The latest issue of BIR is now available online. In the issue this month we see a focus on knowledge management and change from the reflections of senior managers of business information teams on their short-term strategy going forwards to change imposed through Covid to the disruptive effects of technology:
Our first article this issue is the awaited second part of the report on last year’s BIR Survey. Stephen Philips – Consolidate Gains, Implement More Change – The 2021 Business Information Review Survey: Part 2. This part of the survey looks at trends in how leaders are shaping their operations through technology, content acquisition, vendor engagement and client engagement. It finishes with a look at priorities going forward for the near future.
Our second paper by Taleho Tseole – Improving Knowledge Retention in the Cross-Border Mergers of the Telecommunications Industry of Lesotho is part of a larger PhD study and takes a look at how knowledge retention can be improved in the consolidated telecommunications industry in Lesotho, South Africa. It considers what actually happened, the knowledge that was retained and how that might have been improved with the use of more formal techniques.
Our third paper by Sanjay Kaushal – Sustainable knowledge management during crisis: focus on Covid-19 pandemic is a review of the literature around the importance of effective knowledge management in the mitigation of the effects crises can have on organisations. It uses the Covid 19 pandemic as the example. The paper considers what the literature shows in relation to what has been effective knowledge management through people, process and technology throughout this crisis.
Our fourth paper by Abdulakeem Sulyman – Smart Libraries: Changing the Paradigms of Library Services takes an interesting look at the effects of technology that have created ‘smart services and products’ in particular it looks at the emergence of the Smart Library Service considering both the flexibility that smart services can offer as well as what new challenges may be raised in implementing such services.
We finish this issue with our regular writer, Hal Kirkwood and his quarterly article Perspectives Revisited. This issue focussed on market research, competitive intelligence, and social media research papers from across Sage publications. Papers of interest quoted look at the exploitation and exploration of knowledge, the effects of the commoditisation of market research through the publication of industry insights and the importance of marketing information, how it can fuel growth within an organisation but also by the nature of wealth of information collected how caution needs to be exercised in order to not come to inappropriate or inaccurate conclusions.