Emerald Article an Online Knowledge-Centred Framework for Faculty Support

7/28/2019 Emerald Article an Online Knowledge-Centred Framework for Faculty Support

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An Online Knowledge-Centred Framework for Faculty Support and ServiceInnovation

Author Details

Author 1 Name: Wu HeRole: Assistant ProfessorDepartment: Information SystemsUniversity/Institution: Old Dominion UniversityTown/City: NorfolkState (US only): VACountry: USAEmail: [email protected]

Author 2 Name: MHammed Abdous

Role: Assistant Vice-President for Teaching and Learning with Technology and the Director of the Center forLearning and TeachingDepartment: Center for Learning and TeachingUniversity/Institution: Old Dominion UniversityTown/City: NorfolkState (US only): VACountry: USAEmail: [email protected]

Corresponding author: Wu HeCorresponding Authors Email:[email protected]

Please check this box if you do not wish your email address to be published

Acknowledgments (if applicable):

n/a

Biographical Details (if applicable):

Wu He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences at OldDominion University. Wu He received his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri. His research interests includeknowledge management, data mining, cased-based Reasoning, and information technology education.

Mhammed Abdous is the Assistant Vice-President for Teaching and Learning with Technology and the Director ofthe Center for Learning and Teaching at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he provides leadershipand assistance to the Provosts Office and to the Distance Learning office to (1) conceive, implement, and evaluateprocesses for effectively integrating technology into teaching and learning practices, and (2) manage and produce

quality online programs and courses.

Structured Abstract:

Purpose This paper aims to share our experience gained while implementing a systematic knowledge-centredsupport approach to providing both support and service innovation within an organization whose mission is theoffering of instructional design, learning technologies integration, multimedia production, and faculty development tofaculty members. As it proposes a knowledge-centred support (KCS) framework for faculty support and serviceinnovation, this paper aims to help other faculty support organizations to improve their current knowledgemanagement and support practices.

Design/methodology/approach This paper shares our practical experience in implementing a knowledge-centredsupport approach for both faculty support and service innovation. The paper uses our experience to introduce theproposed framework.

Findings This paper develops a knowledge-centred support (KCS) framework for faculty support and serviceinnovation. Practical concerns and insights are provided to help other faculty support organizations adopt and


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implement the framework. We hope that our sharing of best practices can increase discussion about using knowledgemanagement approaches to improve service quality and innovation among other faculty support organizations.

Research limitations/implications Because the framework has been developed based on our organizationalenvironment, the framework may lack generalizability. However, other faculty support organizations are encouragedto revise or to adapt our framework to suit their specific organizations cultures and goals.

Practical implications Increasing service quality and innovation are major concerns for many faculty supportorganizations. Many faculty support organizations are exploring ways to provide a better service experience tofaculty. This paper shares our experience in this area and has the potential to inspire other faculty supportorganizations to examine, rethink, and improve their current practices, using a knowledge management perspective.

Originality/value Few articles discuss how faculty support organizations can use knowledge managementapproaches to increase service quality and innovation. This paper identifies such a shortage in the literature and canbe used as a starting point to motivate other faculty support organizations to share their knowledge managementexperience for improving service quality and innovation.

Keywords: Knowledge management, knowledge-centred support, service innovation, service quality, faculty support,faculty development

Article Classification: Conceptual Paper

For internal production use only


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An Online Knowledge-Centred Framework for Faculty Support and Service Innovation

1. IntroductionTodays support organizations are facing a number of challenges, including decreasing budgets,rising costs, increasing complexity, and increasing demand for services (Custy, 2007). Inresponse to these challenges, many forward-looking organizations are embracing knowledgemanagement (KM) and service innovation. As a result, various KM initiatives and serviceinnovation approaches have been implemented to help support organizations to improve theirservice performance, to increase service innovation, and to achieve competitive advantage (Lubit,

2001; Adams and Lamont, 2003). As Lubit (2001) suggests, knowledge management is key tohelp companies to create and maintain a competitive advantage over time.

