Sharing contextual knowledge in today’s workplace environments

Due to an evolution of business models compatible with networked economy, office environments of this age need effective support for collaboration among office workers. This article demonstrates that existing Extended Office Systems (EOS) are not specifically designed to maintain awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of the collaborating actors of many of today’s networked office environments. Using an awareness framework for sharing of contextual knowledge in collaborative business processes, this article provides general design directives for a CollaborationAware EOS (CAEOS) system that facilitates sharing of the contextual knowledge among office workers in networked offices. In order to assess its effectiveness, this framework is applied to a network management case study with the aim of identifying the awareness requirements of the actors within that process. The results confirm effectiveness of the framework. The components of the framework, that is the process model and the awareness model, are then used as analytical tools as input to the design of CAEOS for achieving its collaborating goals. It is suggested that the process model component of the framework to constitute foundation for the knowledge-base component of the CAEOS, whereas the awareness model of the framework to constitute foundation for the inference engine of the CAEOS’.

Sharing Contextual Knowledge in Today’s Workplace Environments Farhad Daneshgar1 and Chandra S Amaravadi2 University of New South Wales, Australia Western Illinois University, USA f.daneshgar@unsw.edu.au Chandra_amaravadi@ccmail.wiu.edu Abstract- Due to an evolution of business models compatible with networked economy, office environments of this age need effective support for collaboration among office workers This article demonstrates that existing Extended Office Systems (EOS) are not specifically designed to maintain awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of the collaborating actors of many of today’s networked office environments Using an awareness framework for sharing of contextual knowledge in collaborative business processes, this article provides general design directives for a CollaborationAware EOS (CAEOS) system that facilitates sharing of the contextual knowledge among office workers in networked offices In order to assess its effectiveness, this framework is applied to a network management case study with the aim of identifying the awareness requirements of the actors within that process The results confirm effectiveness of the framework The components of the framework, that is the process model and the awareness model, are then used as analytical tools as input to the design of CAEOS for achieving its collaborating goals It is suggested that the process model component of the framework to constitute foundation for the knowledge-base component of the CAEOS, whereas the awareness model of the framework to constitute foundation for the inference engine of the CAEOS’ Keywords: awareness, extended office systems (EOS), collaboration support systems, knowledge sharing, knowledge representation, groupware, business intelligence Background 1.1 Introduction The term Extended Office System (EOS) has originally been described as a system that allows users to make enquiries about concepts in the domain (Cordingley 1987) Based on this idea, the architecture of a system called AEI-3 that manages administrative knowledge has been introduced by Amaravadi (1998) Administrative knowledge is the knowledge needed to perform the support operations in an organization and can include such things as the date a contract will expire or a customer’s idiosyncratic preference to be billed in instalments The acronym EOS also emphasises the fact that this variant of Knowledge Management system is the result of an outgrowth of existing office technologies (Ibid) The main motivation for development of the AEI-3 was that as office systems become more sophisticated, it will be necessary to enhance their capabilities with knowledge management features Thus a Word processing system could be equipped with the capability to answer questions about budgets, clients and schedules EIS-3 was a starting project for arriving at the above results One of the objectives of this article is to introduce an enhanced version of the AEI3 that provides support to its collaborating users In that sense, CAEOS is a collaboration-support version of the AEI-3 A summary of the two systems is provided in Table Due to its collaborative nature CAEOS must also maintain additional contextual knowledge regarding the collaboration among the office workers called in this article as the collaboration/contextual knowledge, or awareness For example, knowing who is doing what; how and for whom they it? Etc Such awareness knowledge is represented in the proposed framework by a set of collaborative semantic concept including the roles of persons, the tasks that these roles perform (both in isolation as well as in collaboration with others), and the artefacts/resources/knowledge that are used by roles in order to perform those tasks Moreover, in defining the operational and administrative knowledge, AEI-3 adopts the assumption that the nature of such knowledge is limited to explicit taskspecific knowledge only Such limited noncollaborative view is expanded under ISSN 1479-4411 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Reference this paper as: Daneshgar F and Amaravadi C S (2004) “Sharing Contextual Knowledge in Today’s Workplace Environments” The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, Volume 2, Issue pp (1-12), available online at www.ejkm.com Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (1-12) presented in Section Section is allocated to the objectives and characteristics of the CAEOS In Section the Network Management Case Study is presented This will lead to Section where conclusion and future work are presented CAEOS and incorporates both knowledge of domain (as before) as well as the additional awareness knowledge of context including knowledge of roles, tasks, and artefacts, as defined in the previous paragraph A thorough discussion about the proposed framework and its components is Table 1: Main Features of the AEI-3 and CAEOS Existing Version (AEI-3) Main Function To facilitate sharing of operational and administrative knowledge among those who need it Method of accumulating knowledge Knowledge repository consists of a linked set of structures linking the key concepts in the domain and descriptive assertions about them Process Model Representation Intuitive; no formal framework used Participants are: Both producers and consumers of knowledge (hence dual roles) The Scope restricted to the explicit administrative/operational knowledge only Administrative Knowledge Contents only (routine, diverse, fragmented, dynamic and explicit) workers will immediately re-orient their activities to support a critical situation simply on the basis of overhearing a phone call or noticing a change in another's voice tone 1.2 Awareness provisioning methods for collaborative business processes In daily dialog the word awareness is generally defined as “being conscious + in possession of information + cognisant + informed” The word information on the other hand is defined as “knowledge or facts acquired or derived as from study, instruction, or observation + act of informing + being informed” (Halsey 1986) Bentley et al (1992) on the other hand note the importance of a standardised display of the airspace to support air traffic controllers gaining at-a-glance awareness of the airspace others are controlling Media spaces are promoted as supporting informal shared awareness across distributed offices (Gaver et al 1995) Also, significant work is being undertaken in the CSCW community looking at ways of defining different types of awareness and supporting awareness (Fitzpatrick et al 1998) Most of these studies represent awareness as identified in ethnographic studies With few exceptions, awareness has been regarded by researchers in the field of CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) as a kind of information that is made available to (or targets) certain people for a specific purpose For example, in co-located work, peripheral awareness is an awareness that is gained by implicit monitoring of the local work environment (Robinson 1993) Two examples are (Suchman 1986) and (Heath et al 1996) who describe the way in which www.ejkm.com Proposed Version (CAEOS) To facilitate sharing of operational and administrative knowledge among collaborating office workers (see Section 1.3) Knowledge repository consists of a linked set of structures linking the roles, tasks and artefacts (see Sections 1.2 & 2) A formalised awareness framework is used (see Sections 1.2 & 2) Potentially, all the collaborating office workers (hence uniform roles) restricted to the knowledge (explicit/implicit) that exists in the pre-defined/non-emerging business processes (see Section 1.3) Both content and context (see Section 2) In majority of the above studies, the primary meaning of awareness implies that an individual becomes aware by ©Academic Conferences Ltd Farhad Daneshgar and Chandra S Amaravadi perception of a given information about an object, and not by just receiving that information This is the way the interactionists in the field of social psychology approach awareness The writers of this chapter have extended the interactionists' approach to awareness to include office workers when involved in today’s collaborative office activities According to this approach, awareness between objects in a given medium is manipulated via focus and nimbus, which are subspaces within which an object chooses to direct either its presence or its attention (Benford et al, 1993) The more an object is within your focus, the more aware you are of it; and the more an object is within your nimbus, the more aware it is of you As a result of this definition, awareness levels can be derived from a combination of nimbus and focus: "The level of awareness that object A has of object B in medium M is some function of A's focus in M in relation to B's nimbus in M" (Ibid) little