社會網絡和知識管理留學生dissertation Literature Review 范文

 

The literature review starts with the book "Enterprise 2.0" by Andrew McAfee a reference book on social media tools for collaborative purposes. From that starting point, bibliography references in the book and articles published in leading thought publications - HBR, McKinsey quarterly, etc. - will be reviewed along with some case studies. Specialized blogs and websites on social media will be part of the study as well.

 

Knowledge management is a vast topic and there are many books available in the market. "Knowledge Management in organizations" by Donald Hislop presents an orderly introduction to this subject with many references to leading articles and authors. This will be consulted allied with specific material on this field about the banking industry available in specialized journals.

 

Throughout the document it will be emphasize that knowledge is vital for any organization and as such its impact on organizations needs to be reviewed. It will be of importance to draw relationships between learning organizations and competitive advantages in line with the resource based view theory of strategy.

 

Finally, in regards to how companies can quantify the value generated through IT, works on valuation on intangibles and the different frameworks used by different companies to assess success on social media will be looked through.

 

執行綱要

 

研究設計

 

目的

 

社會媒體是當前商業世界里的熱門話題之一。而且，大多數人都以這樣或那樣的方式成為這一現象的消費者。然而，支撐這個概念的這套技術支提供了更多的可能，甚至超越了大家所普遍知道的領域和使用的在線社區，比如 Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter等。于是，在人們的關注下，越來越多的公司意識到這些工具的發展潛力，并嘗試去開發利用它們所有的潛能。

 

社交媒體領域是浩瀚的，為許多企業所面臨的挑戰提供了解決方案。例如市場營銷，就從與客戶交流的新途徑中收益頗豐。知識管理是另一個被指定的主題，在這里這類技術可以取得一個飛躍。在這個領域中，企業都在為努力做到精通而奮斗，但是在技術上存在著許多社會文化的障礙，這些障礙很難被打破。

 

因此，這項研究的初級目標就是深化有關如何利用這些技術的知識，以此來實現企業目標。這些知識包括創造、收集和分享知識，以及公司在面臨實現知識管理的主動權上遇到的問題。這包括通過利用這些解決方案和可行性的計劃可以實現什么樣的目標，去實現它們，去克服可能存在的陷阱和障礙。

 

是否會存在一個具有可行性的計劃并不確定。它也許會有對于企業的一系列建議和注意事項。根據最終的的結果，我或許會在銀行業增加社會文化問題，以及企業如何去克服它們。社會媒體工具能否在這方面對銀行有所幫助呢？

 

企業需要估計這些方案的成功率。面對正在使用的不同舉措和結構，并無法得出明確的答案。也許無法用經濟來量化由IT創造的無形價值（卡普蘭和諾頓2004），但還是需要一些指導方針來衡量它的使用與相關支出的關系。

 

Social Networks and Knowledge Management

 

Executive Summary

 

Research Design

 

目標-Purpose

 

Social media is one of the current hot topics in the business world. Furthermore most people are a consumer of this phenomenon one way or another. Nevertheless, the set of technologies that underpins this concept provide further possibilities and go beyond the widely known and used online communities such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, etc. With this regard, increasingly more firms are realizing the possibilities of these tools and are trying to harness its full potential accordingly.

 

The social media universe is vast and provides solutions for many organizational challenges. Marketing for example, is one field that is greatly benefiting from an array of new ways to communicate with customers.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Knowledge management is another subject identified where it is believed these technologies can provide a great leap forward. This is a field that organizations have struggled to master as there are a number of social-cultural barriers above technology hard to break.

 

Therefore, the primary goal of this research is to deepen the knowledge on the use of these technologies for organizational purposes such as the creation, gathering and share of knowledge as well as on the issues firms face when implementing knowledge management initiatives. This will cover, what can be achieved by using these solutions and an actionable plan to implement them overcoming the likely pitfalls and barriers.

 

Not sure there will be an actionable plan. It will probably be more a set of recommendations and caveats for organizations.

 

Depending on the final outcome, I may add social-cultural issues in the banking industry and how firms try to overcome them. Can social media tools help bank on this regard?

 

Businesses need to measure the success of these initiatives. There is no clear answer to this as different measures and frameworks are currently being used. It has been argued that it might be impossible to quantify financially the intangible value created by IT (Kaplan & Norton 2004) but some guidelines are required to justify its use against costs associated.

 

The banking sector in the UK is the industry context for this piece of research. 

