Collaborating across institutional and jurisdictional boundaries: enabling the emergence of a national innovation system through public knowledge management

Abstract

Public institutions involved in research that aims to strengthen the productivity, profitability and adaptiveness of industries face a multiplicity of challenges when managing for the emergence of cost effective solutions to problems. We reflect upon the learnings of a Government sponsored Visiting Fellow's programme that we describe as a knowledge management (KM) intervention within Australia's primary industries Research, Development and Extension (R, D and E) system. Our central concern is to draw upon the learnings of an internet-based initiative in the United States called eXtension to show how 'traditional' D and E activities can be transformed. We argue that organisations and networks involved in such D and E activities need to perceive themselves as belonging to systems that are sociotechnical in nature. That is, the development and deployment of cross-jurisdictional and cross-institutional innovations are shaped by both the social interactions between people and the systematic use of technology to support distributed learning. We explain how the elements of an integrated model to support public KM can be developed to create the conditions for enhanced innovation. Our findings have relevance to a wide range of other industry sectors considering contemporary service models involving public and private partnerships.

Documenting things: bringing archival thinking to interdisciplinary collaborations

“…Through involvement in a number of consultancies, ESRC staff introduced archival thinking -working with items in aggregate, focusing on provenance and context and so on -to the agricultural section of the Department. This included workshops and the provision of a 'lessons learned' report on managing knowledge in the public sphere , and the provision of analysis and commentary on the American eXtension initiative (Vines, Jones, & McCarthy, 2013), an initiative which was subsequently introduced to Australia as a pilot. More recently, the author has been involved with the Department in the design, development and deployment of a new Knowledge Curation Tool (KCT) which utilises two standards, with some local variation: Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) and ISAAR (CPF) (International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families) (State Government of Victoria, 2011;ICA, 2004).…”

Cultivating capability

“…As Meloche et al write when examining wiki technology in 2009: "people take for granted their ability and right to access, and contribute to, the global knowledge repository that is the World Wide Web." (Meloche et al, 2009, p. 33) It is important to highlight that Meloche et al's notion of a global knowledge repository does not equate to a singular or simple system, and necessarily includes distinctly different but overlapping knowledge spaces, previously described by Vines et al as a 'personal knowledge space', a 'public knowledge space', and a 'boundary space' where there is overlap (Vines et al, 2013). Thus, working with organisational knowledge involves working with the dynamics of hierarchically complex adaptive systems where knowledge creation results from the co-existence and co-evolution of both top-down and bottom up processes (ibid, 2013).…”

“…The work on knowledge hubs did not result in practical, demonstrable change in the systems and processes of the Department; however, the idea of a more structured, standards-based approach had been introduced. In 2013, the ESRC was again requested to provide advice as to how such an approach might apply in the potential development of cross-institutional and cross-jurisdictional communities of practice, communities of interest and learning networks (Vines et al, 2013). In this way, the idea of the effective management of context was introduced once again, and recommendations made about possible standards and structures for the management of such context.…”

“…It is important to highlight that Meloche et al's notion of a global knowledge repository does not equate to a singular or simple system, and necessarily includes distinctly different but overlapping knowledge spaces, previously described by Vines et al as a "personal knowledge space", a "public knowledge space" and a "boundary space" where there is overlap (Vines et al, 2013). Thus, working with organisational knowledge involves working with the dynamics of hierarchically complex adaptive systems where knowledge creation results from the co-existence and co-evolution of both top-down and bottom-up processes (Vines et al, 2013). By implication, working with a tool such as KCT/EMMA involves more than just the management and description of content, or information resources.…”

Knowledge of the situation, social network and knowledge sharing in Peshawar University: an empirical study

“…However, this theoretical recognition has to be complemented by its actual application. This paradigm shift has exposed organisations to a knowledge challenge of how to create, disseminate and use knowledge (Vines, Jones, & McCarthy, 2015). Coping with this challenge has now become the question of survival for any organisation.…”