Facing similar external and internal pressures for effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability,educational institutions are seeking to understand how they can improve their management andadministrative practices and procedures. As these organizations realize that knowledge is astrategic resource capable of giving them a competitive advantage and helping them achievelong-term organizational goals, many educational organizations are seeking better ways tomanage knowledge systematically and effectively. To this end, some educational organizationshave attempted to incorporate knowledge management practices to support their traditionaltriumvirate: education, services, and research. As a result, knowledge management practices

have gained acceptance in the field of education over the past decade (Sallis and Jones, 2002;Ubon and Kimble, 2002; Kidwell, Vander Linde, and Johnson, 2000; Ramachandran, Chong,and Ismail, 2009; Sohail and Daud, 2009). However, an extensive review of the literature revealsthat the majority of knowledge management articles in education are focused on learning,teaching, and research purposes. Our review shows that few articles discuss the ways in whicheducational organizations have applied knowledge management practices within the facultyservice support area. Even though they are faced with budget pressures and growing demandsfor performance improvement and accountability in education, faculty members are being askedto become more involved in teaching, learning, research, and various other services (Darling-Hammond, 2009). To succeed in this endeavour, faculty are seeking more support from theiruniversities in terms of faculty development and on-going support.

The Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) at our large US university is a faculty supportservice organization which houses a pool of experts including designers, technologists,

programmers, and project managers. CLT has been providing a variety of services includinginstructional design, the teaching of the use of learning technologies, multimedia production, andfaculty development to a wide audience, including nearly 800 faculty members (and theirteaching assistants), nearly 700 adjuncts, and more than 450 faculty administrators at thisuniversity for more than ten years. Knowledge is regarded as a vital asset and is the main sourcefor the services provided to faculty by CLT. As a support organization, CLT encounters the sametraditional issues faced by faculty support organizations, including the need to respond to facultyrequests quickly, the need to answer the same questions over and over, the need to lower supportcosts, and the need to avoid providing different answers to the same question. In addition, as


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technologies become increasingly complex and diverse, resolving issues and meeting faculty

requests often becomes complicated and time-consuming. The complexity and diversity oftechnology can increase the stress level/burnout of the staff providing the service support.Furthermore, occasionally a key staff member leaves and takes his/her knowledge with him/her,which can threaten the maintenance of projects and the overall quality of service. Therefore,innovation is increasingly a requirement, as faculty need better support services to help themsucceed in an environment ofburgeoning competition in teaching and research. To meet thesechallenges, the Center has invested heavily in developing a systematic approach to knowledgemanagement by designing several web-based systems intended to create, update, share, andstreamline knowledge while improving and ensuring quality service.

Outside of academia, knowledge management systems implementation has yielded mixed results.

According to Thomas (2006) corporations that have implemented KMS have seen a wide rangeof outcomes ranging from enormous savings to significant losses. Among the first group,corporations, such as Ford and Texas Instruments, have reaped the benefits of knowledgemanagement systems (KMS). These benefits include cost savings and improved efficiency(Bose, 2004; Nantapanuwat, Ractham, and Kaewkittipong, 2010; Hassan and Al-Hakim, 2011).In contrast, other researchers have reported that almost 70% of the surveyed knowledgemanagement systems did not achieve the expected outcomes (Bose, 2004; Malhotra, 2005;

Nantapanuwat, Ractham, and Kaewkittipong, 2010).

Alavi and Leidner (2001)point out that limited empirical work has been done regarding knowledgemanagement. In particular, empirical evidence remains sparse regarding the implications for

value creation through IT-supported knowledge management systems (Kautz and Mahnke, 2003).There is also a large gap in the literature regarding the interrelationship of knowledgemanagement and service innovation (Hassan and Al-Hakim, 2011). Case studies and empiricalresearch that discuss the relationship between knowledge management and service innovationare rather limited. As far as organizational performance is concerned, many factors have beenrecognized to have an effect on organizational performance (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). Thus, itis difficult to measure the contributions of a factor such as KM in improving organizational

performance. Currently, only a small number of studies focus on the value and the effect of KMon organizations and organizational performance (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Kruger and Johnson,2011).

