Poleacovschi, C (2017) The role of social and governance mechanisms on the process of knowledge seeking in engineering organizations. PhD thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.
Abstract
Knowledge seeking represents the process of approaching a knowledge provider when a knowledge seeker does not have the knowledge they need. The process of knowledge seeking is important for engineering organizations as it allows people to obtain the knowledge they need to resolve everyday project problems. In the process of knowledge seeking, knowledge accessibility and provider’s expertise represents the two major factors determining knowledge seeker’s choice of knowledge providers. Because there are numerous barriers in the process of knowledge seeking, this dissertation seeks to identify the antecedents of knowledge accessibility and expertise assessment. The overall dissertation research questions is: What are the antecedents of knowledge seeking? The context of the study is one large engineering organization that focuses on providing water and wastewater services. First, the dissertation identifies the characteristics of experts based on the cues that knowledge seekers use to assess knowledge providers’ expertise. Second, the dissertation identifies the gender characteristics which affect knowledge accessibility between the knowledge seeker and knowledge provider. Lastly, the dissertation identifies the control systems which influence knowledge accessibility based on the knowledge type. A multi-method approach (qualitative and quantitative) is used in dissertation research using survey data distributed to 855 people in the organization and 35 interviews with knowledge seekers. The results in this dissertation contribute to theory and practice by identifying the social and governance mechanisms that influence knowledge accessibility. These results contribute to a social view of knowledge seeking by showing the importance of gender for knowledge accessibility and forms of capital for expertise assessment. Identifying the governance mechanisms which contribute to knowledge accessibility contribute to theory of knowledge governance by connecting the macro level control systems with micro level knowledge accessibility. For practitioners, this dissertation emphasizes the barriers and enhancers to the process of knowledge seeking. First, the dissertation shows the importance of enhancing social capital among employees in order to cultivate expertise. Second, the dissertation identified gender groups which are disconnected. Finally, the dissertation shows which control systems need to be implemented by the management based on the knowledge type in order to increase knowledge accessibility.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Javernick-Will, A |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | accessibility; control system; gender; governance; employee; interview |
| Index terms: | accessibility, governance, dissertation, interview, survey, social capital, practitioner, control system |
| Subjects: | practitioner, research dissemination and communication, inclusive design, data collection methods, business, sociology, monitoring and control |
| Topics: | Design Practice, Roles and Professions, Governance, Business Strategy, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here