Knowledge Integration

The ability to manage knowledge is relevant for millions of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that operate in high-tech environments. They strongly depend on external knowledge about customers, technologies, and competitors because, as opposed to large companies, they have limited internal knowledge resources and little power to control their business environments. Present KM literature, however, mainly focuses on large companies and therefore does not explain, how SMEs, for example, can successfully apply groupware, data mining, semantic networks, and knowledge maps. This book addresses this problem by introducing the concept of knowledge integration (KI) that places emphasis on the identification, acquisition and use of external knowledge. Drawing from this theoretical basis, the book presents concepts and instruments specifically designed for SMEs, as well as examples of their implementation and use in practice.

Interest in knowledge integration grew considerably in recent years, particularly within the realm of pre-service teacher education. However, studies on the topic conceptualize knowledge integration in diverse ways. For example, it may be conceived as a specific coherence-building learning process which involves not only acquiring but interrelating knowledge of different types or from different domains, which together constitute a teacher?s or educational specialist?s professional knowledge base. Furthermore, knowledge integration also refers to the meaningful application of knowledge of different types and from various domains in order to act professionally and to teach successfully.0In many countries, however, future teachers and educational specialists often struggle with knowledge integration, because the task of integrating knowledge across domains, from various courses, and from practical training is left largely to the individuals. Thus, the efficacy and quality of higher education programs, particularly in pre-service teacher education, could be improved through careful attention to knowledge integration.00This book aims at facilitating the consideration of knowledge integration in teacher training and higher education in both research and practice. Specifically, it explores theoretical conceptions and methods, and reports on original research and good practices for fostering knowledge integration. It is thus of interest to researchers, faculty board members, and lecturers concerned with teacher training and higher education, as well as to student-teachers and students of pedagogy, education, and educational psychology.

Technology-based firms continue to compete primarily on innovation, and one continuously required to present new solutions to an exacting market. As technological complexity and specialization intensifies, firms increasingly need to integrate and co-ordinate knowledge by means of project groups, diversified organizations, inter-organizational partnerships, and strategic alliances. Innovation processes have progressively become interdisciplinary, collaborative, inter-organizational, and international, and a firm's ability to synthesize knowledge across disciplines, organizations, and geographical locations has a major influence on its viability and success. This book demonstrates how knowledge integration is crucial in facilitating innovation within modern firms. This book provides original, detailed empirical studies of prerequisites, mechanisms, and outcomes of knowledge integration processes on several organizational levels, from key individuals, projects, and internal organizations, to collaboration between firms. It stresses the need to understand knowledge integration as a multi-level phenomenon, which requires a broad repertoire of organizational and technical means. It further clarifies the need for strong internal capabilities for exploiting external knowledge, reveals how costs of knowledge integration affect outcomes and strategic decisions, and discusses the managerial implications of fostering knowledge integration, providing practical guidance and support for managers of knowledge integration in high technology enterprises.

Presents an analysis of the business model unique to Japanese firms, emphasising four special features: the vertical value chain model, cross-industry collaboration, dynamic knowledge integration, and strategic innovation capability. This book also emphasises on inter- and intra-organizational collaboration as a source of strategic innovation.

Knowledge integration - the purposeful combination of specialized and complementary knowledge to achieve specific tasks - is becoming increasingly important for organizations facing rapidly changing institutional environments, globalized markets, and fast-paced technological developments. The need for knowledge integration is driven by knowledge specialization and its geographic and organizational distribution in the global economy. The increasing complexity and relevance of the knowledge integration problem is apparent in emerging new fields of research, such as open innovation, or the merging of existing ones, e.g. organizational learning and strategy. In global competition, the successful management of knowledge integration underpins firms' ability to innovate, generate profit, grow and, ultimately, survive. This book provides conceptual contributions as well as empirical studies that examine knowledge integration essentially as a 'boundary' problem. Knowledge integration becomes a problem when boundaries between knowledge fields, and the institutions that preside over those fields, are not clear, or become fluid and contestable. This fluidity, and the competitive pressures this fluidity generates, are persistent and permanent features of the world we live in. This book put forward a consistent set of ideas, methods and tools useful to interpret, analyze and act upon the processes of knowledge integration across boundaries.

International Perspectives on Knowledge Integration explores theoretical conceptions and methods and reports on original research and good practices for fostering knowledge integration in pre-service teacher and higher education.

Knowledge-based systems and solving knowledge integrating problems have seen a great surge of research activity in recent years. Knowledge Integration Methods provides a wide snapshot of building knowledge-based systems, inconsistency measures, methods for handling consistency, and methods for integrating knowledge bases. The book also provides the mathematical background to solving problems of restoring consistency and integrating probabilistic knowledge bases in the integrating process. The research results presented in the book can be applied in decision support systems, semantic web systems, multimedia information retrieval systems, medical imaging systems, cooperative information systems, and more. This text will be useful for computer science graduates and PhD students, in addition to researchers and readers working on knowledge management and ontology interpretation.

"This encyclopedia is a research reference work documenting the past, present, and possible future directions of knowledge management"--Provided by publisher.