In an effort to enrich the body of knowledge in this area, this paper shares our experience ofimplementing a KMS to improve organizational performance and service innovation in acampus-level faculty support and service organization. The remainder of the paper is organizedas follows: Section 2 presents a review of the literature in order to explore and identify theinterrelationships between knowledge management, innovation, and organizational performance.In Section 3, the paper describes a knowledge-centred support framework that has transformedfaculty support and has enhanced service innovation. Section 4 describes the practical concernsand insights of implementing the framework for faculty support organizations. Section 5 presentsour conclusion and makes suggestions for future research.

2.

Literature Review


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Our literature review will give a brief overview about the concepts of knowledge management,

innovation, and organizational performance, and about the interrelationships among the threeconcepts.

Knowledge Management (KM)

Knowledge Management (KM) is a process used to create, store, retrieve, transfer, and applyknowledge (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). A KMS is a system which captures knowledge andallows the knowledge to be applied at a variety of levels in organizations (Gallupe, 2001). AKMS is typically used to manage organizational knowledge and to support the organizational

process in terms of knowledge creation, storage/retrieval, transfer, and application (Alavi andLeidner, 1999). As knowledge is the key asset of support organizations, creating, managing,

integrating, and maintaining knowledge is considered to be critical to the survival and success ofsupport organizations. An organizations ability to learn and to acquire knowledge quickly in anever-changing technical environment is believed to be its major source of competitive advantage(Winter, 1995).

As a knowledge management framework, the knowledge-centred support (KCS) methodologyhas received much attention in recent years. The KCS is a powerful method developed by theConsortium for Service Innovation, a non-profit industry alliance which comprises a numberof support organizations. Over the course of five revisions, the KCS has evolved into a richmethodology which provides a set of practices for creating and maintaining knowledge and forimplementing KM in a support environment (Service Innovation, 2011; Gilbert, Morse, and Lee,

2007). According to Service Innovation, the KCS has four basic concepts: 1) Integrate thecreation and maintenance of knowledge into the problem solving process; 2) Evolve content

based on demand and usage; 3) Develop a knowledge base of collective experience to date; and 4)Reward learning, collaboration, sharing, and improving. (Service Innovation, 2011)

However, many organizations have struggled with the implementation of KCS or KM. Inpractice, many organizational KM initiatives have not realized the goals that they had set out toachieve (Bagchi, 2010). Successful implementation of knowledge management must fullyunderstand the work processes or activities that create and leverage organizational knowledge,

build a technology infrastructure to support knowledge capture, transfer, and use; and develop anorganizational culture to support effective knowledge use (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Long, 1997).

In addition, many factors also affect the success of KM implementation. These factors includehuman resource management, information technology, leadership, organizational learning,organizational strategy, organizational structure, and organizational culture (Hassan and Al-Hakim, 2011).

Innovation

Innovation is very important to the survival and growth of any organization (Geroski and Machin,1992). The word innovation, though, has many definitions. According to Rogers (1998),innovation is concerned with the process of commercialising or extracting value from ideas. Aninnovation may also be perceived as an interrelated bundle of new ideas (Rogers, 2003). Theadoption of one idea may trigger the adoption of others. According to Thomas Edison, one of the


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greatest innovators in history, innovation is more than simply coming up with a good idea; it is

the process of growing that idea into practical use (Tidd and Bessant, 2008). Recently, duPlessis (2007) has defined innovation as the creation of new knowledge and ideas to facilitatenew business outcomes, aimed at improving internal business processes and structures and tocreate market driven products and services.Innovation can be classified into many types, based on environmental conditions, organizationalfactors, innovation processes, and organizational sectors (Hassan and Al-Hakim, 2011). Forexample, Gloet and Terziovski (2004) distinguish between radical and incremental innovation.Radical innovation is a major change that represents a new technological pattern (Pedersen andDalum, 2004). Incremental innovation is defined as the small technological changes in anorganization which extend or modify existing products or services (Darroch and McNaughton,2003; du Plessis, 2007; Roberts, 2008; Uden andNaaranoja, 2011).

