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In recent years, online education has boomed. However, online business ethics education faces a challenge in which the lack of communication among teachers and students leads to a decline in teaching effectiveness. Social media applications can be imbedded in traditional ethics education to solve this problem. In this paper, based on the elaboration likelihood model and social media capabilities theory, we develop an integrated model to explain how the change in students' attitudes about corporate social responsibility (CSR) happens in a social media-supported environment and how social media capabilities affect the processes. We conducted a teaching experiment and collected 233 valid samples of students to verify the hypothesis. Our study confirmed there are two mechanisms to affect students' attitudes about CSR, source credibility, and argument quality. Concurrency has a moderating effect on attitudes change. Possible reasons, limitations, implications, and advice for future studies are also presented.

In recent years, online education has boomed. However, online business ethics education faces a challenge in which the lack of communication among teachers and students leads to a decline in teaching effectiveness. Social media applications can be imbedded in traditional ethics education to solve this problem. In this paper, based on the elaboration likelihood model and social media capabilities theory, we develop an integrated model to explain how the change in students' attitudes about corporate social responsibility (CSR) happens in a social media-supported environment and how social media capabilities affect the processes. We conducted a teaching experiment and collected 233 valid samples of students to verify the hypothesis. Our study confirmed there are two mechanisms to affect students' attitudes about CSR, source credibility, and argument quality. Concurrency has a moderating effect on attitudes change. Possible reasons, limitations, implications, and advice for future studies are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As social media is widely adopted in collaborative learning, which places teams in a virtual environment, it is critical for teams to identify and leverage the knowledge of their members. Yet little is known about how social media influences teams to coordinate their knowledge and collaborate effectively. In this research, we explore the roles of two kinds of social media activity - information processing and social connection in teamwork - by applying communication and transactive memory systems (TMSs) as the mechanisms of explicit and implicit coordination respectively. We test this model using partial least squares (PLS) method by treating team as the unit of analysis. Drawing on the data from a study that involves 40 teams of graduate students performing a complex research report over eight weeks, we find that both TMSs and communication can significantly improve teamwork outcomes, and communication can help teams to better coordinate implicitly. With regard to social media activities, the results reveal that both information processing and social connection can enhance the level of TMSs; however, only social connection is positively related to communication. Unfortunately, information processing cannot significantly strengthen communication quality. The possible reasons are discussed and some theoretical and practical implications are also put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we present a formal description of a learning environment framework that gives support to learning analytics. The framework is based on techniques that educational data mining and social network analysis provide. The purpose is to study or discover collaborative relationships that students generate during their learning process and make predictions or assessments about student learning. We also present a new model in the way the learning process is evaluated. This model is more personal and contributes to new possibilities that the digital technologies offer in technology-enhanced assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation is a key element in formal education processes: it must be constructed in a way that the item questions within help students understand by adapting them to the learning style as well. The focus of the present research work specifically in the convenience to adapt an associated multimedia material in each single question besides the traditional adaptation process based on the level of difficulty established for an item; all this in order to increase the final test score of the student. The proposed approach tries to solve this by designing and constructing an authoring tool to construct adaptive objective tests and an a prototype test to evaluate if a test that looks to adapt a multimedia content to the learning style could help to increase cited score of the student. The results are significant because it is able to conclude that adapted test based on the student's learning style slightly increased the final score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface for the special issue of this journal is presented, focusing on emerging information technologies for effective knowledge management.

With a knowledge-based economy emerging, knowledge and innovations have been the core elements of organizations' competitive advantages. Universities, institutes, and enterprises can reach the goal of advantage complement and innovation cooperation by establishing a research and development (R&D) alliance lab. This article focuses on an industry–academy R&D alliance lab, analyzes its motivations and impacting factors, and discusses its cooperative mechanisms. The alliance lab of Tsinghua-Sohu Search Technology is studied as a typical case to provide a reference for industry–academy alliance R&D labs in terms of cooperative mechanisms. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Chinese outward direct investment (ODI) started late, it has increased rapidly. China is gradually changing from the receiver of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the exporter of ODI. With the advent of the era of knowledge economy, knowledge and innovation have become the core elements of organizational competitive advantages. The practice of current international direct investment shows that it is difficult to acquire advanced technologies only by means of the introduction of FDI: The development of ODI is an important way to obtain foreign advanced technologies. Chinese firms' ODI faces some problems in technological innovations, and the total of technology-sourcing ODI is not large. This article focuses on the technological innovations of Chinese firms' ODI, discusses technological innovation mechanisms and organizational modes of Chinese ODI firms, and presents the technological innovation framework and strategies to strengthen the technological innovation advantage of Chinese ODI firms. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The paper seeks to analyze in depth the organizational requirements for the exploitation of human resource management towards increased organizational performance, and to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of human resource management in learning organizations.