Narrow Results

Knowledge Management (KM) provides a systematic process to help in the creation, transfer and use of knowledge across the university, leading to increased productivity. While KM has been successfully used elsewhere, universities have been late in adopting it. Before a university can initiate KM, it needs to determine if it is ready for KM or not. Through a web-based survey sent to 1263 faculty members from 59 accredited Library and Information Science programs in universities across North America, this study investigated the effect of individual factors of trust, knowledge self-efficacy, collegiality, openness to change and reciprocity on individual readiness to participate in a KM initiative, and the degree to which this affects perceived organisational readiness to adopt KM. 157 valid responses were received. Using structural equation modeling, the study found that apart from trust, all other factors positively affected individual readiness, which was found to affect organisational readiness. Findings should help universities identify opportunities and barriers before they can adopt KM. It should be a useful contribution to the KM literature, especially in the university context.

This study examines how a person’s sense of identity (expressed in terms of openness to change vs. conservation) influences the way in which they screen early ideas for innovation projects. To study this, we recruited 20 experts from a leading IT-consultancy firm to individually evaluate and comment on 12 R&D project ideas. This data was then analysed by using a configurational approach (fsQCA) to understand how different experts combine various evaluation dimensions together to make sense of and decide on the goodness of an idea. The findings show that experts who are open to change view ideas as opportunities and approach idea screening as a generative process, while conservative experts are more reserved in their idea screening activities.