For service organizations, Damanpour et al. (2009) have identified three types of innovations:service innovation, technological innovation, and administrative innovation. Serviceinnovation is defined as a company's new service offering beyond its usual service (i.e., anoffering not previously available to a firm's customers), in terms of a new service potential,

process, and/or result (Burrill and Ledolter, 1998; van der Aa and Elfring, 2002). Technologicalinnovation is the knowledge that links methods, components, and techniques with processes inorder to create a product or service (Popadiuk and Choo, 2006). Administrative innovationrefers to changes in organizational structure and processes, including the authority, structuringof tasks, recruiting of personnel, and allocating of resources and rewards (Lin, Chen, and Chiu,2010).

Successfully innovative organizations usually: 1) have solid innovation processes; 2) havedeveloped an innovation culture; 3) have visible innovation champions at all levels; and 4) use amix of internal and external knowledge sources (Andersen and Queck, 2011).

Organizational Performance

According to Pitt and Tucker (2008), organizational performance is a vital sign of theorganization, showing how well activities within a process or the outputs of a process achieve aspecific goal. Hassan and Al-Hakim (2011) define organizational performance as theintegration between organizational knowledge and innovation competence to achieve positive

goals that have been identified previously. To compare the expected results with the actualresults, in order to measure organizational performance, a number of metrics have beendeveloped. According to the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1996) which is usedextensively to align business activities to the vision, strategy, and performance measurements of

business organizations, these metrics can be generally grouped into four major sections:financial perspective metrics, customer perspective metrics, internal business process

perspective metrics, and learning and growth perspective metrics (Kaplan and Norton, 1996;Visser and Sluiter, 2007).

Interrelationship of Knowledge Management, Innovation, and OrganizationalPerformance


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According to Uden andNaaranoja (2011), knowledge management (KM) is important toinnovation. Generally, knowledge and innovation are inseparable. Innovation dependsintensively on the availability of knowledge. A recent survey study by Rahimi, Arbabisarjou,Allameh, and Aghababaei (2011) also found that there is a positive and significant relationship

between KM and creativity. They found that KM helps to promote creativity for innovation.Thus, it can be noted that knowledge management competencies and capacities are essential toany organization that aspires to be innovative. Uden andNaaranoja (2011) conclude thatinnovation and knowledge management are closely related. Furthermore, Uden andNaaranoja(2011) indicate that the use of knowledge management can enhance exploitation (i.e. whereexisting knowledge is captured, transferred, and deployed in other similar situations) andexploration (i.e., where knowledge is created) (Levinthal and March 1993). Exploitation can

help reduce the problem of reinventing the wheel by reusing existing knowledge moreeffectively. Exploration through knowledge sharing supports the development of new ideas andsolutions and is critical to any organizations ability to innovate.

Previous studies have shown that there is a strong relationship between critical success factors ofKM (such as human resource management, information technology, leadership, organizationallearning, organizational strategy, organizational structure and organizational culture) andorganizational performance (Asoh et al., 2007; Hassan and Al-Hakim, 2011). For example, Egbuet al. (1999) found that KM can promote innovation and improve business performance in theconstruction industry. Yang et al. (2009) found that culture, structure, and informationtechnology (some of the critical success factors of KM) have positive effects on organizational

performance. Zack, McKeen, and Singh (2009) found that KM practices showed a directrelationship with the intermediate measures of organizational performance, and organizational

performance showed a significant and direct relationship to financial performance.

As for the relationship between innovation and organizational performance, a number ofprevious studies have agreed that innovation has a positive effect on performance (Akgn,Keskin, Byrne, and Eng, 2009; Carmen, and Jos, 2008). The success of Apple Inc. in the pastseveral years demonstrates that innovation is central to organizational performance. The

balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1996) also indicates that an organization's ability toinnovate, improve, and learn ties directly to its performance.

3. A Knowledge-centred Support Framework for Faculty Support and Service Innovation

Since service quality and service innovation are considered by service organizations to beimportant factors both in creating a positive user experience and in improving user satisfaction(Brady, Cronin, and Brand, 2002; Magnusson, Matthing, and Kristensson, 2003), CLT workshard to study and absorb best practices in order to improve the quality of its service and toenhance service innovation for continued success.