resources if any (in the form of intelligence, algorithmic procedures, internal memory, etc.) for dealing with emerging tasks In reality, however these systems let the human users of the system deal with such emerging situations In our view, a majority of the administrative tasks are repetitive by nature, and can easily fall into the category of predefined tasks in the sense that both the steps of execution, task outcomes, roles, and artefacts can be predefined to a great extent The proposed process model is primarily based on pre-defined knowledge about known relationships among roles, the tasks that these roles perform, and the artefacts that they use in order to perform their tasks Such relationships seem to be quite relevant, applicable, and consistent with the context of the day-to-day and routine administrative and operational processes characteristic of the office life 1.4 Need for a formalised process model In order to operationalise the above concept of awareness levels within the context of collaborative business processes, an existing awareness framework (Daneshgar 2004) is extended here that maintains awareness levels of office workers at appropriate levels while performing various office works as explained in 4.2 Traditionally, two groups of techniques have been used for representation of process models These are graphical techniques and the declarative techniques (Amaravadi , 2001) Graphic specifications are usually variations of Petri-Nets, Data Flow Diagrams, State Transition Networks or Activity Networks (Amaravadi et al 1992) Semantic nets have been widely used for knowledge representation particularly in connection with natural language processing 1.3 Structured collaborative business process vs Administrative knowledge In order to avoid limitations associated with the semantic nets we make use of Graph Theory in this article A collaborative business process model is introduced that has roots in the Applied Mathematics Compared with the semantic nets, the Graph Theory allows use of already existing mathematical-oriented constructs for producing more sophisticated search/browse algorithms This is partly demonstrated in Section when identifying the awareness requirements of the roles by walking through the ‘process graph’ and expressing the results using the notations of Set Theory The structured business process is defined in this article as a collection of a set of collaborative semantic concepts, that is, roles, tasks and artefacts, as well as the relationships among these concepts Moreover, these concepts and relationships among them must either be stable over time (that is, must be defined beforehand), or must be defined at any given time with no uncertainty The above implies that it will be problematic to use a pre-defined business process model if the actual process would need to deal with emerging/unexpected tasks The reason is that the presence of an emerging task may require unplanned resources, resulting in contradictory and inconsistent outcomes and possibly a process failure As a result, systems designed for task support under a predefined process discipline will allocate www.ejkm.com ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (1-12) that consists of a set of collaborative semantic concepts that are related to one another in a pre-specified manner In this Figure, the roles X, Y, T and V are shown by filled circles and each perform one or more tasks Tasks are shown by normal circles A role typically uses either tacit or explicit know-how in order to perform a simple task (as opposed to the collaborative task) This will allow different actors who play the same role for performing the same simple task (perhaps because they are different shift workers) to use their own tacit knowledge that may differ from others when performing the same task An awareness-based framework for representation of the Collaboration Aware Extended Office System (CAEOS) Our proposed framework consists of the two components: a process graph, and an awareness model These components are discussed in this Section 2.1 The process graph: Figure shows one such representation using a connected graph It shows a predefined collaborative business process X V f d c e b T a Y Figure 1: Examples of a Process Graph with four roles and 14 tasks Another commonly practiced method of demonstrating a business process is to use workflow languages (Hawryszkiewycz 1997) However due to the limitations that these tools impose on the sequence of task executions they are not used in this article Performing a simple task means executing those steps of the tasks that not compete with the steps of other tasks in terms of utilisation of the available limited resources/artefacts; hence the name ‘simple’ (Daneshgar 2000) On the other hand, if a role is to perform a collaborative task in conjunction with one or more other roles within the process, then the pair of simple tasks that constitute a collaborative task will have certain steps within them that will compete with (and must share) the available resources/artefacts Ideally, such knowledge must be publicly accessible (and therefore, explicit) before the task can be executed successfully Collaboration between a pair of roles means that they use some kind of explicit knowledge in order to perform certain steps that exist within the pair of simple tasks that together make up a single collaborative task In this paper, the business process is shown by a Process Graph that shows collaborative semantic concepts (roles, tasks, and artefacts) and their relationships www.ejkm.com In the following paragraphs collaborative semantic concepts used in this article are defined: Role: a set of norms expressed in terms of obligations, privileges, and rights On the Process Graph of Figure roles are shown by filled circles X, Y, T and V Role Artefacts: This object carries knowhow of a simple task Role artefacts can be either tacit or explicit That is, they can be either within the mind of the actor who performs the role (eg, skills, experience, etc.) or they can exists externally but in private locations (eg, personal databases, spreadsheets, etc.) On the Process Graph, the role artefacts are shown by thick lines ©Academic Conferences Ltd Farhad Daneshgar and Chandra S Amaravadi perform tasks need to have certain level of contextual knowledge in the form of process awareness that is referred to in this article as process awareness This is a level that is expected from office workers in order to perform their collaborative task successfully Below a summary of five such awareness levels are introduced For more details refer to (Daneshgar 2004) Simple and Collaborative Tasks: Simple Tasks are objects with a set of attributes and actions/steps to achieve a specific goal On the Process Graph simple tasks are shown by twelve circles labelled ‘1’ to ‘8’ and ‘a’ to ‘f’ A collaborative task on the other hand is composed of two simple tasks that have a common goal; and as a result, they have certain actions/steps in common These common actions/steps compete with one another in using available resources allocated by the CBP for execution of the tasks, and therefore must be shared effectively through the common task artefact discussed below Level-0 awareness: A role is at level-0 awareness if it possesses knowledge about the objects that lead the role to an understanding of the tasks that the corresponding actor performs within the process As an example, level-0 awareness for a casual university lecturer may include the following ‘task’ and ‘role artefact’ objects: Task 1: ‘delivering lectures for the subject’ Role artefact 1: ‘resources/artefacts required for such delivery’ Task 2: ‘preparing tutorial and exam questions’ Role artefact 2: ‘textbook and other references, etc.’ Task 3: ‘marking exam papers’ Role artefact 3: ‘exam papers, answers to the exam questions, etc.’ A role’s level-0 awareness will enable the corresponding actor to initiate lowest level of knowledge sharing transactions with other roles within the process (in this case nil, as the role knows nobody else within the process yet) In the Process Graph of Figure level-0 awareness for ‘X’ is a set of paths that include the role vertex ‘X’, the tasks vertices ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ and ‘4’, and the arcs that link ‘X’ to these tasks In this article notation from Set Theory is used to demonstrate various levels/path of awareness within a business process Level-0 awareness for the role X is: A0('X') = {{X}, {X, 1}, {1}, {X, 2}, {2}, {X, 3}, {3}, {X, 4}, {4}} Level-1 Awareness: This is the role’s level0 awareness plus a knowledge about all objects that lead the role to an awareness/understanding of some of the other roles within the process The ‘some of the roles’ here means those with whom the role has a direct task dependency In Figure role ‘V’ happens to have task dependency with one other role, that is, role ‘X’ Level-1 awareness allows ‘V’ to initiate a limited level of knowledgesharing transactions with others (here, ‘X’ Task Artefact: An object that carries knowledge about how various actions/steps associated with a collaborative task are executed Contrary to the role artefacts where they may or may not exist within organised knowledge bases, it is assumed here that task artefacts are ideally kept within the organisational knowledge bases so that they can be accessed and used by multiple actors when they enact various roles for performing their collaborative tasks On the Process Graph task artefacts are shown by thin lines linking two tasks together 2.2 An awareness model for the office workers Following is a summary of some of the main characteristics of today’s office work from the perspective of the researchers in the field of CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) who are frontrunner designers of today’s networked-oriented business models (Hawryszkiewycz 1997) Office workers may work at different times and at different places and yet, they all belong to the same business process and must collaborate through sharing documents, artefacts, resources, workstations, etc Office work can range from being fully structured and predefined, to fully unstructured and emergent Office work can range from fully personal to