• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.109-132
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• 2001

The purpose of this article is to develop a dynamic model of organizational capabilities and knowledge creation, and at the same time identify the organizational capability factors for effective knowledge creation, by empirically analyzing the history of new Quinolone antibacterial drug compound (LB20304a) discovery process at LG, as a case in point. Major findings of this study are as follows. First, in a science-based area such as drug development, the core of successful knowledge creation lies in creative combination of different bodies of scientific explicit knowledge. Second, the greater the difficulty of learning external knowledge, the more tacit knowledge is needed for the recipient firm to effectively exploit that knowledge. Third, in science-based sector such as pharmaceutical industry, the key for successful knowledge creation lies in the capability of recruiting and retaining star scientists. Finally, for effective knowledge creation, a firm must keep its balance among three dimensions of organizational capabilities: local, process, architectural capabilities.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.13-29
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• 2010

This study aims to investigate the effect of mentoring functions (career development, role modeling, and psychosocial function) on the motivation to adopt knowledge and the success of knowledge transfer in formal mentoring relations. There are considerable empirical investigation into the antecedents and consequences of mentoring, such as organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, In this paper, based on the relevant literatures, hypotheses are established and empirically tested that are about the effect of mentoring functions on the motivation to adopt knowledge, and the effect of motivation to adopt knowledge on the success of knowledge transfer. Using a sample of 287 service industry employees, the empirical results shows that career development and role modeling functions ware positively related to motivation to adopt knowledge, but psychosocial function was not significantly related. In addition, the motivation to adopt knowledge was positively related to the success of knowledge transfer. Based on these findings, implication and future direction are discussed.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.500-532
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• 2012

This study analyzed the technology innovation strategies of knowledge-based companies in the semiconductor IP industry. The theoretical approaches of this study are to i) the creation, protection and utilization of knowledge and innovation, ii) value creation from innovation, iii) modularity, timing of market entry, and the emergence and competition of standard (dominant design). Based on the theoretical analysis, I presented exploratory research hypotheses. Ultimately, this study examined the proposed hypotheses by conducting case studies on the technology innovation strategy of two leading knowledge-based companies in the semiconductor IP industry: ARM and INTEL. First, knowledge-based companies entering in the early stage of the technology cycle select the vertically-integrated technology strategy because of lower access to complementary knowledge assets, and maintain the vertically-integrated technology strategy despite the environmental change-driven differentiation of industry's value chain. Second, knowledge-based companies entering in the later stage of the technology cycle prefer the contract-based technology strategy because of its increased accessibility to complementary knowledge assets, and choose a different path of innovation strategies depending on whether their asset has the feature of discontinuity or not.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.15-21
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• 2012

Objective: We propose empathy as a user research method for service design. Background: We argue that empathy will enable user researchers to go beyond the conceptual knowledge to the design knowledge of user experience. Method: We tested our hypothesis by conducting an experiment in which subjects were required to propose solutions to improve the experience of a family member of a patient hospitalized in an emergency department. Results: We found that the subjects who empathized with the family member of a patient tended to suggest the solutions based on design knowledge rather than the solutions based on conceptual knowledge compared to the subjects who did not empathize. Conclusion: Data support our hypothesis that empathy enables people to focus on design knowledge rather than conceptual knowledge. Application: These findings provide practical implications for user researchers in service design.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.159-177
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• 1995

The objective of this paper is to propose a knowledge-based fuzzy post adjustment so that unstructured problems can be solved more realistically by expert systems. Major part of this mechanism forcuses on fuzzily assessing the influence of various external factors and accordingly improving the solutions of unstructured problem being concerned. For this purpose, three kinds of knowledge are used : user knowledge, expert knowledge, and machine knowledge. User knowledge is required for evaluating the external factors as well as operating the expert systems. Machine knowledge is automatically derived from historical instances of a target problem domain by using machine learning techniques, and used as a major knowledge source for inference. Expert knowledge is incorporate dinto fuzzy membership functions for external factors which seem to significantly affect the target problems. We applied this mechanism to a prototyoe expert system whose major objective is to provide expert guidance for stock market timing such as sell, buty, or wait. Experiments showed that our proposed mechanism can improve the solution quality of expert systems operating in turbulent decision-making environments.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.57-81
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• 2008

