Informatica Economica Vol. 13 No. 4/2009

Issue Topic: Knowledge Management

CONTENTS

The Integrated Knowledge Space - the Foundation for Enhancing the Effectiveness of the University’s Innovative Activity
Vladimir TIKHOMIROV, Natalia TIKHOMIROVA, Valentina MAKSIMOVA, Yury TELNOV 5
The paper examines the implementation of Integrated Knowledge Space as an effective method for knowledge management in a global university network which will integrate all interested parties of the educational space: the faculty, scholars and business people within the framework of distributed departments on the basis of Information Centre of Disciplines (ICD). ICD enables higher education institutions to accumulate and make on-line renewal of   knowledge for teaching and learning processes and for enhancing innovation potential.  ICD facilitates the development of human and relational capital of integrated and interconnected educational, research and business communities.
Keywords: Intellectual capital, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Park, Integrated Knowledge Space, Information Centre of Disciplines

Capture and Reuse of Knowledge in ICT-based Decisional Environments
Ioana Andreea STĂNESCU, Florin Gheorghe FILIP 11
Health care practitioners continually confront with a wide range of challenges, seeking to making difficult diagnoses, avoiding errors, ensuring highest quality, maximizing efficacy and reducing costs. Information technology has the potential to reduce clinical errors and to improve the decision making in the clinical milieu. This paper presents a pilot development of a clinical decision support systems (CDSS) entitled MEDIS that was designed to incorporate knowledge from heterogeneous environments with the purpose of increasing the efficiency and the quality of the decision making process, and reducing costs based on advances of information technologies, especially under the impact of the transition towards the mobile space. The system aims to capture and reuse knowledge in order to provide real-time access to clinical knowledge for a variety of users, including medical personnel, patients, teachers and students.  
Keywords: Clinical Decision Support Systems, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Interoperability, Mobile Interface, Object-relational Mapping

Measuring the Performance of Corporate Knowledge Management Systems
Ioan I. ANDONE 24
Whereas knowledge management systems (KMS) continues to gain popularity as a corporate most advanced information systems, the acceptance of standardized KMS assessment approaches has logged. Developing metrics to assess a corporate KMS is inherently problematic due to the intangible nature of knowledge-based resources, and for the fact that measurement is a precursor to improvement. This is true for knowledge management capabilities of an organization. Nonetheless, assessment is of vital importance for valuation purposes as well as to help managers determine whether particular KMS are effective working. The main focus of this paper is to explain the value of knowledge management and provide a general overview of measurement approaches. Finally, developing an improved measurement system for corporate KMS is considered the key to the competitive success of the organization.
Keywords: Corporate Knowledge, Knowledge Management Systems, Measuring the Performance

Knowledge Management Approaches in Portal-Based Collaborative Enterprises
Mihaela I. MUNTEAN 32
Collaboration involves a different approach to business – focused on managing business relationships between people, within or without groups, and within and between organizations. Collaborative enterprises differ from other business in a number of ways and collaborative working needs to be simultaneously a business philosophy, strategy and operational working. Effective collaboration unlocks the potential of the collective knowledge and intellectual capital of the organization and its networks of business partners, suppliers and customers. At the core of true collaboration is the ability to share and catalogue knowledge, ideas, standards, best practices, and lessons learned and to be able to retrieve that knowledge from anywhere at any time. Knowledge management is not a goal by itself. Businesses don't exist with the purpose of spreading and advancing knowledge, they exist for selling competitive products and services of high quality. Based on these considerations, we propose some knowledge management approaches for portal-based collaborative environments.
Keywords: Collaborative Environment, Knowledge Management, KM Lifecycle, Enterprise Knowledge Portal

Cross-cultural Knowledge Management
Felicia ALBESCU, Irina PUGNA, Dorel PARASCHIV 39
The success of international companies in providing high quality products and outstanding services is subject, on the one hand, to the increasing dynamic of the economic environment and on the other hand to the adoption of worldwide quality standards and procedures. As market place is becoming more and more global, products and services offered worldwide by international companies must face the multi-cultural environment challenges. These challenges manifest themselves not only at customer relationship level but also deep inside companies, at employee level. Important support in facing all these challenges has been provided at cognitive level by management system models and at technological level by information cutting edge technologies Business Intelligence & Knowledge Management Business Intelligence is already delivering its promised outcomes at internal business environment and, with the explosive deployment of public data bases, expand its analytical power at national, regional and international level. Quantitative measures of economic environment, wherever available, may be captured and integrated in companies’ routine analysis. As for qualitative data, some effort is still to be done in order to integrate measures of social, political, legal, natural and technological environment in companies’ strategic analysis.  An increased difficulty is found in treating cultural differences, common knowledge making the most hidden part of any foreign environment. Managing cultural knowledge is crucial to success in cultivating and maintaining long-term business relationships in multicultural environments.Knowledge Management provides the long needed technological support for cross-cultural management in the tedious task of improving knowledge sharing in multi-national companies and using knowledge effectively in international joint ventures. The paper is approaching the conceptual frameworks of knowledge management and proposes an unified model of knowledge oriented enterprise and a structural model of a global knowledge management system.
Keywords: Global Business, Intercultural Competencies, Business Intelligence, Multicultural Knowledge Management, Business Knowledge Frameworks, Knowledge Capital