 

It is interesting as well because of regulatory issues. But this point may be part of the executive summary.There are two reasons supporting this choice. On the one hand, the importance of this sector for the UK economy and the high number of knowledge workers present on this industry. On the other hand, my professional expertise resides in helping financial institutions overcome challenges to fully harness technologies being used in the industry.

 

Hence based on the goals and motivations outlined, the set of research questions and objectives are as follows:

 

What can new collaborative tools bring to financial institutions? The importance of creating, locating, gathering and sharing knowledge for these organizations and how the array of collaborative tools available can help companies achieve it

 

What are the cultural challenges to embrace these technologies? Main cultural barriers to implement these technologies. Review the support required from managers to make this work. Provide an actionable plan and recommendations to overcome pitfalls and get these initiatives right.

 

Should I add another bullet point on KM general social-cultural issues? Is Enterprise 2.0 going to be enough? Probably not, this is probably going to be my theory ans need to be linked back to objectives and research questions.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Is it possible to quantify financial benefits from these initiatives? To what extent this can be quantifiable and the level of justification required for firms with this regard

 

方法論-Methodology

 

Do not forget to reason metholody choices and design. Take into account advantages and disadvantages of different choices made.

 

The philosophy for this research is going to be in line with the realism strand, being a mixture of positivist and interpretivist principles when used for business and management research (Saunders 2000). Given the nature of this research, there will probably not be a magic formula that can be applied for every situation. Therefore it is important in this instance to understand the specific details and context of different cases. I recognise the risk of this approach is the difficulty to generate a universal theory or generalization but the purpose is aimed to find out a common reality working behind the different circumstances.

 

The initial idea was to develop a theory as data was gathered and analysed, ultimately leading to a set of recommendations. Nonetheless, given the time constraints of the research and in order to focus from the outset, a deductive approach is being used which is outlined below.

 

Classic models for knowledge management have not been successful since there are a number of pitfalls - social-cultural and technological - that companies must overcome. What can social media tools bring to this field? Do these tools suffice to break the existing barriers? Is there enough support in firms towards these measures? The research hypothesis holds that albeit previous technologies did not help the development of knowledge management initiatives and Web 2.0 tools can provide a new edge, technology is not the only answer. Should organizations want to seize these initiatives they first need to remove power, political and cultural issues from knowledge processes.

 

It might need to be tweaked - To be developed as the report is being written. Check consistency with objectives and research questions.

 

Allied with above choices a number of research strategies will be utilized namely surveys, structured interviews and building theory. The study will be cross-sectional as the social media phenomenon for knowledge management purposes will be studied at a particular time.

 

Primary Data

 

The collection of primary data will be based on semi-structured interviews and surveys. Interviews will be used to study particular cases and deepen knowledge of barriers and challenges faced and imposed by managers. On the contrary, surveys will be aimed to collect generic data on employees' attitude and experiences on social media and knowledge management initiatives. Another approach can entail focus groups to complement and cross-check employees' views with survey results.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

In order to experience the collaborative power of social networks some data will be collected by making use of them. The idea is to post threads on knowledge management and web 2.0 in places where professionals gather to discuss strategic issues online i.e. LinkedIn.

 

It will be interesting as well to explore the attitude and existing awareness of the likely managers in the years to come - MBA cohorts. This targets the perspective of future managers from the so-called generation Y - digital natives - to see if they are aware of the possibilities Web 2.0 tools can bring.

 

Secondary Data

 

Use of secondary data will encompass an extensive literature review on knowledge management, social networks, organizational behaviour and strategy. Given the richness of the research theme, I will draw on different subjects from the MBA course such as Information Management, Organization Behaviour, Strategy and Finance.

 

 

Risks

 

The acknowledgement of risks upfront is another important part of the research design. This is done to facilitate overcome these issues if they were to appear.

 

Firstly, data collection can be hindered by inability to access people within banks to discuss the research key questions. This is being mitigated by a number of informal contacts carried out before the actual research starts to measure feasibility and people's willingness to provide information.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Secondly, the research findings need to be credible. There is a tendency on social networks books and papers to be either overoptimistic or too pessimistic hence the difficulty to find balance views and arguments. Research findings will have to be based on the proper analysis of data and the validity and reliability of data collected. Furthermore, I need to be aware that technology may not just be the only solution as there are other barriers with a bigger impact hence the benefits of social media tools are not overemphasized.

 

Lastly, the study must be explanatory to have relevance. The research is being designed to avoid a descriptive outcome and to provide an explanatory study with solid recommendations and conclusions for the specific contexts researched. The choice of a deductive approach for the research will facilitate me this task at the expense of losing flexibility and adding data gathering biases such as anchoring and confirmation.

