There are aspects of New Product Development (NPD) business processes that pose particularly difficult challenges to Organizational Learning systems. Short product and process life cycles compress the available time window for recouping the expenses associated with product development. Cross‑functional collaboration in product development organizations requires the merging of knowledge from diverse disciplinary and personal skills‑based perspectives. Cross‑institutional collaboration leads a requirement for knowledge to be combined from participants across multiple collaborating organizations. Transient existence in teams and high turnover results in a reduction in organizational knowledge unless there is a repository for knowledge rather than a dependence on knowledge which is situated in the minds of individuals. High rates of change in turbulent industries, such as electronics, motivates participants in NPD processes to effectively overcome these Organizational Learning challenges. The potential payoff includes time saved by not repeating mistakes and reuse of knowledge that leads to successful products and processes. IS research has paid little attention to NPD processes despite the fact that some IS appears to have the potential to have an impact in that area. Recent research completed by these researchers in Analog Devices Inc identified Organizational Learning challenges encountered by engineering teams in product development. This paper will report on these challenges and will describe how systems were developed to support organizational learning to support the product development process.

Building knowledge management (KM) infrastructure involves reuse and refocus of several existing infrastructure components, and awareness around future visions and conditions of infrastructure. We present a community perspective using a staircase metaphor for conceptualizing government supported KM infrastructure and services. Additionally we illustrate a model for government's role in providing and leveraging infrastructure components from all tiers of government. With examples, we build a case for adding diffusion of innovation characteristics, and features from innovation networks analysis in KM infrastructure. Observability and trialability are important to knowledge acquisition, while compatibility are central to knowledge application, packaging, and creation. Ease of use, and perceived usefulness affects knowledge use in all its forms.

The paper discusses the positive influence that knowledge creation exerts over organizational performance in regard to collaborative learning environmental and quality uncertainty. The paper shows the Knowledge Value Chain (KVC) would be the best means of expressing the environment and quality condition into corporation rather than the normal value chain and the former is thus becoming more important and significant method of implementation. The Knowledge Value Chain (KVC) will be worked as a model of the knowledge management framework. In a sense, KVC will provide more details how being incorporated with the environmental factors to success the corporation requirements. Eventually, KVC will also discuss how it enabled the corporation improve and develop the most competitive advantage position. As such, it will be widely used worldwide in future as an effective means of corporation management and sustainable development.

This paper offers a view of communication networks in which professionals are connected via knowledge flows and communication processes. The discussion focuses on a case study of software business processes in two small‑ size Finnish software companies. The paper has two objectives. First, it assesses the knowledge flow model as a tool that can be used for developing knowledge‑intensive services. Second, it offers a new way of seeing a software project from a communication and knowledge flow perspective.

This paper is an exploration of knowledge work practices in a distributed software development setting. The author has undertaken an empirical study in the Irish subsidiary of a multinational company over a 16‑month period. Our methods were inspired by ethnography; by spending an extended period of time with a software development team working on a specific project, we had the opportunity to observe real work practices in a real work setting in the specific circumstances of distributed work. The purpose of the current study is to highlight the ways in which technical and social factors are inextricably entwined in distributed work settings.

This paper is based on the outcomes of a study that explored the knowledge management practices and challenges in an international NGO network. The investigation constituted comparative case studies of two centres (one in Zambia and the other in the Netherlands) belonging to a single international network. An empirically grounded framework of knowledge management practices based on the taxonomy proposed by Holsapple and Joshi was utilised as the reference framework for the study. The framework provided guidelines to characterize factors that influence organizational knowledge management; knowledge manipulation activities (processes) and organizational knowledge resources. The results of the empirical study confirm that a variety of factors affect knowledge management behaviours in an organization. These factors include managerial and internal controls such as management styles and incentives for knowledge creation and sharing; resource influences; and environmental influences relating to an organization's culture and the needs of partner organizations. The study highlights important variation in diversity, gaps and perceptions in managing knowledge between centres in the network that are based in Europe and Africa. This is despite significant communality in knowledge management processes and infrastructures. The results further show that institutionalization of knowledge management practices within a network seem to enable or constrain knowledge management at centre and network level. Recommendations are proposed to improve knowledge management practices at local and international level and include enhanced technical and advisory services at international level; capacity building; creating greater awareness of knowledge management; decentralization of knowledge management processes; implementation of a knowledge management strategy at network level and improving relationships between centres. The authors conclude that networked NGO's and specifically OWI could operate more efficiently and incrementally enhance service provision by leveraging their knowledge resources more effectively. It is in this light that knowledge management practices should be examined in NGOs and particularly networks with their complex structures and attendant reoccurring and unavoidable problems.

There is no credible methodology for knowledge management systems development (KMSD). We report on a KMSD approach that has emerged from an investigation based on action research and grounded theory into a number of business problems experienced by organizations. The KMSD approach is highly participatory, requiring full involvement of members of an organization. It has three interacting aspects: envisioning knowledge work behaviour, design of knowledge management system (KMS), and exploring technology options for supporting the KMS. In the first of these aspects, challenges and opportunities in an organization's current situation are analysed and an improved situation is envisioned to expose knowledge concepts and their properties. In the second, a logical design of a KMS is produced using knowledge entities, knowledge flows and knowledge interfaces; the design is guided and constrained by an organization's structure, culture, and resources. The third aspect is to do with introducing appropriate IT into KMS design, integrating organizational, social and technological aspects of the system. The paper describes this KMSD approach and how it emerged from both practical and theoretical investigation.

Intellectual capital (IC) development includes a wide set of activities focusing on the improvement of an organisation's intangible resources. However, it is often unclear what kind of impacts different IC initiatives have. The current literature lacks appropriate methods for identifying and measuring them. If it is not possible to assess the impact of various development activities it is difficult to justify IC investments or choose between alternative service providers. This paper, based on a case study, examines how to assess the impacts of an IC development initiative. The empirical research setting is the Pietari Business Campus, a knowledge‑intensive business service organisation providing various development services for its twelve member companies operating in the St. Petersburg region in Russia. In this paper, the literature is first examined to understand how the impacts of development activities can be assessed in different contexts. The characteristics of these approaches are then utilised to formulate the assessment methodology used in the case study. The empirical assessment consists of both numerical indicator data and subjective interview data. The case study showed that the activities and outputs can be measured quite accurately but that the outcomes are difficult to capture. The main challenge results from external changes taking place and making it difficult to observe the outcomes of development activities. Due to the challenging nature of the assessment task and the relatively low managerial priority of the issue (on the customers' side) it is suggested that subjective assessment methods may provide sufficient information in many cases. Although this paper is focused on IC development, there may be similar contexts in other knowledge‑intensive services in which the lessons of this study might be useful.