fully collaborative Instead of repetitive simple tasks, an office worker may now have a portfolio of tasks and select the task that need most attention One universal requirement of all the above types of office tasks is that actors who www.ejkm.com ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (1-12) only) The mathematical representation of level-1 awareness for the role V is: Objectives of the CAEOS In this article the term Collaboration-Aware Extended Office System (CAEOS) refers to an extended version of the IEA-3 that maintains awareness requirements of its collaborating users As a result of the CAEOS’ capability of enhancing collaboration of the office workers, the following two objectives are added to the previous objectives of the IEA-3 extended office system: A1(‘V’) = {A0{V}, {d, 1}, {1}, {1, X}, {X}} Or, alternatively, A1(‘V’) = {A0(V), {d, 2}, {2}, {2,X}, {X}} Level-2 Awareness: A role’s level-2 awareness is his/her level-1 awareness plus knowledge about objects that lead the role to an understanding of all other roles within the process whether the role has task dependency with them or not According to Figure 1, the mathematical representation of level-2 awareness for the role X is: The first objective is to enhance collaboration among the office worker The two components of the proposed framework, that is, the process graph and the awareness model, are the main analytical tools used for both representation of the collaborative business process, as well as for identification of the awareness requirements of the collaborating actors within the process and were discussed in previous Section A2('X') = {A1 ('X'), {4, 6}, {6}, {6, b}, b, {b, V}, {V}} Notice that from its level-1 awareness the role ‘X’ already knows ‘Y’ and ‘T’ The only remaining role to be known to him/her is ‘V’ The second additional objective of the CAEOS is related to the nature of the task artefacts It is only natural to expect CAEOS to facilitate creation, acquisition, capture, access and reuse of the task artefacts One may claim that management of these artefacts corresponds to the document centred strategy for knowledge management, whereas management of the actors and tasks correspond to the community-based strategy of the knowledge management See Hansen et al (1999) for a thorough discussion on these two approaches As mentioned before, task artefacts are public artefacts that are shared by various office workers in order to perform their collaborative tasks For this reason, task artefacts must ideally be always accessible and sharable by relevant collaborators In other words, knowledge within a task artefact must ideally be codified and stored in an integrated manner in a way that office knowledge can be shared on demand By this CAEOS is playing the role of knowledge facilitator that brings knowledge source and knowledge user together in a variety of modes This is so because while it has the capacity to separates knowledge from its sources, due to the integrated nature of the process map, it is also capable of tracing the knowledge back to its origin and to further keep track of its originator’s Level-3 Awareness: A role’s level-3 awareness is his/her level-2 awareness plus knowledge about the objects that lead the role to an understanding of all the interactions (that is, all the task artefacts) that occur between any pair of roles within the process In Figure 1, the mathematical representation of the role Y’s level-3 awareness is either: A3(‘Y’) = {A2(Y), {5, 4}, {4}, {4, X}, {X, 1}, {1}, {1, d}} or, A3(‘Y’) = {A2(Y), {6, 4}, {4}, {4, X}, {X, 2}, {2}, {2, d}} Depending on the chosen alternative path at the level-1 Level-4 Awareness: A role with level-4 awareness will possess the highest level of process awareness It is the knowledge of objects that lead that role to an understanding of how all the objects within the process (that is, all the roles, tasks, role artefacts and task artefacts) fit together to make the process graph Graphically, the process graph in its entirety can represent this level of awareness www.ejkm.com ©Academic Conferences Ltd Farhad Daneshgar and Chandra S Amaravadi context (that is, for performing which task) did the originator issued/created/modified certain task artefact one of the main objectives of the CAEOS.This Case Study demonstrates application of the proposed awareness framework in a typical office environment, and that how the framework can be used to enhance collaboration in this office process The role artefacts on the other hand are more personal They either reside in people’s minds or, in certain situations they may reside in personal databases or private workstations A third objective for CAEOS would therefore be to assist office workers in creation, organization and utilization of process awareness knowledge that is needed to perform tasks This we call the ‘knowledge utilization role of the CAEOS’ Several interviews were conducted with the actors involved in the process in order to derive the Process Graph for this collaborative process, as shown in Figure In this Figure, roles are shown with filled circles and tasks are shown with normal circles The actual and required levels of awareness for various roles is shown in Table Columns of this Table were derived from the interviews made with various actors as well as additional task and problem domain analyses performed by an actor with level-4 awareness An example of applying the awareness framework to the office business processes: A network management case study 4.1 Background In the previous discussion it was mentioned that awareness-provisioning is Table 2: Association between the actors' satisfaction level and the awareness gap Inter-action # Co 1 Pair of roles involved in this interaction Col Technician Test Controller Technician Change Manager Change ManagerUser User Operator UserChange Manager Technician Operator Required Level for the roles Col Actual Level of each role Col Awareness Gap Satisfactio n Level Col Col 1-1 1-1 No 8(High) 3-2 1-2 Yes 3(Low) 4-1 3-0 Yes 3(Low) 3-3 1-0 Yes 3(Low) 3-4 1-3 Yes 3(Low) 2-3 1-1 Yes 2(Low) Column of the Table shows various interactions within the process, and are numbered to These interactions always involve a collaborative task (or, a pair of related simple tasks) related to a pair of roles www.ejkm.com Column of the Table shows the pair of actors involved in each of the interactions Columns and show the required and actual levels of awareness respectively for each actor and for each task separately It must be mentioned here that the actual level of awareness is the level that an actor of a role actually posses ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (1-12) means the actual level of awareness of the Change Manager is whereas that of the User is In the same transaction, the required level of awareness 4-1 means that Change manager requires level-4 awareness for the task Impact Control whereas the User requires level-1 awareness for the task Impact Analysis This indicates that there is a definite awareness gap in this interaction, hence the entry "yes" in column For similar token, no awareness gap exists for the interaction and is an attribute of the role; whereas the required level of awareness is the level that is attached to a particular task (an attribute of the task object) and is the level of awareness that is expected from the actor/role who performs that particular task The existence of awareness gap for each interaction is indicated in column of this Table Awareness gap for a role is the excess of the required level of awareness of the task that the role plays over the actual level of awareness that the role already possesses For example, in interaction 3, actual level of awareness 3-0 impact control implmnt change request place change request arrange meeting approve time for meeting Technici an Change Mangr impact analysis report the problem User IWP receive problem receive T-Ticket assign T-Ticket Operator try solve problem Test Coordin ator Figure 2: Process Graph for the Network Management Case Study interactions All the actors, with the exception of the “User”, are called by the ‘role’ that they play (eg., “Technician”, “Test Coordinator”, “Change Manager”, and “Operator”) In the case of the “User” where up to five actors plays this role, the actors are referred to as “User1” to “User5” The actors' satisfaction levels corresponding to each interaction were also recorded in column of the Table The method used to arrive at the satisfaction levels in column is as follows: Each interaction in column involves a pair of actors These actors were interviewed Since some actors participate in more than one interaction, more than one interview was held for these actors A total of twelve interviews were conducted with the actors participating in the www.ejkm.com The purpose of the interview was to obtain qualitative information about the details of each interaction/scenario Such qualitative information was then used to provide the actor in one side of the interaction an ©Academic Conferences Ltd Farhad Daneshgar and Chandra S Amaravadi opportunity to rank their satisfaction of the services provided by the actor on the other side of the interaction, and vice-versa More specifically, lists of the problems that the actors have been facing in each interaction were collected, summarised, and structured For each interaction a ‘Satisfaction Ranking Scheme’ for that particular interaction was used by the actors to decide on a satisfaction rank between to 10 for the services that were provided by the actors on the other side of the interaction To avoid repetitive details results of the application of the “Satisfaction Ranking Scheme” to the interaction are reported below: 2.8 The average value rounded to the nearest whole number for this and other interactions are shown in Column Results in columns and indicate negative association between the actors' satisfaction (represented by high values of satisfaction level) and the awareness gap between actual and required levels of awareness of the actors involved in each interaction Interaction 3: Change Manager explains to, or notifies the, affected Users of a possible need for network shutdown In order to prove the existence of a strong negative correlation