Knowledge Engineering

The Process Paradigm

Hamed Fazlollahtabar

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367517366
• eBook ISBN: 9781000163278
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Subtopic: Industriemanagement

Knowledge management is far-reaching. It can dramatically reduce costs such as costs of office work repetition, human resource retirement, information reuse, etc. Rather than "reinventing the wheel" and having it be a costly and inefficient activity, systematic reuse of knowledge can show substantial cost benefits immediately.

This book shows how to develop process-oriented methodologies, covers both interorganizational and enterprises models, discusses how knowledge management can dramatically reduce costs and increase speed of response, presents a wide range of quantitative methods applied to various knowledge engineering problems, and offers several graphical presentations of models and processes.

Academicians and practitioners in the area of knowledge management and engineering, especially managers in industries will fine this book useful. The material might also be useful in knowledge management graduate studies.

1 Knowledge and Global Learning

Main Body

Subsidiaries’ Knowledge Stock

For foreign subsidiaries, a major source of learning is their operational experience in the host country. The subsidiary’s host country experience subdivides into a time-based experience and a diversity-based experience. The longer the time-based experience and the more diverse the experience of the subsidiary in the host country, the more knowledge is transferred from it to the parent company and to its peer subsidiaries [1, 2, ].

Hypotheses can be expressed as follows:

• H1a/H1b: The longer the time-based experience of the subsidiary in the host country, the more knowledge is transferred to the parent company (H1a) and to its peer subsidiaries (H1b).

Centralized control imposed by a parent company undermines a subsidiary’s motivation to learn, thus the more autonomy is given to the subsidiary, the more knowledge is transferred to the parent company and to its peer subsidiaries.

• H1c/H1d: The more diverse the experience of the subsidiary in the host country, the more knowledge is transferred to the parent company (H1c) and to its peer subsidiaries (H1d).

Knowledge Transfer Mechanisms

Poor communication and lack of incentives could hinder the transfer and utilization of the knowledge. Staffing expatriate managers in foreign subsidiaries and facilitating direct contact between managers in different subunits can be effective. Expatriate managers can share work experience and culture with parent company managers [3 –5].

• H3a/H3b: The more expatriates there are in the subsidiary, the more knowledge is transferred to the parent company (H3a) and to its peer subsidiaries (H3b).

Frequent communication among staff has a crucial role in the transfer of innovations.

• H4a/H4b: The more frequent the communication between subsidiary managers and parent company managers, the more knowledge is transferred from the subsidiary to the parent company (H4a) and to its peer subsidiaries (H4b).

Data and Methods

Data were collected through an email survey of foreign subsidiaries operating in Iran. First, all firms engaged in manufacturing activities and which had at least two years of operational experience were identified. Then, firms whose employee base was less than 50 were excluded, and firms in which foreign parent firms had less than 50% equity stake were also excluded. In total, 404 firms were included in the email survey. Next, the first version of the questionnaire was prepared and pre-tested by three senior managers from different foreign-owned firms. The questionnaire was revised and finalized according to their comments. Then, they explained the purpose of the study and asked if the team member was willing to participate in the email survey. Managers in 195 out of 404 firms agreed to do so. Finally, 98 completed questionnaires were received. Among these, 17 questionnaires, which had insufficient responses (four cases) or reported conducting only manufacturing activities but no sales activities (13 cases) were excluded. Of the remaining 81, ten respondents noted that their parent companies had no foreign affiliates other than the Iranian subsidiary. Therefore, 81 cases were available for analyzing knowledge transfer to the parent company, and 71 cases to peer subsidiaries.

Dependent Variables

First, dependent variables measured the amount of knowledge that the focal subsidiary transferred to the parent company in five major dimensions:

1. 1. The development of basic and applied technologies;
2. 2. New product design and development;
3. 3. Manufacturing activities;
4. 4. Sales, marketing and distribution; and
5. 5. General management (Cronbach’s α = 0.911).

The second dependent variable was measured as the amount of knowledge that the focal subsidiary transferred to peer subsidiaries (Cronbach’s α = 0.941).

Independent Variables

The time-based experience was measured by the number of operational years of the subsidiary. The diversity-based experience was operationalized by the extent to which the subsidiary:

• Produced and sold diverse products;
• Served diverse wholesale markets;
• Served diverse retail markets; and
• Dealt with diverse buyers and customers (seven-point Likert scale).

Subsidiary autonomy was measured, by asking the respondents to indicate the extent to which a subsidiary could make its own decisions without interference from the parent company, in six management domains:

1. 1. Development and launch of new products;
2. 2. Pricing decisions and marketing activities;
3. 3. Expansion and reduction of manufacturing facilities;
4. 4. Human resources management policies;
5. 5. Borrowing and raising capital; and
6. 6. Setting annual business goals (seven-point Likert scale).

The expatriate policy for the basic subsidiary was measured at three different levels using three different variables:

• Dummy variable;
• The number of expatriates; and
• The ratio of expatriates to the total number of employees in the subsidiary.

Communication frequency between the parent and subsidiary managers was measured according to:

• How often the subsidiary manager communicates with managers in the parent company through e-mail, telephone, etc.;
• How often the subsidiary manager makes business trips to the parent company to have face-to-face meetings.

Control Variables

• The size of the subsidiary: measured by the total number of employees;
• The ownership percentage of the foreign parent in the subsidiary: measured by a dummy variable, if the value is “1” the foreign parent had an equity stake over 95%, and “0” otherwise.

Methods

Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression was used to test the hypotheses.

The regression is performed on:

• Two dependent variables (knowledge transfer to a parent company and knowledge transfer to peer subsidiaries);
• Five independent variables (subsidiary experience, subsidiary autonomy, expatriate policy, communication frequency and performance appraisal);
• Seven control variables (subsidiary size, parent ownership, three industrial dummies and two home country dummies).

Assessment of Measures

The authors first performed exploratory factor analysis for four multi-item scales (i.e., diversity of experience, subsidiary autonomy, frequency of communication with a parent, frequency of communication with peers). Each of the constructs is confirmed as one dimension, with the exception of subsidiary autonomy, whose related items were grouped into two different factors: one associated with activities such as the expansion an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Knowledge and Global Learning
• Chapter 2 Knowledge Processes, Intensity and Innovation
• Chapter 3 Knowledge with Innovation Performance
• Chapter 4 Knowledge and Innovation in Networked Environments
• Chapter 5 Knowledge and Organizational Business Loss
• Chapter 6 Knowledge Sharing Using Semantic Web
• Chapter 7 Knowledge Sharing and Tax Payment
• Chapter 8 Knowledge Sharing for Enterprise Resources
• Chapter 9 Knowledge Sharing and Organizational Culture
• Chapter 10 Knowledge Sharing and Learning Capability
• Index