[Sigkm-l] SI - Information Systems Journal (ISJ) - Managing Knowledge Transfer in Distributed Contexts - Call for Papers

[Kevin C. Desouza]

Special Issue of the Information Systems Journal (ISJ) - Managing

Knowledge Transfer in Distributed Contexts

 



Guest Editors

Kevin C. Desouza, University of Illinois at Chicago

Mark E. Nissen, Naval Postgraduate School

Carsten Sørensen, London School of Economics





The Information Systems Journal (ISJ) is running a special issue on

Managing Knowledge Transfer in Distributed Contexts. The special issue is

motivated by several factors. Organizations today are global, distributed,

dynamic and knowledge-intensive. But the knowledge driving competitive

advantage is distributed unevenly through the organization, and tacit

knowledge in particular flows slowly across people, organizations, places

and times of application. Unfortunately, our current level of

understanding is inadequate for managing knowledge in a manner to keep par

with these environmental and phenomenological realities. How do we get

knowledge from one part of the organization to another? How do we transfer

it from one team at the present time to a future team? How do we move

knowledge from one context to another? How do we make informed decisions

regarding knowledge transfers that happen in an emergent and bottom-up

rather than a top-down manner? How do we model and enable knowledge flows

that cannot be specified a-priori? One of the emerging challenges is the

increased fragmentation of working contexts with requirements for

organizational participants’ to engage in complex knowledge generation and

sharing in increasingly distributed and mobile contexts. While the

operational challenges of conducting this in practice is substantial, the

distributed nature of work carries with it a further set of management

challenges where the mediated nature of work implies the application of

mediated techniques for effectivizing the management of distributed

management of knowledge.



Current theory to address such questions remains sparse, and practitioners

continue to rely upon inefficient and ineffective methods such as trial

and error and imitation to cope. This calls for both theoretical and

applied research to help guide the academic and to inform the practitioner

through new contributions to the knowledge management literature. The goal

of this special issue is to catalyze research and to publish papers that

will contribute cutting-edge perspectives on knowledge transfer issues in

organizations. We welcome both conceptual and empirical papers. Topics of

interest include, but are not certainly limited to, the following:



1.      Managing knowledge transfer in emergent teams and emergent work

settings



2.      Enhancers and suppressors of optimal knowledge transfer in

distributed contexts (e.g. incentive issues, cultural issues,

standardization issues, etc)



3.      Specifying knowledge transfer requirements in distributed contexts

(e.g. open source communities, mobile communications, ubiquitous computing

settings)



4.      Managing conflicts and convergence in terms of knowledge

requirements in distributed contexts



5.      Personalization and customization issues in knowledge transfer



6.      Flexibility and agility in knowledge transfer protocols.



7.      New approaches to researching knowledge transfer problems (e.g.

Agent Based Modeling)



8.      The role of multiple fluid contexts of work for the acquisition

and sharing of knowledge



9.      Challenges in the meeting of individual knowledge management

styles and those imposed by extended organizational infrastructures and

systems of organizational control and monitoring



10.  The role of trust in highly mobile and distributed modes of working

and knowledge sharing



11.  The role of mediated socializing in the creation and sharing of

distributed knowledge



12.  Opportunities and pitfalls in the use of technology-mediated

management of distributed work



13.  Diffusion of traditional boundaries for knowledge transfer in

networks engaging in interactive innovation



Timeline

·         October 15, 2005: Optional abstract submission 

·         January 15. 2005: Papers due for special issue 

·         March 15, 2006: First round of reviews complete. Feedback sent

to the authors for revisions.

·         June 15, 2006: Revised submissions due 

·         July 15, 2006: Final papers due.





Procedure

Authors are encouraged to contact the special issue editors to ascertain

fit of their work with the special issue. Manuscript should be submitted

as an attachment to an email to Kevin C. Desouza at kev.desouza at gmail.com.

 The email subject should be ISJ Special Issue Submission.  You will

normally receive an acknowledgement within a few days. Please provide

email addresses for all authors. All manuscripts will be screened by the

guest editors prior to sending them out for review. Manuscripts must be in

doc or PDF format. Please see the Editors ISJ Website for further details

on paper submission - http://disc.brunel.ac.uk/isj/.
 
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