between the awareness gap and the actor's satisfaction with significant level of confidence, the differences between the actual and required levels of awareness are calculated for each interaction and then correlated with the satisfaction level Following results were obtained: 4.2 Statistical test of significance of the correlation between the customer satisfaction and the awareness gap Problems that led to low level of the actors’ satisfaction (that is, five Users’ and the Change Manager) are: There is no automatic change impact notification All concerned need to be informed manually and hence the chance of omissions Four out of five “Users” have expressed such nonsatisfactory experience at least once in the past The average rank for the “Satisfaction Level” given by the five Users to this interaction act was 2.8 Each User’s rank carried a statistical weight of one Change Manager was not allowed to provide a rank for the “Satisfaction Level” for this item since he was considered to be the provider of this service “Change Manager” reported another problem: Some Users not respond at the time of notification Currently, there is no means for the Change Manager to chase the Users A “Satisfaction Rank” of was given to this interaction by the Change Manager This rank carried a statistical weight of five so that the actors in both sides of the interaction carry the same weight when deciding on the “Satisfaction Level” for that interaction Users were not allowed to provide any rank for this interaction act Quite often, both Users and Change Manager cannot be located (no mobile computing facilities were available for mobile actors) Both the “Users” (each with weight 1) and “Change Manager” (with weight 5) provided ranks for this interaction The overall average was www.ejkm.com Coefficient of Correlation, r = - 0.732 SE(r) = 0.41 r/SE(r) = - 1.04/0.41 = - 1.78 The above value can be accepted at a 2% confidence level We can therefore conclude with 98% certainty that there is a negative correlation between the level of satisfaction of the actors and the awareness gaps 4.3 Further analysis: Identifying improvement priorities On the basis of the above findings, the designers of enterprise network management process can now work on the right type of collaboration support for various interactions within the process Similar results were obtained in a number of scenarios studied at this organization Further investigations revealed the following reasons for the existence of the awareness gaps in the above interactions These in turn, can be translated into various functions of the CAEOS: Since there is no automatic change impact notification, all concerned need to be informed manually, and hence, there is a chance of omission There is a need for the system to automatically create a notification list based on the network topology (what we refer to in ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (1-12) within the CAEOS as an inference subsystem in order to facilitates identification of the actors’ awareness requirements, as well as their awareness gaps, if any this paper as focus) so that required level of awareness are maintained on a timely basis (referred to as nimbus) Although all users are notified, some users not respond at the right time Therefore it is necessary to include the impact information in the interaction to the user so that in the case of some users not responding, it may be necessary to chase them up; hence the need for a "to list" for every change, as a minimum Ideally, an integrated coordination subsystem within the CAEOS would be ideal Another alternative would be to assign a software agent with at least level-3 awareness, to monitor every interaction, and ensure a quick reply for some of the time-sensitive types of notifications System workflow should take care of interlocks This will require agents to (automatically) remind users of some information either periodically or after certain number of transactions Often, Users and Technician cannot be located, meaning that either level-1 awareness does not effectively exist for those who try to access these actors, or, perhaps such level-1 awareness is out of date Hence, there is a need for mobile communication solution so that level-1 awareness can be maintained for all actors who want to access Users and Technician at all times More specifically, CAEOS ideally consists of a pair of inter-related components: (i) a knowledge-base that defines, represents and stores the domain knowledge in terms of the collaborative semantic concepts provided, as well as their relationships It also consists of methods/rules of calculating various awareness levels using the domain knowledge The other component, the inference engine/model provides foundation for inferencing the awareness gaps for each actor Some possible functions of the CAEOS are: Dynamically constructing the office process maps as a reference points for those involved in these collaborative processes Measuring the actual levels of awareness of the office workers before performing certain tasks, and identification of their awareness gaps Automation of the flow of the office tasks based on the awareness levels of the workers This can also be a partial solution to management of the task flows in emerging processes in situations where unexpected actors may have to take up the task CAEOS can also be used as a project management tool for allocating various tasks to the office workers on various processes/projects, on the basis of their relative actual level of awareness of each business process/project And as a final point, as the number of roles and tasks increases, the traditional database technology will be ineffective in creation, organization and utilization of awareness knowledge; more advanced techniques need to be investigated for these situations Integration with other Extended Office Systems will also remain an important issue that needs be addressed in future studies Conclusion and future work In today’s networked economy office environments need effective support for collaboration among office workers at anytime and anywhere This article demonstrated that the existing EOSs are not specifically designed to maintain contextual/awareness knowledge requirements of the collaborating actors of today’s collaborative office processes An awareness framework was applied to a network management case study and effectiveness of the framework in identifying the awareness requirements of the actors within the collaborative process was assessed with positive results The framework was then used as a conceptual tool to derive general design directives for a Collaboration-Aware EOS (CAEOS) system that facilitates sharing of the contextual knowledge among office workers It is suggested that the above awareness framework be automated www.ejkm.com References Amaravadi C., Sheng O.R., George J.F and Nunamaker J.F (1992): ‘AEI:A Knowledge-based to integrated office systems’, Journal of Management 10 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (75-86) Western Australian Parliamentary Debates Legislative Council - Estimates Committee (5 June 2003) (pp E634E644) Yin, R K (2003) Case Study Research: Design and Methods (3rd ed.) London: Sage Publications services and research functions in the Western Australia Police Service Perth: Data Analysis Australia Western Australia Police Service (2003) Intelligence-Led Policing In The Western Australia Police ServiceProposed Framework Perth, WA: Strategic Reform Program www.ejkm.com 76 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Knowledge Value Chain: Implementation of new Product Development System in a Winery Hong Kun Wong School of Accounting and Information Systems, University of South Australia, Australia ken.wong@unisa.edu.au Abstract: 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 Keywords: Knowledge value chain, knowledge management, action research, new product development, alcoholic dinks industry, Australia Introduction In Australia, an increasing number of manufacturers are using New Product Development (NPD) systems not only to enhance quality or reduce their operating cost but also to address a variety of issues relating to environmental management To this end, these corporations have to collect more intangible information and knowledge related to a more diverse set of engineering requirements Some corporations have signed up to the voluntary National Packaging Covenant (NPC) , which has been endorsed by the Federal Government as a cooperative vehicle for achieving improvements in environmental management These initiatives are contributing to the development of a renewed knowledge value chain (KVC) that, in turn, underpins the core competencies of the affected corporation This reinvigorated KVC, as described in this paper, assists the Winery in defining customer requirements, improving conditions for workers and staff, and heightening corporate sensitivities to the environmental policies of governments and the desires of customers and the community It is important to distinguish between information and knowledge: the former includes data, graphics, and text, whereas the latter encompasses human feedback The more details of National Packaging Covenant (NPC) can be found by this website http://www.packcoun.com.au/ and collaborative learning (Wong 2003a) Knowledge is derived from information, through reading, learning-by-doing, and other forms of practice In addition, if a person does not understand how to apply knowledge in practical situations this means that information still persists in its original, untransformed condition (Ching 2000, Daghfous 2004, Wong 2003a and Powell 2001) Without knowledge implementation, organisations can neither achieve their communicative goals nor protect the environment Methodology The exploratory case study methodology was used for this study concerning environmental issues affecting New Product Development (NPD) at a South Australian winery in its packaging supply chain The case study investigated issues such as International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) standards, product stewardship, company mission, the “clean and green” image and the National Packaging Covenant (NPC) incorporated in New Product Development (NPD) and in building up a robust framework of KVC for this Winery For this research study, the single exploratory case study research methodology and the effective data collection process were undertaken prior to defining the research questions These research and interview questions focused on the “what” and “how” questions Yin ISSN 1479-4411 77 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Reference this paper as: Wong H K (2004), “Knowledge Value Chain: Implementation of new Product Development System in a Winery” The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 1, pp 77-90, available online at www.ejkm.com Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (109-122) The modified KVC model is used to generate the useful knowledge of how being incorporated with the environmental issues to enable the Winery requirements for their new product development processes of the products (2003) notes case studies are the preferred strategy for studies dealing with “how” or “why” questions The classifications of these questionnaires were the first priority for the researcher, and helped to focus the study‟s purpose It was not necessary for the purpose of the study to be clarified when research was first conducted; however the stated purpose was the success on which it will be judged Yin (1994) provides a checklist of the case study research design as follows: A case study‟s questions; Its propositions, if any; A case study‟s unit of analysis; The logic linking the data to the propositions; and The criteria for interpreting the findings Based on the checklist, these research questions were designated as “what” and “how” and determined the relevant strategy to be used for the study Yin (1994 & 2003) states the exploratory study may not need to have a proposition The unit of analysis is a critical factor in the case study (Tellis 1997) and the unit of analysis for the study can be an individual, a community, and an organisation One of the South Australian Wineries was selected as the unit of analysis focused on the Winery packaging supply chain system In line with the last two points from Yin‟s research design above, points and were not well-developed in this case study, as these case studies were fully represented in report format, and in how the data was collected and analysed Knowledge Management (KM) IS In recent years, it has become harder to extract the knowledge required to meet customer requirements in mature markets such as those of Japan, Europe, the U.S.A, and Hong Kong etc Increasingly, benchmarking activities must go beyond issues of cost or sustainable mark-ups to focus on a variety of service criteria In recent studies, Twigg (1998), Desbarats (1999), Ching (2000), Soley (2003) and McLennan (2000) have argued that the improved supply chain can overcome supply shortages and demand shortfalls by providing information That information includes time-to-build specifications and direct knowledge of customer requirements that enables corporations to rapidly and effectively differentiate their services, products and brands from those of their competitors The notion of Knowledge Management (KM) implied by these authors is one involving the constellation of processes that are used to control the creation, dissemination and leveraging of knowledge to fulfil organisational objectives Berawi (2004) states KM can address the critical issue of organisational adaptation, survival and competence in an evolving environment Thus, knowledge management (KM) enables workers and staff at every level of the organization to access and add as much new information as possible to what they already know within their respective fields of work (Claycomb 2001 and Donnellan 2003) Additionally, Gupta (2002) and Roy (2003) states that KM can also reduce complexities in the environment caused by globalisation, address loss of knowledge owing to poor staff retention, and reduce complexities in relation to mergers It has the potential to improve the quality of life for both workers and customers and to assist in the development of new products and processes From this perspective it can be seen to encompass implementation of ISO standards on quality and environmental management, in production, waste The methodology adopted herein provided evidence of the validity and reliability of the data collected for the study, with reference to everyday situations and problems affecting the Winery The processes of data collection included the use of semi-structured interviews, the preliminary contact and confirmation of interviews, and the transcribing of interviews Further, it also involves the respondents, data analysis and the analytical techniques employed for sorting the data Finally, all the details of information were also carried out in collating and interpreting the data for identifying important themes and patterns of useful knowledge in the study www.ejkm.com 78 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Hong Kun Wong participants working experiences, skills to be contributed management and service delivery Furthermore, this paper argue that the creation of a robust and stable KVC is thus a reasonable goal of organisational design and operation, which should influence the structure of organisation, and the development and application of new technologies It should enable knowledge workers to deliberately leverage their creativity and abilities so as to deliver business and community value to the organisation As a matter of fact, the knowledge assets need to be managed, stored and implemented more effectively in order to achieve the competitive advantages issues for the Winery In contrast, „knowing-that‟ involves knowledge that is consciously accessible and easy to convey to others through explicit instruction, recitation of rules, or attention to perceived actions, and so on This then becomes interactive and an agent for change In this study, the explicit knowledge can be used in encouraging the participants to share their knowledge in such as annual reports, technical documents and standard manual from there manufacturing areas Additionally, this Winery‟s innovation involves both types of knowledge As identified by Nonaka (2000) and Reber (1995), this study is referred to the knowledge innovation spiral (see Figure 5) that emerges when the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge is enhanced and thus evolves dynamically from lower levels to higher levels of understanding within any given entity or network of entities Nonetheless, as I create any new or extended tool for knowledge management, I have account for two different types of the knowledge modes; namely, tacit and explicit Under this study, the KM system, it enables gathering and storing of useful knowledge and can be representing in both tacit and explicit ways to the expression of knowledge in order to provide a useful resource for locating and contacting with reference to anyone and anywhere within the Winery activities This distinction will be examined in details in the next section of this paper, drawing on notion of knowledge creation as defined by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), Berawi (2004) and Ching (2000) Implementing Knowledge Value Chain model 4.1 Value Chain As adopted by Porter‟s value chain model that can be found in his book Competitive Advantage (Porter 1985) Generally speaking, it can be defined as a series of related activities that can be combined together to produce end-user advantages as illustrated in the simplified example below: 3.1 The distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge The distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge has sometimes been expressed in terms of „knowing-how‟ and „knowing-that‟, and at other times in terms of a corresponding distinction between „embodied‟ knowledge and „theoretical‟ knowledge (Polanyi, 1958, 1966 & 1974), respectively All manufacturing processes must commence by using raw materials that are transformed into work-in-process at various successive stages of completion (Humpherys 2001), before being turned into finished products to be packaged and distributed overseas or locally At each stage of the process various components of cost and value-added are accumulated, to meet customer requirements Obviously, it is desirable that at across the entire value chain more value would be added than cost Otherwise, each of the stages must be re-engineering Both tacit and explicit knowledge will be used in a Winery „Knowing-how‟ or embodied knowledge is characteristic of the expert, who acts, makes judgments, and so forth without explicitly reflecting on the principles or rules involved As such, it is not easy for others to share in their knowledge or for it to be interactive Under this circumstance, the study is to identify the tacit knowledge in areas such as www.ejkm.com and 79 ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (109-122) Figure 1: A value chain model In contrast, the KVC commences with the acquisition of knowledge rather than raw materials or resources and ends with knowledge action and dissemination (Collins 2002, Donnellan 2003 and Ching 2000) Here, the focus is on transforming knowledge into new product development for the Winery within a given time horizon seven key transformation steps (see Figure 2) These steps are knowledge acquisition, knowledge innovation, knowledge protection, knowledge integration (intelligence), knowledge dissemination and knowledge action Each stage requires the transformation of inputs into outputs, and the latter are becoming the inputs for the next stage in the KVC Once again, at each stage of the transformation choices can be made to add to or destroy value that depends on the implementation for the study 4.2 Implication for the modified Knowledge Value Chain model Adapted from Ching (2000), the modified KVC model in this study, it consists of six different core stages of activities alongside Figure 2: The modified Knowledge Value Chain (KVC) model Using Yin‟s Model of the exploratory case study research approach was adopted for the study as mentioned earlier Yin (2003) states three effective ways of collecting qualitative and quantitative data These three ways are (1) multiple sources of www.ejkm.com