measurement; and procedures including HR policy committee, strategic and operational HR management. The HR proposal for implementation was emerging. Originality/value – The tacit knowledge in SHCM, including human capital-centric driving for KSFs and innovative HR in university transformation comprising of the strategic and operational levels, was revealed.

Tangaraja, Gangeswari ; Mohd Rasdi, Roziah ; Ismail, Maimunah ; Abu Samah, Bahaman

2015 Journal of Knowledge Management

doi: 10.1108/JKM-11-2014-0449

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a conceptual model of knowledge sharing behaviour among Malaysian public sector managers. Design/methodology/approach – An extensive literature review method was used to identify and analyse relevant literature in order to propose a knowledge sharing model. Findings – The authors identified three potential predictor groups of knowledge sharing behaviour among Malaysian public sector managers. The groups are intrinsic motivational factors, extrinsic motivational factors and organisational socialisation factors. The paper proposes organisational commitment as the mediating variable between the identified predictors and knowledge sharing behaviour (knowledge donating and knowledge collecting). Research limitations/implications – The paper offers a number of propositions, which leads to a knowledge sharing model. Future research should validate and examine the predictive power of the proposed model. Practical implications – Upon model validation, the paper could offer practical interventions for human resource development (HRD) practitioners to assist organisations towards fostering knowledge sharing behaviour. The paper highlights the importance of employee’s organisational commitment in order to engage in organizational-related behaviours such as knowledge sharing. Originality/value – The paper used a new approach in theorising knowledge sharing behaviour by integrating the General Workplace Commitment Model, Self-Determination Theory and Social Capital Theory. The suggestion of public service motivation as one of the intrinsic motivational factors could provide new insights to the HRD practitioners on fostering knowledge sharing behaviour in the public service subject to model validation.