Learning e-Learning
Gabriel ZAMFIR 51
What You Understand Is What Your Cognitive Integrates. Scientific research develops, as a native environment, knowledge. This environment consists of two interdependent divisions: theory and technology. First division occurs as a recursive research, while the second one becomes an application of the research activity. Over time, theories integrate methodologies and technology extends as infrastructure. The engine of this environment is learning, as the human activity of knowledge work. The threshold term of this model is the concepts map; it is based on Bloom’ taxonomy for the cognitive domain and highlights the notion of software scaffolding which is grounded in Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory with its major theme, Zone of Proximal Development. This article is designed as a conceptual paper, which analyzes specific structures of this type of educational research: the model reflects a foundation for a theory and finally, the theory evolves as groundwork for a system. The outcomes of this kind of approach are the examples, which are, theoretically, learning outcomes, and practically exist as educational objects, so-called e-learning.
Keywords: Assisted Instruction, Cognitive Infrastructure, Concepts Map, Software Scaffolding

Managing Knowledge as Business Rules
Anca ANDREESCU, Marinela MIRCEA 63
In today’s business environment, it is a certainty that will manage to survive especially those organizations which are striving to adapt quickly and with low costs to the new demands of market competition. Knowledge represented by internal business rules of an organization can help crystallize their orientation in order to ensure a competitive advantage in the market. In this context and in a relatively short time, a new trend in software development has arisen, extending current methods and putting a strong emphasis on business rules. This article outlines the importance of managing business rules in an organized manner using dedicated software products and furthermore presents a general prototype for a business rules repository.
Keywords: Business Rules, Management, Knowledge, Rule Engine, Repository Prototype

Agent Based Knowledge Management Solution using Ontology, Semantic Web Services and GIS
Andreea DIOŞTEANU, Liviu COTFAS 90
The purpose of our research is to develop an agent based knowledge management application framework using a specific type of ontology that is able to facilitate semantic web service search and automatic composition. This solution can later on be used to develop complex solutions for location based services, supply chain management, etc. This application for modeling knowledge highlights the importance of agent interaction that leads to efficient enterprise interoperability. Furthermore, it proposes an „agent communication language” ontology that extends the OWL Lite standard approach and makes it more flexible in retrieving proper data for identifying the agents that can best communicate and negotiate.  
Keywords: Automated Service Composition, Ontology, Multi-Agent System, Semantic Web Service, Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

A model for Business Intelligence Systems’ Development
Adela BARA, Iuliana BOTHA, Vlad DIACONIŢA, Ion LUNGU, Anda VELICANU, Manole VELICANU 99
Often, Business Intelligence Systems (BIS) require historical data or data collected from various sources. The solution is found in data warehouses, which are the main technology used to extract, transform, load and store data in the organizational Business Intelligence projects. The development cycle of a data warehouse involves lots of resources, time, high costs and above all, it is built only for some specific tasks. In this paper, we’ll present some of the aspects of the BI systems’ development such as: architecture, lifecycle, modeling techniques and finally, some evaluation criteria for the system’s performance.
Keywords: BIS (Business Intelligence Systems), Data Warehouses, OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing), Object-Oriented Modeling

Top Management Control Functions for Information Systems in Small and Medium Enterprises
Uma VIJAYAKUMAR 109
This paper analyzes the Top Management Control functions for Information Systems (IS) in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs extensively rely on information technology resources to enhance their competence in today’s global economy. They should have adequate top management control mechanisms in place for their efficient functioning. Top Management Controls determine how effectively the senior management manages the IS functions in a SME. The major tasks at this level consist of Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling functions. A brief introduction to SMEs is given at the beginning followed by the different categories of Top Management Controls. The final section highlights on some good practices to be followed by Top Management to realize the vision for the IS project in SMEs.
Keywords: Charge-Out, Information Systems, IS Plan, Small and Medium Enterprise, Top Management Controls, Zero Based Budgeting

Comparing Two Multivariable Complexity Functions Using One-variable Complexity Classes
Andrei-Horia MOGOS, Adina Magda FLOREA 116
The comparison of algorithms complexities is very important both in theory and in practice. When we compare algorithms complexities we need to compare complexity functions. Usually we use one-variable complexity functions. Sometimes, we need multivariable complexity functions. In a previous paper we defined several one-variable complexity classes for multivariable complexity functions. Each complexity class of this type is a set of multivariable complexity functions, represented by a one-variable complexity function. In this paper we continue the work from that paper: we define new one-variable complexity classes and we prove several properties. The most important results are several criteria for two multivariable complexity functions to be comparable.
Keywords: Algorithm, One-Variable Complexity Class, One-Variable Complexity Function, Multivariable Complexity Function, Functions Comparison

