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An ophthalmic hospital with wings.

In today's economic climate, knowledge management is very important to the non-profit sector as these organisations experience the effects of a global recession. Financial instability may lead to downsising that creates a loss of important information. For non-profit organisations, a creative solution to the financial crisis has been re-structuring through multi-agency collaborations and mergers. These restructuring processes are complex and disruptive, making effective knowledge management processes even more important for organisational success. This study employs a qualitative interview design to explore the merger of two non-profit cancer support agencies through the lens of knowledge management theory. Participants of the original agencies shared their views of previous knowledge processes, how the processes changed as a result of the merger and strategies used by the newly formed agency to address merger complexities. Results reflect that one of the original organisations began as a non-profit medical provider with formal culture and communication patterns; the other a grass-roots social service agency with informal structure and communication patterns. These differences contributed to differing views about how the merger was implemented and perceived by various employees and board members. Knowledge gains were generally explicit knowledge processes while knowledge losses were implicit processes. Some important strategies and lessons learned included the need for good documentation of all work processes, an external facilitator, and the need for transparency and collaboration between all constituents.

This study reviewed the literature to understand “how does research produce impact?”. Despite all discussion threads in the literature, it was clear that management of the Front-end of Innovation (FEI) of non-profit research centers has received little attention. As a result, this study was a first step toward proposing a model that describes the Front-End of R&D at non-profit Research Centers. This paper is an Integrative Literature Review that follows the PRISMA statement methodology. Building on FEI2O’s High-Level Ontology, this paper’s contribution elicited relevant constructs from the literature and took the first steps to extend it to the Front-End of R&D. New research-related concepts such as the RESEARCH CONCEPT, the INFLUENCING FACTORS, and the RESEARCH PROJECT were introduced. The RESEARCH PROJECT produces RESULTS that may have an IMPACT ON SOCIETY. All these concepts are interconnected through a feedback loop that feeds the FEI2O: STRATEGIC PURPOSE of the non-profit research center, contributing to the advancement of its research strategy, objectives, and goals. The current work contributed to understanding a domain of knowledge that is of interest to researchers, research managers, and those interested in bringing new scientific research results to society.