Knowledge is an essential strategic weapon for sustaining competitive advantage and is the key determinant for organizational growth. When knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout the organization, it increases an organization's value by providing the ability to respond to new and unusual situations. The growing importance of knowledge as a critical resource has forced executives to pay attention to their organizational knowledge. Organizations are increasingly undertaking knowledge management initiatives and making significant investments. Knowledge sourcing is considered as the first important step in effective knowledge management. Most firms continue to make an effort to realize the benefits of knowledge management by using various knowledge sources effectively. Appropriate knowledge sourcing strategies enable organizations to create, acquire, and access knowledge in a timely manner by reducing search and transfer costs, which result in better firm performance. In response, the knowledge management literature has devoted substantial attention to the analysis of knowledge sourcing strategies. Many studies have categorized knowledge sourcing strategies into intemal- and external-oriented. Internal-oriented sourcing strategy attempts to increase firm performance by integrating knowledge within the boundary of the firm. On the contrary, external-oriented strategy attempts to bring knowledge in from outside sources via either acquisition or imitation, and then to transfer that knowledge across to the organization. However, the extant literature on knowledge sourcing strategies focuses primarily on large organizations. Although many studies have clearly highlighted major differences between large and small firms and the need to adopt different strategies for different firm sizes, scant attention has been given to analyzing how knowledge sourcing strategies affect firm performance in small firms and what are the differences between small and large firms in the patterns of knowledge sourcing strategies adoption. This study attempts to advance the current literature by examining the impact of knowledge sourcing strategies on small firm performance from a holistic perspective. By drawing on knowledge based theory from organization science and complementarity theory from the economics literature, this paper is motivated by the following questions: (1) what are the adoption patterns of different knowledge sourcing strategies in small firms (i,e., what sourcing strategies should be adopted and which sourcing strategies work well together in small firms)?; and (2) what are the performance implications of these adoption patterns? In order to answer the questions, this study developed three hypotheses. First hypothesis based on knowledge based theory is that internal-oriented knowledge sourcing is positively associated with small firm performance. Second hypothesis developed on the basis of knowledge based theory is that external-oriented knowledge sourcing is positively associated with small firm performance. The third one based on complementarity theory is that pursuing both internal- and external-oriented knowledge sourcing simultaneously is negatively or less positively associated with small firm performance. As a sampling frame, 700 firms were identified from the Annual Corporation Report in Korea. Survey questionnaires were mailed to owners or executives who were most erudite about the firm s knowledge sourcing strategies and performance. A total of 188 companies replied, yielding a response rate of 26.8%. Due to incomplete data, 12 responses were eliminated, leaving 176 responses for the final analysis. Since all independent variables were measured using continuous variables, supermodularity function was used to test the hypotheses based on the cross partial derivative of payoff function. The results indicated no significant impact of internal-oriented sourcing strategies while positive impact of external-oriented sourcing strategy on small firm performance. This intriguing result could be explained on the basis of various resource and capital constraints of small firms. Small firms typically have restricted financial and human resources. They do not have enough assets to always develop knowledge internally. Another possible explanation is competency traps or core rigidities. Building up a knowledge base based on internal knowledge creates core competences, but at the same time, excessive internal focused knowledge exploration leads to behaviors blind to other knowledge. Interestingly, this study found that Internal- and external-oriented knowledge sourcing strategies had a substitutive relationship, which was inconsistent with previous studies that suggested complementary relationship between them. This result might be explained using organizational identification theory. Internal organizational members may perceive external knowledge as a threat, and tend to ignore knowledge from external sources because they prefer to maintain their own knowledge, legitimacy, and homogeneous attitudes. Therefore, integrating knowledge from internal and external sources might not be effective, resulting in failure of improvements of firm performance. Another possible explanation is small firms resource and capital constraints and lack of management expertise and absorptive capacity. Although the integration of different knowledge sources is critical, high levels of knowledge sourcing in many areas are quite expensive and so are often unrealistic for small enterprises. This study provides several implications for research as well as practice. First this study extends the existing knowledge by examining the substitutability (and complementarity) of knowledge sourcing strategies. Most prior studies have tended to investigate the independent effects of these strategies on performance without considering their combined impacts. Furthermore, this study tests complementarity based on the productivity approach that has been considered as a definitive test method for complementarity. Second, this study sheds new light on knowledge management research by identifying the relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies and small firm performance. Most current literature has insisted complementary relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies on the basis of data from large firms. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study identifies substitutive relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies using data from small firms. Third, implications for practice highlight that managers of small firms should focus on knowledge sourcing from external-oriented strategies. Moreover, adoption of both sourcing strategies simultaneousiy impedes small firm performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.142-148
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• 1993

Recectly, development of expert system utilizing the domain specific knowledge focuses upon the machining operations. This paper describes an expert system for selecting the optimum grinding wheel based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Logic. Knowledge-base, in this system, for selecting of grinding wheel is designed to appling the knowhow and experience knowledge of skilled hands. In this paper, firstly determination method of fuzzy membership function utilizing the qualitative knowledge, and then selection of the optimum wheel from among the available components according to Saaty's priority rule are described. Lastly,some implementation results are suggested.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.15-35
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• 2013

Nowadays, online shopping has become popular among consumers. As such, gaining loyal online shopping customers has become a rising concern for online shopping vendors. In this study, we investigated the hierarchical relationships among Lewicki and Bunker's three different types of trust, namely, calculus-based trust, knowledge-based trust, and identification-based trust, in the context of online shopping and their impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty. A total of 104 responses from online shopping users were analyzed to test the proposed model and its hypotheses using Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results showed that, in the online environment, hierarchical relationships between different types of trust exist and that, among them, knowledge-based trust has the strongest impact on customer satisfaction. This finding implied that practitioners should focus on developing appropriate online strategies for building trust-based relationships with online customers.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.173-194
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• 2008

Conventional financial accounting system has overseen the significant roles of the non-financial facets of the activities of the company, especially whose value creating abilities are based on knowledge assets. In the knowledge-based economy, telecommunication service companies must recognize the changes from the tangible assets to the knowledge assets as value creating resources, understand the dynamic processes in which the knowledge is converted to financial profits and seek the method to measure and report knowledge assets to sustain the competitive advantage continuously. This study proposes the indicators and measures of knowledge assets of Korea Telecom. Through the analysis and application of tile knowledge assets report of the Korea Telecom, this study shows the usefulness of the knowledge assets report.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.77-87
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• 2006

It is necessary to change the existing design process to cope with a short life-cycle product and various customer's demands. Also a frequent design change may delay the whole design process and it will increase the unit cost of the production. New alternatives or techniques have emerged to solve the existing design problems, such as a knowledge based engineering, an intelligent CAD, a function based design, and so on. In this paper, we propose a hybrid design system with a knowledge based design methodology and a function based design technique. The knowledge based design is good at a frequent design change and the function based design is effective to extract a core design behavior. In an early design process, the system utilizes a core design behavior through the function based design process. On the other hand, the system manages complicated design issues with the knowledge based design technique in the detailed design process. We conclude that the hybrid design system can bring fair effects on implementing an efficient design environment in aspect of time and expense.