One commonly acknowledged factor in the successful implementation of any application or information system is user satisfaction. This paper studied users' judgments on a new technology in an educational context. This study found that, while perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use each had a positive correlation with user satisfaction, there are likely to be additional factors that contribute to user satisfaction.

This paper reports the results of an empirical examination of the effectiveness of two knowledge discovery tools (barchart and scatterplot) in the context of a sales forecasting task. The main results of the study indicate that both tools were reasonably suitable for well conveying associations among task variables and offering improvements in prediction accuracy when compared to a naive predictor. There is however, still much ground for improvement towards a theoretical optimal case. In addition, findings show that a scatterplot was significantly more beneficial than a barchart in enhancing forecasters’ knowledge and performance of the task. This superiority can be potentially explained in terms of the favorable aspects of Cartesian graphs and the greater concentration required for using the tool.

Few would refute the importance of harnessing organizational knowledge — for reuse, learning, and process improvement. Once retained in a concrete form, knowledge becomes less fragmented and more easily accessible and useable. Such a knowledge management system indeed becomes a source of competitive advantage for an organization. The key to achieving this is by retaining the existing organizational knowledge so that we do not have to rely solely on available expertise. A number of knowledge management frameworks exist which help us to classify and structure knowledge. No single framework dominates, because different organizations have different needs depending on factors such as culture and business processes. At the same time, there is a lack of case studies on how organizations create or operate such a knowledge management system. In this paper, we present a case study of a knowledge management system used in a specific context — an Australian construction company. The study shows that, at least in this particular context, a knowledge management system can operate only where it does not interfere with the existing workflow of the organization. Furthermore, the importance of retaining valuable tacit knowledge is emphasized. We also discuss the implications for future research and practice.

The growing importance of information technology and innovation in the market place brings with it a need for the better management of professional knowledge for knowledge workers in the New Economy. This paper illustrates some major steps underway at the University of New South Wales, Australia towards building an educational system for IS professionals that can meet the requirements of the Knowledge Economy. The paper describes new multidisciplinary curriculum initiatives and instructional learning developments considered or implemented at the School of Information Systems, Technology and Management. A case study of a course, Electronic Record Systems, is presented. (Contains 14 references.)

This paper reports the results and implications for management education of an empirical study evaluating the impact of interaction among learners on their knowledge and performance in a judgmental decision making task context. The results indicate that interaction had a significant positive effect on individual learning over time. Interactive learners were found to make significantly smaller decision errors over time than during the earlier stages of their decision task. This was not true for their non-interactive counterparts. The study also found a significant positive effect of interaction on learners’ overall decision accuracy. Interactive learners tended to make smaller decision errors than their non-interactive counterparts irrespective of the stage of their decision making process. These results suggest that future management education needs to consider forms of interactive learning in response to environment pressures for faster and more effective learning.

This paper reports the results of an empirical examination of the effectiveness of one type of knowledge management technology, namely 'contextual knowledge repository', for supporting individual decision makers in a predictive judgement task context. 31 volunteer subjects participated in the study. The results indicate that a given technology was fairly useful, but insufficient to maximally enhance individual decision making. On one hand, subjects were found to extract more knowledge and make significantly smaller decision errors than their notional naive counterparts. On the other hand, subjects tended to extract less knowledge and make significantly larger decision errors compared to notional optimal counterparts. These findings suggest that individuals could potentially benefit from those knowledge management technologies that would provide additional explicit analytical and procedural knowledge, or those that would facilitate sharing of tacit knowledge through interaction with others. Future research is necessary to address these issues.

It is commonly accepted that all forms of software engineering knowledge should be captured and stored in a repository. This knowledge enables us to learn from past development experience and promotes reuse. Unfortunately there is not much work in the software engineering literature that emphasizes the importance of capturing implicit knowledge for the repository. This paper begins with a critical literature review on the epistemological dimensions of knowledge (explicit and implicit knowledge) in software development. Then it speculates a lack of attention on the capture of knowledge for the software experience factory. It suggests that the source of implicit knowledge extends beyond the software development team which accumulates implicit knowledge during practice. In this paper we formulate a conceptual framework that captures the implicit knowledge, and then organize the knowledge in a useful form for the software experience factory. This paper emphasizes the importance of implicit knowledge both on the individual and collective levels and suggests a combination of knowledge capture techniques to achieve this end. Though not within the scope of this paper, we recognize that knowledge must be organized in a useful way for easy access.

The paper describes a development effort and an empirical test of a software prototype for stimulating creative problem solving. The software was designed on the basis of a solo brainstorming technique that provided users with external stimuli and exposed them to a large number of ideas over a short period of time. The prototype was empirically tested in the context of issue identification for a natural disaster. The results of the test indicate that users were able to identify on average 40% of all critical issues individually, and over 95% of issues in nominal groups of 4-6 people. These results suggest that collaborative creativity may facilitate optimal performance and learning.

This study investigated the impact of increased information availability on people’s ability to process and use information in a judgemental decision making task context. The main findings indicate that increased availability had a detrimental effect on people’s information processing efficiency. This, in turn, led to reduced decision accuracy. These findings have important practical implications, as they emphasise the danger of ever increasing information supply enabled by new technology. The findings also suggest a need for future research aimed at improving people’s ability to make sense of the available information.

This paper reports results of an empirical examination of the contribution of information diverse repositories in enhancing individual knowledge and performance in a judgemental decision making context. A laboratory experiment was conducted using 32 graduate students as voluntary subjects. Performance of actual subjects was compared with that of their nominal naive and optimal counterparts. Results indicate that actual subjects performed better than naive, but worse than optimal nominals irrespective of the level of information diversity present in their available repositories. the results also indicate that subjects tended to perform significantly worse when faced with more diverse information. It can be concluded from the results that, in general, knowledge workers may have difficulties in turning available task information into knowledge and translating it to task performance. This also suggests that such workers may potentially benefit from a number of other knowledge management initiatives that would enhance their understanding of the existence and the form of relationships among diverse information.

This paper reports results of an empirical examination of the facilitating role of experimentation and socialisation in enhancing individual knowledge and performance in decision making. A laboratory experiment was conducted using 28 graduate students as voluntary subjects. Performance of actual subjects was compared with that of their nominal naive and optimal counterparts. Results indicate that both opportunities for independent experimentation and socialisation among subjects significantly facilitated individual knowledge enhancement and led to improved decision performance. Subjects encouraged to interact with others tended to make better quality decisions than those who individually experimented with the decision task. Both performed better than notional naive subjects who applied random walk decision strategy. However, the results indicate room for further improvement. Subjects failed to reach performance of notional optimal counterparts who used linear decision strategy. The results also suggest the need for a holistic approach to managing knowledge by combining and integrating various initiatives to create even higher levels of knowledge and performance.

This paper reports the results of an empirical examination of the effects of personal experience and social interaction on individual knowledge and performance in a specific decision making task context. The study revealed a differential effect of increased experience on the quality of participants' decisions. In particular, increased experience did not result in significant decision improvement in the non-interactive social environment, but did so in the interactive social environment. The study also revealed that social interaction was beneficial irrespective of personal experience, and led to better performance at both low and high experience levels. The results suggest that individuals may benefit from, in combination, opportunities for personal experimentation and social interaction with others. These results may be useful to all those responsible for planning knowledge management strategies aimed at enhancing knowledge creation and utilization. Includes two tables and one figure. (Contains 48 references.) (Author) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. THE ROLE OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND °,7g. SOCIAL INTERACTION IN KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND UTILISATION