evidence, (2) collecting relevant data from the semi-structured interview questions, and (3) establishing a chain of evidence adopted for the study Additionally, Yin (2003) and Stake (1995) strongly recommended the use of this method for 80 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Hong Kun Wong In Figure 2, it shows that core component “knowledge worker recruitments” consists of three stages of activities working together; these are knowledge acquisition, knowledge innovation, and knowledge protection and confidentiality that will be discussed in the following sections of the paper data collection as it enhances the reliability of information of the study by adding value to the research Figure shows that the modified KVC model as adopted herein encompasses the mere two key components “knowledge workers recruitment” and “decision makers” of the part of management, with each playing a vital role in the overall knowledge management (KM) process The six stages of activities will now be reviewed in more detail in relation to the environmental management issue as follows 4.2.2 Decision makers Decision makers make reliable and effective decision to acquire the target company and to achieve the corporation mission In employing the useful knowledge alongside with the modified KVC model, whereby, the study herein gives decision makers the right direction improve the appropriate packaging for the final products and processes with the reasonable environmental and quality standard needed In addition, the entire term of decision makers also have to understand and improve their effectiveness and need to know what happens after all knowledge transfer in relation to the final decision in what they have decided for the new product development in the Winery‟s study 4.2.1 Knowledge workers recruitments In this study, the core component of knowledge worker recruitments of the modified KVC model consists of the external and internal participants who contributed to this study All external interviewees (suppliers) were qualified with experience in environment and management All internal interviewees (the Winery‟s staff) provided invaluable supports and information to the researcher issues such as environment, quality, marketing, packaging, and production in relation to the Winery Particularly, the Winery also provided some information of how they were working on the reduction of energy consumption areas and the improvement progress of the NPC action plan Decision makers also have access to the last three stages of activities in the modified KVC model In other words, the decision makers are not enlighten to the knowledge transfer process in the final stage of knowledge action factitively so they have to go back to the first stage of activity to gather other information and knowledge to be reused and redo the entire activity‟s loop again or called corrective loop (see Figure 2) until the knowledge are qualified by decision makers Importantly, recruiting knowledge from the internal and external participants for the Winery is a main activity used for the long run competitive advantage situation The purpose of this section was not merely to collect relevant and invaluable data from all participants; it also recruited all participants by using their data and knowledge to “tell other people about the story of the study” Therefore, the information or data gathered from all participants, they all are transformed into knowledge when the researcher reads, understands, interprets and applies the information into a specific work for the Winery Finally, the knowledge workers (and the researcher) involved also have to understand and improve their effectiveness that need to know what happens after all knowledge transfer for the study www.ejkm.com 4.2.3 Knowledge acquisition In this first stage of the modified KVC‟s activity, knowledge workers who have been recruited will start searching for and gathering the data related to the given study For purposes of environmental management, data could be collected through interviewing key internal staff within the organisation and external suppliers who supplies raw materials and components (Yin 2003) Successful knowledge transfer processes from one organisation to others have been identified as a main vehicle to the organisational performance in many studies (Soley and 81 ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (109-122) The interview questions (Yin 2003 and Bircham 2003) elicited information about the knowledge interviewees possessed about new product development, environmental management systems, and product stewardship Follow up information was requested about detailed breakdowns on environmental impacts and costs Pandya 2003, Bircham 2003, and Roy, Parent and Desmarais 2003) As discussed above, this study is to illustrate the company, a large winemaker, must take on Product Stewardship Obligations under the Australian NPC These obligations impose a requirement for transformation of the company‟s existing New Product Development System Initially, letters and e-mails were sent out to suppliers, explaining the aims and objectives of the NPC and new product development study Here, the objectives were to invite participation and to indicate the overall every of support for the study emanating from the company‟s senior management Indeed, the letters and e-mails also made it clear that any responses would be treated in the strictest confidence (read Section 4.2.5 to have more detail) such that no single interviewee could be identified on the basis of their transcribed responses In addition, the letter of consent forms to be signed by the participants would accompany this handout, as the interview was about to proceed Letters of consent were to reflect the variety of modes of engagement for each of the participants— for both communication and interviews "Having a good beginning, having a half way of a success process" As mentioned earlier, knowledge can be classified into two different modes: tacit and explicit After data collection has been completed, the transcripts and additional information must be analysed so that it can be converted into valuable and meaningful knowledge for the company Furthermore, a useful framework for analysis is provided by the Action Research (AR) tool, which can be deployed in two ways First, it can underpin our research methodology as a metaphor for social inquiry, problemsolving and interactive transformation of the company Second, it can be used as a vehicle for the analysis of existing practices around product design and development AR is informed by the wellknown Kölb cycle that has four iterative stages: observation, reflection, planning and action (see Figure 3): Figure 3: The action research component of soft systems methodology The AR process is underpinned by a belief in individual potential (Weinstein 1999), as reflected in self-guided learning through practice, application and inquiry (into what is happening to us and around us) In addition, I have to allow for sufficient time to identify the question, understand what it entails, and then to reflect, gain insight and then consider how I should act in future, albeit in a thorough and structured way www.ejkm.com 4.2.4 The role of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) in AR Checkland (2000) states that soft systems methodologies (SSM) are more appropriate when dealing with fuzzy, illdefined (soft) problem-oriented situations (for example, those involving cultural considerations and qualitative aspects of stakeholder value) Nevertheless, SSM is also seen to encompass well-defined (hard) systems In certain circumstances SSM applications can be broken down into 82 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Hong Kun Wong ISO standards-based approach to environmental management is primarily concerned with documenting actions and monitoring strategies Existing systems that support new product development (NPD) and process improvement must still be reviewed and upgraded later both hard and soft system components, with each supported by a different combination of qualitative and quantitative metrics From an environmental management perspective, the hard system component would include technical aspect of green engineering concept in this study The concept of green engineering (GE) can be defined as a framework that applies environmentally conscious attitudes, values and principles, in association with relevant science, technology and engineering practices, to the objective of improving local and global environmental quality GE thus encompasses all of the engineering disciplines and is consistent and compatible with sound engineering design principles Additionally, the Winery has accreditation from the ISO 14001 environmental management system (ISO 14001 EMS) Under ISO 14001, all environmental risk factors must be assessed, priorities for action must be determined, and risk management strategies must be developed and documented Hence, they all were gathered for using in this stage of the modified KVC model in this study This Perceived Real-World Problem Situation Leads to selection of OBSERVE REFLECT Action to improve ACT Comparison (using models) Find accommodations which enable PLAN On the other hand, the soft system component would include broader knowledge management (i.e social aspects of collaborative learning) In Checkland‟s model the AR cycle is combined with an interpretative framework, which acknowledges that participants interpret the problem situation through the lens of different worldviews Thus, the individual learning cycle based on observation, reflection, planning and action is re-conceptualised as a social process (taking a global view), which is now directed at finding an accommodation across various groups drawn from different functional areas within the organisation The Winery has significantly reduced some energy consumptions in packaging department by using an effective AR and SSM approach (Wong 2003a) Models of relevant purposeful activity systems, each based on a declared world-view A structured debate about desirable and feasible change Reflect Saying what you did without being judgmental Observing the process Planning What to next time Setting goals Act Getting right participation and