 

文獻綜述-Literature Review

 

Knowledge Management

 

The importance of knowledge is undeniable and it is widely acknowledged in management literature. A number of renowned authors in management namely Drucker, Bell, Arrow, Reich or Winter affirm that we are living in an Information Age where knowledge has become the organization's principal asset (Spender & Scherer 2007, p.6). Moreover, systematic knowledge management has been linked with gaining and sustaining competitive advantage (Bogner & Bansal 2007, pp.165-6).

 

Accordingly to the above factors the academic interest on the subject has increased dramatically in the last decade. This can be seen in the vast number of articles exploring the topic of knowledge management. Furthermore, conferences and journals specialized in learning and knowledge has arisen - i.e. Annual European Conference on Knowledge Management, Journal of Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management: Research and Practice.

 

This trend has been reflected as well in the amount of initiatives organizations around the world have been implementing in order to capture and share knowledge. A series of surveys carried out by KPMG between 1998 and 2003 underscore an ever increasing importance of these measures amongst the top 500 companies in Europe which can be clearly seen in the following key findings (KPMG 2003, p.8). 

 

Language stating key findings from this survey should be done in present or past tense?

 

80% of correspondents recognise knowledge as a strategic asset and 51% indicate board involvement is increasing

 

78% of companies believe they are missing important opportunities by unsuccessfully avail knowledge. This was estimated as 6% revenue being missed

 #p#分頁標題#e#

Overall the firms surveyed report the cost of KM is relatively low and it is an investment with a positive return. It brings financial and non-financial benefits such as quality improvement, increased teamwork and better decision making to name a few albeit 64% report ROI is unknown

 

A number of key assumptions underpin the majority of the knowledge management literature which need to be presented. The realization of knowledge at the end of the twentieth century as a key asset for organizations and a primary source of competitive advantage are two assumptions already introduced. There is another premise relating to the fact that the nature of work has changed significantly, with the importance of intellectual work increasing significantly (Hislop 2009, p.3).

 

//Post-industrial society concept + Post-industrial society critique

 

There are different perspectives on knowledge and knowledge management that can be found in academic literature. One of the key distinctions in the knowledge management literature relates to Epistemology - Philosophy addressing the nature of knowledge. It is concerned with questions such as: is knowledge objective and measurable? Can knowledge be acquired or is it experienced? What is regarded as valid knowledge, and why? (Hislop 2009, p.16) - being the objectivist perspective and the practice-based perspective the most relevant.

 

Objectivist Epistemology

 

The term objectivist is used as opposed to other terms used by other writers (see Table 1 below) since it includes two of this strand fundamental assumptions: much organizational knowledge is considered objective in character and that such knowledge can be separated from people and be codified as explicit knowledge. The character of knowledge under this epistemology is based on the following points: (Hislop 2009, p.19)

 

Knowledge is an entity or object

 

Based on a positivistic philosophy: knowledge considered objective facts

 

Explicit knowledge (objective) is favoured over tacit knowledge (subjective)

 

Knowledge is a cognitive process

 

Sharing of knowledge from an objectivist perspective is represented by the transmitter/receiver model. This model entails the transfer of explicit, codified knowledge from an isolated sender, to a separate receiver. Using the posting of a letter as an analogy of knowledge sharing is thus appropriate (Hislop 2009, p.26).

 

In terms of knowledge management processes, the starting point is what (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995) call externalization - process of codifying knowledge, converting tacit to explicit knowledge. It is acknowledge that much organization knowledge may be tacit, but under this perspective it is believed that it is possible to convert much of this knowledge to an explicit form. Therefore technology plays a key role in the collection and storage of knowledge in central repositories (Hislop 2009, p.27).#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Practice-Based Epistemology

 

This perspective highlights the extent to which knowledge it is embedded and inseparable from work activities or practices rather than interpret it as a codifiable entity (Hislop 2009, p.33). This school was labelled as 'epistemology of practice'. 

 

Definition of practice can be added if required.because of the centrality of human activity to its idea of knowledge by (Cook & Brown 1999). This stream

 

Differing Views

 

//Nonaka and the emphasis that needs to be put into tacit knowledge

 

//KM discourses based on Schultze and Stabell 2x2 matrix (Schultze & Stabell 2004): New variable added which refers to the extent to which existing social relations are regarded as consensual and unproblematic (Hislop 2009, p.9). // Important insight from this framework is the fact in which most literature ignores the issues of conflict, power and disagreement as the consensus-based perspective on social order predominates. // Knowledge based view of the firm dominant theory which adopts the objectivist perspective on knowledge