Figure 1 depicts our knowledge-centred support (KCS) framework, which is used for facultysupport and service innovation. The framework was developed based on KCS methodology andon our many years of authentic experience in providing support services to faculty. Specifically,to develop this framework, the authors examined the practices and systems used by CLT during


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the past six years. Feedback is being collected to continuously refine the framework. In general,

the framework summarizes the way CLT creates and shares knowledge, continuously createsnew services, and empowers all staff members to create, share, modify, and reuse knowledge.This framework is the key to effective problem solving and service innovation in supportorganizations, and has worked well at CLT. A description of the framework is offered below.

INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE

To better meet the variety of requests from faculty and to ensure continuous serviceimprovement, CLT has implemented and integrated the KCS into its day-to-day operations. Anumber of tools including a web-based faculty contact tracking system, a web-based project

management system, and a web-based knowledge base have been developed and deployed tocapture, maintain, share, and reuse support knowledge.

All of the support requests from faculty by email, telephone, and face-to-face talk have beenrecorded by CLT staff using a web-based faculty request tracking system. These requests arealso categorized and organized by staff to facilitate online retrieval and reporting. In essence, wecapture all of the support requests as well as relevant knowledge or solutions for answeringfaculty requests at all times through the faculty request tracking system. Meanwhile, we havedeveloped a knowledge base to store our collective support knowledge earned while addressingfaculty needs to date. All of the knowledge in the knowledge base has been verified and isregularly updated to ensure the quality of the content. The content in the knowledge base has

been evolving and growing and provides an effective means of solving problems and offeringself-service. When a staff member receives a support request, he or she can check the knowledge

base to see if there is an article or solution about this type of request or situation. If a relevantarticle or solution is found in the knowledge base, then the staff member can easily address thesupport request. If the staff member cannot find anything pertinent to the support request withinthe knowledge base, then the staff member does research to resolve the problem independentlyor by collaborating with others. The research process involves creating new knowledge, sharingknowledge, and verifying knowledge.

CLT is involved in a variety of efforts, ranging from simple, small-scale projects to complex,large-scale projects. Faculty submit their project requests to CLT for review. Once a project is

approved, a team of CLT staff members is assigned to the project and is responsible for itsexecution and completion. During this process, staff members are actively engaged in knowledgecreation and application. The newly created knowledge is also recorded into the knowledge base,depending on the demand and usage. And lastly, designated CLT staff members also conductdata mining and content analysis on the support requests and the project information stored in theweb-based faculty request tracking system and in the project management system on a regular

basis to discover patterns, insights, and issues. As a result, new knowledge can be created ordiscovered. This new knowledge can be stored in the knowledge base and shared with other staffmembers (Abdous and He, 2009).

Within the framework, the knowledge base has also made support knowledge available to facultymembers, who can now look for answers at their convenience, in a self-service format. The self-


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service element of the knowledge base has also lowered the cost of support and has saved staff

time in supporting faculty requests. Faculty members are able to obtain immediate assistance, atall times, from the content in the knowledge base. This web-based self-service offering providesa valuable support channel to faculty, in a controlled and managed way.

The knowledge-centred support framework provides distinct benefits to CLT as it offers supportto the faculty. It enables CLT to increase its support capacity and to improve the facultyssatisfaction. With the implementation of the knowledge-centred support framework, CLT is ableto leverage its newly available knowledge capacity, to increase service innovation capability, andto offer new services to faculty, including the teachBANK (its teaching and learning repository),an online course development system (Abdous and He, 2008a), and a syllabus generator (Abdousand He, 2008b). In March 2011, CLT polled faculty members about their overall satisfaction

with CLT services. Overall, on a rising Likert scale of 1 to 5, satisfaction with the quality of theproject received a 4.70 rating, and the effort and willingness of the CLT staff to understandand solve problems earned a 4.75 rating. These results show that the implementation of theknowledge-centred support framework at CLT has achieved good outcomes.

