Regional Growth and Accessibility to Knowledge Resources: A Study of Swedish Municipalities

-- Martin Andersson, Urban Gråsjö and Charlie Karlsson

This paper analyzes the relationship between regional growth and accessibility to knowledge resources in a cross-section of Swedish municipalities. The empirical part of the paper shows the hypothesis that knowledge accessibility has a positive effect on growth which cannot be rejected. The knowledge accessibility in a given period has a statistically significant effect on the growth in subsequent periods. The paper also demonstrates that knowledge accessibilities do not affect growth homogeneously across municipalities.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Consequences of the Adoption of Information and Communication Technologies in SMEs in Jamaica

-- Kaushalesh Lal

The study examines the intensity of the adoption of information and communication technologies in Jamaican Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) and their ability to use them in augmenting performance of firms. Most of the firms which participated in this study had access to and utilized Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) such as office automation technologies, E-mail, and the Internet. However, only a limited number of firms were using advanced ICT tools like Computerized Numerically Controlled machine tools (CNC), Computer Assisted Design (CAD)/ Computer Assisted Manufacturing (CAM), Computer Assisted Engineering (CAE), and Web-enabled technologies. Majority of the firms surveyed did not report any major constraint to the use of ICTs apart from the speed of communication and the Internet access. An analysis of data in neo-classical production function framework suggests that firms that adopted more advanced ICTs performed better than others that were users of low level of ICTs. The other factors that emerged significant in influencing performance of firms were size of operation, skill intensity of workforce, age of managing directors, communication technology infrastructure, and international orientation. It is concluded that the Jamaican Government needs to strengthen technical training institutions so that they can produce persons with appropriate skills who can use and encourage the use of ICTs which is expected to consolidate the position of SMEs in the domestic as well as in international markets.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Onto-DOM: A Question-Answering Ontology-based Strategy for Heterogeneous Knowledge Sources

-- Mariel Alejandra Ale,
Cristian Gerarduzzi,
Omar Chiotti and Maria Rosa Galli

Despite a large number of Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives implemented in organizations, they often fail to manage the natural heterogeneity of organizational knowledge sources. Many approaches to KM have been only based on new information systems technologies to capture all the possible knowledge of an organization into databases that would make it easily accessible to all employees. To overcome heterogeneity, documentation overload and lack of context this article proposes Onto-DOM, a question-answering ontology-based strategy within a Distributed Organizational Memory.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Accounting for Organizations of the Future Knowledge Society

-- Alexandru Tugui

In the future knowledge-based society, knowledge will be the regular working material, which will be easily handled in any organization. Organizations' accounting will be one of the tools to handle knowledge as the "raw material" of the future accounting. This stage of accounting will be reached following a standardization of the accounting procedures, practices and methods, processing of the company data, utilizing the communication technologies, the artificial intelligence, as well as of the potential technologies that "wait" to be discovered. This study discusses concepts like: knowledge, new economy, data-based accounting (d-accounting), information-oriented accounting (i-accounting), accounting in collaborative environments (e-accounting) and accounting in the knowledge society. The road to knowledge-based accounting (k-accounting) will involve automation, digitization, virtuality, multimedia, mobility and interoperability.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Some Novel Information Systems for the Empowerment of Decision-making Process on a Territory: Outcomes from a Four-Year Participatory Modeling in Senegal

-- Patrick D'Aquino

The Maps, the Geographical Information Systems (GIS), the Role-Playing Games (RPG) and the other participatory supports, the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS): all are modeling supports designed through their conceivers' perception. Even in participatory approaches, these designing and modeling supports can take off towards technocratic, but often unconscious, drifts. Yet, a true empowerment of local governance means to let stakeholders and their principals totally handle their information and modeling systems. The mere access to information is certainly a first step but it is far from a true power over it, so long as the local people are unable to select, process, and manage their information systems. Actually, the present fast-developing use of these tools could be a threat as much as a progress for the democratization of information. These new information technologies are still often a way to reinforce technical point of view into the decision-making process. This analysis brought us to methodological experiments between 1997 and 2001 in the Senegal river area, to support a land use management local process based on Information Systems Self-Governance (ISSG). Novel forms of maps, GIS, RPGs, other participatory supports and MASs in a designing approach were conceived and tested truly reversed. For all these supports, stakeholders or their local principals guided all steps of designing and modeling process. This method rests on two principles: 1) the endogenous nature of a decision-making process that we consider always continuous and iterative; 2) the self-design of the modeling tools to supply supports for decision-makers much suitable, much handy and much controllable. In such a decision-making process on territories, the technical supports are merely a sort of mediating accompaniment. The results of the four-year experiment allow us to formalize a self-designed modeling approach, for simple maps as well as GIS, RPG and MAS supports. The outcomes also show that this sort of endogenous and self-designed participatory modeling is efficient to let an endogenous dynamics of governance come across into a bottom-up regional policy and planning, from local (2,500 km²) to regional (18,000 km²) scales. In other words, a bottom-up participatory modeling and planning is more fitted with the more humble place where our post-normal science should be in the 21st century.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.