doing Observe Making judgements What worked well and why? Figure 4: The Kölb Action Research cycle modified to incorporate SSM supply chain to evaluate how successful the project has been in their eyes In the case study, the action research cycle as modified by SSM provides a schematic picture of how the researcher intends to deal with the Winery Information that is gathered will provide the material for on-going reflection and collaborative evaluation In some respects, Checkland‟s methodology can be used as an ideal benchmark for the assessment of actual procedures and deliberations At a later stage, the researcher may be able to conduct further interviews with representatives from the company and its www.ejkm.com Within the action research cycle used in this study, it is essential to recognize the question, observe and understand the situation, so that we can plan, then act, and finally reflect on what has occurred with a view to gaining additional insights into how best to act in the future When applied in a soft systems context each group within the Winery will first observe the situation in relation to their own worldviews The stage of reflection then 83 ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (109-122) SECI as a selfself-transcending process entails a comparison of these different interpretations to achieve an accommodation realized through a structured process of debate This planning stage then leads on to a set of actions focusing on how best to improve the situation After having done action loop by loop again, the quality and useful of knowledge will come out to be ready for the next stage of activity As a consequence, knowledge must be learnt both from this direct experience and through trial and error and concurrently through both mental and bodily modes of experience Existential Face-to-face I I I G I Socialization Tacit  Tacit Explicit  Tacit Internalization I Externalization I Tacit  Explicit Explicit  Explicit Combination O G G G O I Collective On the Site Systemic Collaborative G G Source: Nonaka, Reinmoeller, and Senoo, 2001 4.2.5 Knowledge innovation Figure Nonaka (2000) construct a four-way taxonomy of knowledge transfer and conversion based on socialisation (from tacit-to-tacit), externalisation (from tacit-toexplicit), internalisation (from explicit-totacit), and combination (from explicit-toexplicit) as shown in Figure This process of knowledge creation, in turn, depends on four different kinds of learning relationship that are set up between the individual (I), group (G) and organisation (O) (as depicted in the following diagram) Under this study, as the knowledge innovation process is well managed the knowledge created by individuals, it can amplify both within the organisation and across inter-organisational networks or clusters Organisational overlap and redundancy can also be deployed to improve cross-functional collaboration and experimentation within the organisation The knowledge innovation spiral emerges when the various learning interactions are elevated dynamically from the lower level of knowledge to higher levels, as depicted in the following diagram (Nonaka 2000, as modified by Juniper 2003): www.ejkm.com Reflective Peer-to-peer 5: A four-way taxonomy of knowledge transfer (Nonaka 2000) The Nonaka‟s structure of four-way taxonomy of knowledge creation is adapted for this new product development of the Winery‟s study The “socialisation” knowledge creation mode requires “faceto-face” interaction for the tacit to tacit knowledge that focuses on collecting the annual reports, environmental reports, details of company mission and vision and NPC action plan from each participant due to the difficulties to communicate and formalise in some situations in this study (Nonaka 1995 and Donnellan 2003) The “externalisation” knowledge creation mode requires “peer to peer” interaction for the tacit to explicit knowledge that focuses on the semi-structured interviews with relevant participants from both internal and external in relation to the study‟s knowledge for this study The “combination” knowledge creation mode requires “systematic collaborative” interaction for the explicit to explicit knowledge that focuses on the interviews and meeting with the environmental group members within the Winery in relation to the environmental knowledge such as the EMS, policy and reports to be used for the study The reason is this study has to use the parameters gathered and test for transferring to the new knowledge that must be alignment with the Winery‟s environment management system At the last stage, the “internalisation” knowledge creation mode requires “collective on the site” interaction for the explicit to tacit knowledge that focuses on coding the knowledge and information gathered from all participants, and enables them to be transformed to further explicit knowledge 84 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Hong Kun Wong summarisation of the materials Information, data and knowledge must be accurately sourced with thorough analysis, conclusions and recommendations There then must be successful communication and interaction between both to ensure that the knowledge is integrated and actuated effectively or data can be re-used for the EMS system or other systems within the Winery 4.2.6 Knowledge protection knowledge confidentiality and Knowledge, especially of a tacit kind, is difficult to evaluate or measure However, tacit knowledge is much easier to protect Through this right of legal action against infringers, intellectual property rights (IPR) no doubt afford the best form of protection against actual and potential theft of explicit knowledge However, certain forms of IPR may promote collaborative learning because they support the development of knowledge-based assets These IPR can also be supplemented by other protocols and policy guidelines, which recognise investment of resources in collective forms of learning For instance, once a proposal has been discussed in a group collaborative environment, it should then be protected immediately by IPR Furthermore, the Winery receives the knowledge from these participants of years of their experience in such things as manufacturing, packaging and service (Selen 2001 and Claycomb 2001) And this knowledge gathered from the environmental meeting of the Winery Integrating the knowledge gathered from internal and external that all just passed by the previous stage of the modified KVC model, they must compile with the current ISO 14001 EMS and environmental standard and the requirements of the Winery Otherwise, the knowledge must be useless for the any purpose This cumulative experience from various resources is used together with information gathered from outside sources such as open-ended interview questions, and the environmental report from each participant that can be suitably integrated into the modified KVC of the Winery Finally, it also depends upon how people make the decisions on how to translate this raw knowledge from the information obtained from the previous stage, and then convert it into actionable knowledge that is in regard to accurate understanding of their environmental business context This is then used to project into possible foreseeable scenarios The next step is to disseminate the knowledge to the personnel concerned Recent studies were conducted by Twigg (1998), Trueman (1998), Muffatto (2000), Rahim (2003) and Yin (2003) who adopted the case study approach successfully to collect the data in their studies Indeed, all authors used the same method before commencing their project or writing up their findings for their study and all were progressed through the ethical stages to write up the formal consent form that involved a brief explanation of the study After obtaining approval from the ethics committee, the research study design was appropriately covered by the University‟s insurance policy to cover the study of the Winery, participant‟s interviews and the Australian ethical standard conditions Furthermore, the right to privacy of the individual participants and the Winery were protected 4.2.8 Knowledge dissemination “Decision makers” firstly disseminate the knowledge and analysts use it to make decisions for the Winery These decisions may involve resource allocation such as where to increase or reduce investment This stage before the final action is to further develop the knowledge base by creating an environment of shared input before the action stage As such, this stage is finding better ways to have the quality of knowledge for the Winery to bring the useful idea and particular to the complication of environmental issues for the organisation and the customer perspectives to the markets, especially, 4.2.7 Knowledge integration Knowledge Integration is the first stage of activity appearing in the “decision makers” section of the KVC model In this crucial stage, knowledge that has been developed in the mind of the knowledge worker is transmitted to a decision-maker To successfully communicate and link the two principal sectors of KVC, for instance, the “knowledge workers recruitment” and “decision makers” core components, there needs to be adequate organisation and www.ejkm.com 85 ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (109-122) contribute to the achievement of the principle of NPC for its shared product responsibility and product stewardship by throughout the conscious relationship of the entire supply chain in order to minimise the packaging waste the European market Indeed, the knowledge dissemination illustrates that the people and stakeholder realise that the Winery has highly qualified and professional in environmental areas of people to access the usage of knowledge based model This is fully supported by the Winery‟s NPC action plan, environmental mission and vision, and the Winery is looking forward to the future investment and innovation for extending their business In addition, the Winery has made up the action plan in recent years that show people and shareholders how they gradually achieve to the objectives of Australian NPC The Winery will not only satisfy the state policies that is under the NPC requirements, and the Winery is also acted as a vehicle to put more focuses on addressing the