A Modular Logic Approach for Expressing Web Services in XML Applying Dynamic Rules in XML
Theodoros MITAKOS, Ioannis ALMALIOTIS 129
RuleML is considered to be a markup language for the semantic web. It allows the enrichment of web ontologies by adding definitions of derived concepts and it enhances interoperability among different systems and tools by publishing rules in an XML format. Moreover the increasing demand for interfaces that enhance information sharing has given rise to XML documents that include embedded calls to web services. In this paper we propose a variation of RuleML that is based on modular logic programming. Our approach is based in a two level architecture. In the first level a modular logic language, called M-log, is presented. This language encompasses several mechanisms for invoking web services. In the second level we exploit the semantics of M-log to present a variation of RuleML with rich modeling capabilities. Formal foundations for this variation are given through direct translation to M-log semantics.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, XML, Modular Logic Programming, E-Services

Class-Based Weighted Window for TCP Fairness in WLANs
Mojtaba SEYEDZADEGAN, Mohamed OTHMAN 137
The explosive growth of the Internet has extended to the wireless domain. The number of Internet users and mobile devices with wireless Internet access is continuously increasing. However, the network resource is essentially limited, and fair service is a key issue in bandwidth allocation. In this research, the focus is on the issue of fairness among wireless stations having different number and direction of flows for different required bandwidth to ensure that fair channel is fairly shared between wireless stations in the same class of bandwidth. It is shown that the current WLANs allocate bandwidth unfairly. It is also identified that the cause of this problem of unfairness is the TCP cumulative ACK mechanism combined with the packet dropping mechanism of AP queue and the irregular space for each wireless station in AP queue. The proposed method allocate converged bandwidth by introducing a Class-Based Weighted Window method which adjusts the TCP window size based on the current conditions of the network and according to the network’s requirements. This method works in wireless stations without requiring any modification in MAC. It can guarantee fair service in terms of throughput among wireless users whether they require the same or different bandwidth.
Keywords: Wireless LAN, TCP, Fairness

An Agent-Based Framework for E-Commerce Information Retrieval Management Using Genetic Algorithms
Floarea NĂSTASE, Radu - Ioan MOGOŞ 148
The paper addresses the issue of improving retrieval performance management for retrieval from document collections that exist on the Internet. It also comes with a solution that uses the benefits of the agent technology and genetic algorithms in the process of the information retrieving management. The most important paradigms of information retrieval are mentioned having the goal to make more evident the advantages of using the genetic algorithms based one. Within the paper, also a genetic algorithm that can be use for the proposed solution is detailed and a comparative description between the dynamic and static proposed solution is made. In the end, new future directions are shown based on elements presented in this paper. The future results look very encouraging. Keywords: Mobile Agents, Information Retrieval Management, Genetic Algorithm

An Ontology-centered Approach for Designing an Interactive Competence Management System for IT Companies
Cristina NICULESCU, Stefan TRAUSAN-MATU 159
The paper presents a generic framework for an intelligent information system of competence management based on ontologies for information technology companies. In a first step it will be applied in an information technology (IT) small enterprise and then its applicability will be verified for other organizations of the same type. The work presented in the paper is performed under the project “CONTO – Ontology-based Competencies Management in Information Technology” funded by the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, involving two universities, a research institute and an IT private company. A competence management system (CMS), in our vision has to achieve three functions: (a) to support the complete and systematic acquisition of knowledge about the competence of the members of an enterprise; (b) to provide the knowledge about competences and their owners; (c) to apply the available knowledge to serve a purpose. The core of the competence management information system is an ontology that plays the role of the declarative knowledge repository containing the basic concepts (such as: company-job, competence, domain, group, person etc.) and their relationships with other concepts, instances and properties. The Protégé environment was used for the development of this ontology. The structure of the ontology is conceived so that description logics can be used to represent the concept definitions of the application domain in a structured and formally well-understood way. Knowledge acquisition is performed in our approach by enriching the ontology, according to the requirements of the IT company. An advantage of using an ontology-based system is the possibility of the identification of new relations among concepts based on inferences starting from the existing knowledge. The user can choose to query instances of one type of concept. The paper also presents some use-cases.
Keywords: Competencies, Ontology, Competence Management System, IT

Preprocessing and Content/Navigational Pages Identification as Premises for an Extended Web Usage Mining Model Development
Daniel MICAN, Dan-Andrei SITAR-TAUT 168
From its appearance until nowadays, the internet saw a spectacular growth not only in terms of websites number and information volume, but also in terms of the number of visitors. Therefore, the need of an overall analysis regarding both the web sites and the content provided by them was required. Thus, a new branch of research was developed, namely web mining, that aims to discover useful information and knowledge, based not only on the analysis of websites and content, but also on the way in which the users interact with them. The aim of the present paper is to design a database that captures only the relevant data from logs in a way that will allow to store and manage large sets of temporal data with common tools in real time. In our work, we rely on different web sites or website sections with known architecture and we test several hypotheses from the literature in order to extend the framework to sites with unknown or chaotic structure, which are non-transparent in determining the type of visited pages. In doing this, we will start from non-proprietary, preexisting raw server logs.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Web Mining, Data Preprocessing, Decision Trees, Databases

Publishing guide for authors 180