KNOWLEDGE SHARING PROCESSES AND TOOLS IN U.S.A PRIMARY HEALTH CARE: ANALYSIS OF FOUR CASE STUDIES

Bibi M. Alajmi, Claire R. McInerney, A. John Orzano, Alfred F. Tallia, Abigail Meese and Iulian Vamanu
Additional contact information
Bibi M. Alajmi: School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, Rutgers University, USA
Claire R. McInerney: School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, Rutgers University, USA
A. John Orzano: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Jersey, USA
Alfred F. Tallia: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Jersey, USA
Abigail Meese: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA
Iulian Vamanu: Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Chapter 9 in Knowledge Management:Competencies and Professionalism, 2008, pp 97-108 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: AbstractThis paper focuses on knowledge sharing as an important area in the study of knowledge management (KM). The paper's primary goal is to examine how health-care practices employ knowledge sharing tools and processes to the benefit of their daily work processes. In addition, the study seeks to understand how knowledge sharing would contribute to practices' performance. Adopting a qualitative approach, four health care practices were selected from within a research network to represent larger and smaller practice with different performance levels, two high-performing practices (HP) and two low-performing practices (LP), using standard clinical and health care practice measures. Data collection and analysis involved several iterative steps including interviews, field notes of observations. Four case studies were developed reflecting how each practice implemented knowledge sharing tools and processes and how this implementation influenced performance. The study found that all of the four practices manifested and implemented knowledge sharing tools including knowledge artifacts; sharing social tools-meetings and communication channels; and processes including training and apprenticeship and communities of practices; however, the level of implementation varied among the four practices. A comparison of the high-performing and low-performing practices showed that even though the high-performing practices implemented and invested more in knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing processes and tools were not completely integrated throughout the practices including the high performing ones. Moreover, in all practices there was little evidence of encouragement to efficiently use knowledge sharing tools either among staff members or between patients and the practice.

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Knowledge Management Practices; Knowledge Sharing; Skills and Competencies; Professionalism; Organizational Memory; Knowledge Processes; Knowledge Management Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789812837578_0009 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789812837578_0009 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:wschap:9789812837578_0009

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().