environmental concerns associated with packaging cost compared with other wineries in the year This stage is very close to the end of results However, the system may need to plan and execute some actions for the final stage of the modified KVC model to take the action that embodies the decision This establishes the formula for further action and policy development within the Winery Figure shows the relationship between the modified KVC model and packaging group, environmental group and marketing group and the final stage of new product development for the Winery product It also illustrates the stages of how they are working together to make contributions to the development and the promotion of a reliable profit margin in their new product development By working through Figure 6, it shows how these stages have an effect on the normal information or data format to become the valuable knowledge used for the Winery after implementing the modified KVC model During the processes of transferring the knowledge, it flows through the action research and SSM loop from the first stages of activity “knowledge acquisition” of the modified KVC model to reach the final stages of activity “knowledge action” The detailed of this process can be found from previous section 4.2.3 to 4.2.8 4.2.9 Knowledge action This is the final stage of the modified KVC model The knowledge action stage is the sophisticated integration and collation of all knowledge and information for the study requirements, that all have been organised and analysed through these previous stages and seven processes of KVC This stage therefore represents the synthesis of all previous steps As a result of that, this stage is taking the action to implement the valuable knowledge into three different group members namely, environmental group, marketing group and packaging group, then later summing up and monitoring their significant comments to make the final decision and to help them to overcome their previous knowledge deficiencies and continuously develop a fuller understanding to address problems and find solutions The Winery, in its minds, has found a great deal of ability and responsibility to reduce the environmental impacts of their new product development After implemented the knowledge fertilisation in six different stages of activities, it is time to illustrate the final stage of the process and implicate it to the Winery‟s NPD process Discussions with modified KVC model Moreover, the core components of “knowledge worker recruitments” and “decision makers” need to be effectively incorporated into the company policy, environmental issues and mission, all of value-added processes into knowledge of acquisition, innovation, protection, integration, dissemination and action in order to incorporate with new product development to formulate the final outcome and improve the overall value of the business in particular to the packaging section of the Winery the It is important to implement the modified KVC model into the company‟s decisionmaking processes to effectively reduce the This Winery is located in South Australia The Winery is voluntary signatory to NPC and encourages their employees to www.ejkm.com 86 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Hong Kun Wong groups have to add the “knowledge” in parallels with the Winery‟s action plan, mission and vision in relation to the “green and clean” image for their new product development Finally, all three groups are to satisfy the results with the knowledge that is provided by this modified KVC model Now, the packaging department will sum up all relevant knowledge and results from the other two groups, then the final products will be packed by packaging department and passed on to the NPD of the final stage of this paper to be ready for the market cost for the Winery As shown in Figure 6, groups‟ namely environmental group, packaging group, and marketing group are interrelated The three expert groups will monitor the knowledge carefully from the “decision makers” If they all are passed through the internal policy and in compliance with the 14001 EMS requirements (that is current management system using in internal environmental group within the Winery), the knowledge and comments of the environmental group members regarding the products that will then share with marketing group and packaging group for further discussion and make adjustments Importantly, these Figure 6: The modified KVC model implemented for the Winery‟s new product development Of all processes, the researcher finds the added value generated from the specialisation of each component activity from the modified KVC itself So KVC‟s activity enables business to develop the components of the Winery such as packaging competence with the added value In particular, this modified KVC model is involved with relevant environmental issues to fulfil the ISO quality and environmental standard to satisfy for the customer requirement and the new product development (NPD) greenhouse effects To process the gathering of information and data involves trend indicators, diagrams and graphs for helping to build up the structure of information and data The knowledge development process requires correlation between the volume of production, profits and energy intensity All of this data needs to be synthesised to bring to the attention of the decision-makers Importantly, the last stages of the modified KVC model involve the final formulation and implementation of the knowledge gained through the entire process after constant reviewing and feedback of each stage At this stage a proposal for an action plan can be put to In this paper, the case study can lead the acquisition of data related to energy consumption expanded on the packaging of wine bottles and the various related www.ejkm.com 87 ISSN 1479-4411 Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume Issue 2004 (109-122) In addition, the researcher found that the data, information and knowledge are reuseable assets It is certain that it is useable in unlimited situations anytime and anywhere For instance, the researcher performed several interviews to look for how to reduce the cost of the environmental impact of the wine industry in South Australia The researcher gathered considerable amount of information and data to support the environmental issue process and stored this information in the computer for later analysis Particularly, the data, information and knowledge gathered herein can be used for the energy consumption so as to how to reduce the greenhouse effect and energy consumption‟s areas alternatively In the end of last year, the energy consumptions have significantly reduced approximate 3% compared to the previous year results after using the action research loop at the first stage of activity of the modified KVC model It is clear that the same data can be transformed for the use of other fields In fact, it will improve the co-operation between different sections of the Winery and overcome any apparent divisions For the corporation with the closer relationship with each level, the achievement will be higher because more efficient and effective work model is a valuable and useful tool incorporated with green engineering issues and competitive advantage section to solve the environmental problems such as the greenhouse effect and knowledge management for the Winery Transforming the information into knowledge and capabilities, and then into competitive advantage is a process necessary rooted in the intangible assets of the plant, in particular its environmental management and intellectual‟s capital Finally, this modified KVC model as discussed can clearly show how to understand the ways in which getting better at finding, and creating and using creates real added business value for the Winery Knowledge management is therefore one of the most powerful organizational tools Hence, the information gathered for the study is then transformed into knowledge after the researcher reads, understands, interprets and applies to a specific work function in the Winery Once developed, this modified KVC model is in the hopes to spur enhancements in the productivity of knowledge process used in the packaging, marketing and environmental section of the Winery Importantly, it can provide fully understanding on the working of the knowledge added into the value chain in order to identify the Winery‟s strengths and weakness in some particular activities The robust based KVC model can be considered as part of a larger effort focused on adding new product development in environmental issues, green and clean image, an organisational performance time, an effective for managing knowledge and time to market Finally, this exploratory research study does reveal the way of systematic processes using the modified KVC model for transferring the information to knowledge via the semi-structured interviews as well as archival documents all the way to the NPD system Conclusion References The application of knowledge to tangible assets drives the creation of value, so that knowledge becomes a source of competitive success Firms develop capabilities that embed this knowledge in the production of goods and services Sustaining competitive success requires that organisation to capture the knowledge that resides in individuals and leverage it across the whole plant This modified KVC Berawi, M A „Quality revolution: leading the innovation and competitive advantage‟ International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol 21 No (2004) pp 425-438 Billatos, S B & Billatos, N A B Green technology and design for the environment, Taylor & Francis, USA 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a firm engages only in innovation, it is likely to incur costs from the innovation process while not gaining from its benefits Following only an innovation... “low knowledge sharing. ” Individuals are classified as high knowledge sharers if they provide knowledge to others in the organisation Low knowledge sharers are individuals who not provide any knowledge. .. facilitate sharing of operational and administrative knowledge among collaborating office workers (see Section 1.3) Knowledge repository consists of a linked set of structures linking the roles,