Distributed knowledge management minitrack

The goal of this track is to explore the notion of managing knowledge in today's distributed environment. Specifically, we solicited papers that explore issues, challenges, and case studies of sharing and leveraging knowledge using new advances in protocols, approaches or technology in a distributed, collaborative, virtual, or global context. In the first paper, knowledge management in distributed environments: roles of informal network players, Yukika Awazu examines the saliency of informal networks on three knowledge management activities - aggregation, transfer, and sensemaking. Her paper's novelty lies in her examination of how the importance of informal roles emerges as knowledge is managed in a distributed organization. The second paper is by Adel Al-Taitoon and Carsten Sorensen - supporting mobile professionals in global banking. The authors examine the role of ICT-support call-centers in supporting mobile professionals. Mobile professionals need pervasive and ubiquitous access to information. The ability of an agent to use ICTs is hence critical in order for them to attain task objectives. Technology, however, is bound to experience failure or disruption in service. This paper examines how a global help desk accomplishes the role of providing pre-, in-, and post-mobility support. The third paper is robustness of a distributed knowledge management model by Mogens Kuhn Pedersen and Michael Holm Larsen. The authors examine the role of incentives in fostering a stable distributed knowledge management model. Here the term distributed is used in the decision making sense - spreading decision making authoring to the front lines. A set of 9 static and 5 dynamic propositions is calibrated for the model to maintain symmetric incentives between different actor networks. The final paper is by Andreas Nilsson, Johan Magnusson, and Hakan Enquist - change management implications for network organizations. The paper investigates possible change management implications for networks organizations. The authors apply six critical management issues (CMIs) from the change management framework DELTA on a taxonomy consisting of three generic types of network organizations.