Knowledge Work: Knowledge Worker Productivity, Collaboration and User Support

It comprises seven articles focussing on various aspects of knowledge work, namely knowledge worker productivity, collaboration and user support. The first two papers address the aspect of knowledge worker productivity. The first paper is mainly concerned with the measurement of knowledge worker productivity as regards experts in specific professional domains. The results of an empirical study in different industrial domains suggests that productivity itself is not useable as performance indicator but that it is composed of multiple indicators which additionally are of different importance for different stakeholders. The second paper also states that knowledge worker productivity-according to the authors composed of efficiency and effectiveness-cannot definitely be measured and that therefore representing dimensions have to be identified. Thus, different dimensions are identified and it is shown how efficiency and effectiveness can be measured on the basis of linguistic fuzzy approach and DEA. The next three papers discuss issues of collaboration and communication. The first paper describes a framework for the design of performance evaluation systems in collaborative networks. The idea behind is, that participants propose criteria and indicators in order to construct a shared conceptualisation of performance. The next paper is concerned with how inter-organisational collaboration can be enhanced by visual facilitation. In an experimental study the authors assessed the advantages and disadvantages of visual facilitation in inter-organisational teamwork where the research questions referred to knowledge sharing quality, team performance, satisfaction and the effects of aesthetic beauty on the estimated potential. The last paper in this block focuses on communication as mechanism for intra-and inter-organizational knowledge transfer. It discusses the concept of clarity of conveyed knowledge and its effect on efficiency in knowledge management in general and communication in particular. Ways of how clarity can be pro-actively and systematically managed are shown. The last three papers are concerned with user support whereas the first two have their focus on practice sharing and the last is about intention aware systems. The first