Mapping knowledge networks for organizational re-design in a rehabilitation clinic

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a social network approach for identification of micro-organizational re-design interventions to make more efficient and fluid the knowledge flow in a rehabilitation multidisciplinary team. The structural information of different kinds of knowledge networks within a team is augmented with additional analyses aimed at collecting information about the ways through which participants use knowledge, the motivation behind knowledge exchange, and the non-human knowledge sources used by subjects to perform their work. This paperwork was supported by CNCSIS – UEFISCDI, project number PNII – IDEI 810/2008. Design/methodology/approach: The authors propose a definition of knowledge network including human and non-human knowledge source (documents and knowledge repositories) as it is more adequate for the analysis of knowledge flows in multidisciplary medical teams. The mapping and analysis of the network are carried out through: elicitation of knowledge flows between people within and outside the team through a structured questionnaire; mapping of the knowledge flows toward non-human knowledge sources; and identification of critical aspects and proposal of re-engineering interventions to make knowledge flow more efficient and effective. Findings: The analysis of the critical aspects emerged in the field study identifies a number of opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge sharing through the re-design of the team network. The re-design interventions concern three main features of knowledge network: “knowledge centralization,” “Over-reliance on External experts,” “Unshared knowledge tools and sources.” Originality/value: The originality of the work resides in applying social network analysis (SNA) for healthcare management settings, proving evidence and guidelines to show how healthcare organizations can benefit from the adoption of SNA-based approaches

Network approaches and interventions in healthcare settings: A systematic scoping review

“…Seven different types of ties were analyzed across studies. Two studies analyzed more than one tie [ 108 , 113 , 114 ]. Twelve different network measures were used to describe or analyze networks at the individual, dyadic, group and whole network levels.…”

Team learning in interdisciplinary research teams: antecedents and consequences

“…Knowledge sharing enriches the knowledge base of the team (Nickerson and Zenger, 2004;Kim, 2018) and enables a constant flow of task knowledge among interdependent individuals (Hansen, 1999;Alsharo et al, 2017). Through knowledge sharing, individuals can understand how theoretical perspectives, methods and skills from different disciplines compare to, complement or contradict each other (Ö berg, 2008) and get a comprehensive understanding of the challenges they confront (Cannavacciuolo et al, 2017). In this way, team members can benefit from mitigated cognitive differences and engage themselves in team learning.…”

Knowledge in Transition in Healthcare

“…Most knowledge in organizations is dynamic, rooted in each worker, and a small part is static, embedded in documental information [ 34 ]. Dynamic Knowledge should be stored in tangible repositories so that it can become a substantial source of relevant information and expertise [ 35 ], as reported in Table 1 [ 30 , 36 ].…”