Abstract
This thesis describes research carried out to investigate and address the problems associated with knowledge creation through collaboration between diverse stakeholder groups within service industries in the UK. Collaboration is an emerging necessity for organisations and has been influenced by the evolving need for gathering segmented groups with diverse knowledge and experience in developing new solutions to support addressing complex problems in a domain. Use of new technologies, to some extent, assists interaction and collaboration between segregated stakeholders. This approach has been a feasible solution for real-time communication in virtual environment; however, knowledge boundaries in addition to stakeholder boundaries influence the recognition of the problem-related factors affecting different stakeholder groups in a domain and results in conflicts of perspectives and ineffective interaction between stakeholder groups.The origin point of this research was revolved around investigating the limitations of the existing approaches to engaging segregated stakeholder groups in knowledge creation and developing a new approach to address a key service organisation’s complex problem. consequently, this thesis addresses the research question How to reduce the limitations of existing approaches to collaborative knowledge creation in service industries? In doing so, this research brings together literature on the fields of knowledge management empirical evidence to investigate the factors that influence the effectiveness knowledge creation through collaborations between different stakeholder groups. Review of the existing approaches to collaborative knowledge creation and the limitations of each approach shows that the effectiveness of collaborative knowledge creation has not been fully achieved. This resulted in developing, refining and validating a new approach to collaborative knowledge creation by applying it in different service industries.
The research has resulted in a number of contributions to knowledge and benefits for the stakeholder groups involved. A key contribution is a development of a new approach to collaborative knowledge creation called Ep-s to emphasise on Effective problem-solving. The applications of Ep-s in the field suggest that it eliminates some of the main deficiencies of well-known approaches to collaborative knowledge creation, and that it brings additional benefits to service industries. However, the research has identified areas where there is significant scope for further research and investigation.
| Date of Award | 2017 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Alexeis Garcia-Perez (Supervisor) & Steve Martin (Supervisor) |