Extensive urbanisation is increasing on a global scale. The urban population is estimated to rise to 66 per cent by 2050. This significant urbanisation growth drives the consumption of resources causing resource shortages and posing significant environmental and social concerns. To manage these concerns municipal decision makers' attempt to leverage the smart city concept with collaboration between external actors as a means to maintain the prepossessed living standard in the city. The philosophy of smart cities is to see challenges as opportunities and take advantage of other trends such as digitalization. Smart cities may offer a major market opportunity that can be easily exploited by information and communication technologies providers and their telecom equipment partners. However, although the opportunity exits, capitalizing on it is not as straightforward as it seems. This paper investigates the predominant challenges in smart city initiatives from the municipal decision makers' perspective. The study is based on the findings of a survey conducted via 65 participants from various small and medium enterprises and large organisations. The results show that smart cities decision makers mainly perceive challenges with various technical and non-technical issues such as collaboration, economical, governance, social acceptance, and awareness of technology, as well as high technological risk, security and privacy of users and cyber-crimes issues.

Smart cities need to take advantage of the opportunities that the knowledge-based economy and society can bring to the city. Therefore, cities planners and decision makers need to develop cities that take advantage of local knowledge and the intellectual capital of the population. Organizational culture is widely held to be a major barrier to creating and leveraging knowledge. Successful implementation of knowledge management (KM) almost always requires a culture change in order to promote a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration. Hence, organizations implementing smart cities need to place great emphasis on the need to change organizational culture to pursue effective KM and its successful implementation. However, the management of culture change is a complicated task; its precise nature in smart-city development and the strategies required to be adopted remains underspecified. This study aimed to explore organizational cultural transformation needed for managing knowledge in the context of smart cities. The methodological approach for this study is a systematic review, covering publications on smart cities, KM, and organizational culture. The method used in this study involved three stages: planning the review, conducting the review, and reporting and disseminating the results. The findings revealed three key themes which are: organizational perspectives of smart cities; organizational change, innovation, and digital transformation; and the relationship between organizational culture and KM. The paper concludes that the cultural transformation required for the development of smart cities needs to facilitate the ability to integrate, create and reconfigure both internal and external competences to manage knowledge that originates from within and beyond projects boundaries. This study provides an insight into urban policymakers, planners, and scholars to prepare for the challenges that organizations face in their efforts to manage and implement smart cities successfully.

Purpose The ability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic is contingent upon the ability to effectively manage its heterogeneous knowledge resources. Knowledge mapping represents a great opportunity to create value by bringing stakeholders together, facilitating comprehensive collaboration and facilitating broader in-depth knowledge sharing and transfer. However, identifying and analysing critical knowledge areas is one of the most important steps when creating a knowledge map. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to appraise the critical knowledge areas for managing COVID-19, and thereby enhance decision-making in tackling the consequences of the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The methodological approach for this study is a critical literature review, covering publications on knowledge management, knowledge mapping and COVID-19. EBSCOhost, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, TRID, Web of Science and Wiley Online Library were searched for full text, peer-reviewed articles written in English that investigated on critical knowledge areas for managing the spread of COVID-19. After full screening, 21 articles met the criteria for inclusion and were analysed and reported. Findings The study revealed seven critical knowledge areas for managing the COVID-19 pandemic. These are cleaning and disinfection; training, education and communication; reporting guidance and updates; testing; infection control measures, personal protective equipment; and potential COVID-19 transmission in health and other care settings. The study developed a concept knowledge map illustrating areas of critical knowledge which decision-makers need to be aware of. Practical implications Providing decision-makers with access to key knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be crucial for effective decision-making. This study has provided insights for the professionals and decision-makers identifying the critical knowledge areas for managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Social implications The study advances the literature on knowledge management and builds a theoretical link with the management of public health emergencies. Additionally, the findings support the theoretical position that knowledge maps facilitate decision-making and help users to identify critical knowledge areas easily and effectively. Originality/value This study fills gaps in the existing literature by providing an explicit representation of know-how for managing the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper uses an objective and qualitative approach by reviewing related publications, reports and guidelines in the analysis. The concept map illustrates the critical knowledge areas for managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Effective management of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) and the urgent need to improve epidemic prevention require rapid response and immediate solutions, deploying appropriate knowledge management procedures and facilitating effective decision‐making and managerial efforts. The increased adoption of smart cities (SC) technologies offers various technologies that can support knowledge capturing, acquisition, sharing, and transferring. However, knowledge management practitioners and decision‐makers face various challenges to manage huge data generated from the various SC platforms. Managing COVID‐19‐related knowledge necessitates filtering, cleaning, keeping, and sharing only useful data. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate managing knowledge related to COVID‐19 from a SC perspective. The methodological approach for this study is a systematic literature review. The findings indicate that SC technologies, through the advanced deployment of information communications technology (ICT) applications, have a crucial role in knowledge capturing and sharing. Smart cities strategies enable knowledge extraction through facilitating data collection and analysis over various disparate databases, as well as facilitating quick and accurate handling and analysis of huge and unpredicted amount of data. Managing knowledge related to COVID‐19 pandemic has the potential to improve the planning, treatment and controlling the pandemic, enhance decision‐making, and enable disaster management. However, the managing of a huge amount of complex, unstructured data and information remains a big challenge for COVID‐19 knowledge management (KM) initiatives. The paper proposes a conceptual model and illustrates the various components and links between SC strategies, KM and COVID‐19, and how this can inform, facilitate, and enhance decision‐making to take steps for the path of recovery.

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