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of an extensive literature review on human resource management (HRM), organizational learning and human capital.Findings – The major contribution is the Requirements Framework for the Adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning and Semantic Web Technologies, which can guide strategies of effective competencies management in modern organizations. This framework initiates an interesting discussion of technological issues that go beyond the scope of this paper.Research limitations/implications – The Requirements Framework provides the basis for an extensive specification of knowledge management strategies. A follow-up publication will present the practical implications of the "theoretical" abstraction of framework and empirical evidence.Practical implications – The paper is a very useful source of information and impartial advice for strategists, HRM managers, knowledge management officers and people interesting in exploiting human resource management systems in a knowledge-intensive organization.Originality/value – This paper fulfills an identified need to outline methods and technologies for integrated knowledge and learning and competencies management support in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze knowledge flows transfer within multinational corporations. In particular, it is focused on to what extent multinational companies can replicate headquarters' human resource management systems in subsidiaries. This paper is structured into three major sections. The paper analyzes the transfer of knowledge flows in multinational companies. To analyze this "old problem" and shed light on its solution, the paper draws on the knowledge-based view of the firm and reviews both seminal and recent contributions to this field of research. This paper develops a conceptual framework for the analysis of knowledge transfer at international level. It also examines the influence of four human resource management models (exported, adapted, hybrid and open models) on organizations. It addresses particular factors that influence the transferability of organizational knowledge such as the features of this knowledge and both organizational and national culture. Afterwards, these issues are addressed in the scenario of North-American and Japanese multinational corporations. Multinational firms face important challenges in the actual economic environment. On the one hand, the firm must learn how to exploit its specific resources either acquired in the country of origin or in foreign markets. On the other hand, these firms cannot forget that the source of sustained competitive advantage takes place in the variety of skills and the diversity of knowledge, no in these resources homogeneity. Finally, multinational firms can benefit from international fertilization, because knowledge exploring and exploitation activities are closely relationed with the concepts of synergies, interdependence and interactive organizational learning. That is, the organizational capacity to innovate is the result of the interrelation among the units that form the firm. This paper offers a knowledge-based view of the firm to help managers with the management of knowledge flows in multinational companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is double. First, it provides a conceptual framework linking human resource management, organisational learning and knowledge management Second, the paper builds a causal model and tests it with a sample of firms from the Spanish manufacturing industry, using a structural equation modelling technique. In particular, after the performance of a cluster analysis, a group of 72 learning firms is identified and used to test our model. Finally, major conclusions and implications for management are drawn and further avenues for research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is structured into four sections. The first section proposes a conceptual framework to analyze organizational learning and its outcomes. It focuses on the strategy perspective of organizational learning – with special attention to the resource and capabilities theory of the firm – addressing its ontology, contributions and problematic. The second section is focused on a particular type of knowledge – the structural capital – that is institutionalized knowledge in the form of organizational processes, structures, technologies, policies and culture. In sum, it represents all forms of knowledge deposits that are not supported by the human being such as organizational routines, strategies and processes and is the result of learning at organizational level. This section studies the map of different types of organizational structural capital of companies: idiosyncratic, core, ancillary and compulsory. Section three shows the results of a case study done in pioneer learning organizations in Europe regarding knowledge measuring and reporting. It analyzes the main indicators used for quantifying the knowledge embedded in the organization and its processes. Finally, the last section explores the main results and implications for knowledge management drawn from this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon four perspectives (resource-based view of the firm, knowledge management view of the firm, organisational learning and human resources management) to develop a framework for analysing the building of a firm's sustained competitive advantage. Research on the resource-based view of the firm has explored the features of firm's strategic resources. It suggests that resources that are rare, valuable, scarce, non imitable and non substitutable provide a source of sustainable competitive advantage. According to the knowledge-based view of the firm, organisational knowledge is an intangible resource that meets the above stated conditions. However these views of the firm have not explained how these strategic resources are created. Thus, in order to develop a holistic model that pushes forward this issue, serious attention must be focused now on the literature on human resource management and organisational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the research is to design a model for the analysis of the conceptual relationships between business processes and the respective knowledge processes that explain the critical intangible resources and the essential capabilities for organisational achievement. Learning processes are included in the model considering their role in the assimilation and dissemination of knowledge and in the improvement of business processes. In sum, this paper presents a theoretical and conceptual proposal that has been tested empirically in four Spanish companies of the automotive sector, financial sector, electricity sector, and technological sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management literature highlights the fact that, in the new economy, the achievement of a sustained competitive advantage depends on firm's capacity to develop and deploy its knowledge-based resources. However, not all resources are equally important for the achievement of this competitive edge. In this sense, this paper proposes an integrative framework for the analysis of human capital combining the advances from three different areas of research: knowledge management, intellectual capital, and strategic human resource management. Juxtaposing two dimensions – value and uniqueness – it analyzes the different forms of firm's human capital. These are the following: idiosyncratic, ancillary, core and compulsory. Furthermore different human resources practices that should be used to manage such specific forms of human capital are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]