4. Practical Concerns and Insights of Implementing the Framework

Although many organizations have implemented KM, not many of them are considered to havebeen successful in their KM effort (Rahimi, Arbabisarjou, Allameh, and Aghababaei, 2011).Martins (2000) found that certain environmental circumstances, strategic approaches, the valuesand actions of top management, the organizational structure, and the technologies used are

related to the success of KM implementation in organizations. As KM implementation is aninvestment that needs extensive resources and effort, it is important to ensure that people,

processes, and technologies are aligned to effectively support the management of organizationalknowledge.

The implementation of a knowledge-centred support framework such as the one described aboveis not easy and requires a supportive environment and a culture that explicitly supports andrecognizes knowledge sharing, creation, use, and innovation (Kamath, Rodrigues and Desai,2011). Barriers that prevent successful implementation of KM must be identified, reviewed, andaddressed (Alavi and Leidner, 2001).

Based on our experience, the main barrier for the successful implementation of KM is related toknowledge sharing and creation (He, Means, and Lin, 2006). The performance of an organizationdepends upon how effectively its people can create and share knowledge around the organization,and how effectively they can use that knowledge. Thus, it is critical to have an open culture thatencourages knowledge sharing, promotes dialogue in the workplace, and supports innovation.The development of such an open culture needs multi-level support, including leadershipcommitment, supervisor and co-worker support, and incentives (Kulkarni, Ravindran and Freeze,2007). Particularly, in an organization that supports innovation, employees who share specializedknowledge and bring new ideas and experiences should be recognized and rewarded, in order tomake knowledge sharing a reality (Uden andNaaranoja, 2011).

To enable and to accelerate service innovation, the framework must be implemented in an


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environment conducive for innovation to take place. As knowledge sharing is important to

innovation, a knowledge sharing culture needs to be created to promote close collaborationamong staff members and between staff members and faculty. To that end, the Director of theCLT has been committed to the encouragement of knowledge sharing. Staff members are askedto provide topics for knowledge sharing and professional development sessions on a regular

basis. The sessions are usually facilitated by staff members who want to share specializedknowledge.

To sustain long-term service innovation, top management must encourage individual learningand personal growth. The Director of CLT continues to encourage innovative thinking on the

part of staff members. Staff members who come up with new ideas often receive support withresources and time release to further develop their ideas, and they are also recognized and

rewarded. For example, an instructional technology specialist recently offered an idea forinteractive informational kiosk. His idea received support from CLT and the kiosk, wasdeveloped and deployed, and is now widely used.

To offer a practical roadmap for other faculty support organizations, we suggest the followingsteps for implementing the framework presented in Figure 1.

1. During the planning phase, the top management of faculty support organizations must clarifyexpectations with the staff in order to gain their buy-in and participation (He, Means, and Lin,2006). Both a summary of best practices and an analysis of current practices need to be

provided to the staff so that they can understand any gaps and the targeted goal. Policies such

as accountability, roles, responsibilities, workload, performance review, rewards, andrecognition should be discussed and established with the involvement of the staff.

2. During the implementation phase, it is important to engage both faculty and support staff incontinuous dialogue in order to co-develop solutions through a knowledge exchange of needsand ideas (Uden &Naaranoja, 2011). For example, CLT offers 5-10 faculty innovationgrants each year to encourage faculty members to work with CLT to develop new ideas,techniques, and products for teaching and learning. Some of these grant ideas and productshave been implemented and disseminated across the entire campus. Magnusson (2003) foundthat the service innovations suggested by users were more creative and useful than thosesuggested by professionals. On the other hand, the suggestions of the professionals were

deemed easier to produce (Magnusson, 2003). However, oftentimes it is not easy toimplement what the users demand. Thus, the key is to find an effective balance betweenexploiting their organizational capability and exploring new technologies, solutions, andinnovative ideas. In addition, we recommend using a request tracking system to documentfaculty needs and to manage dialogue with faculty at all times. The recorded requests fromfaculty can be integrated with other faculty-related systems to provide a rich data set for dataanalysis and data-driven decision making.

5. Conclusions and Future Research

The importance of managing organizational knowledge and innovation processes has long beenrecognized (Paiva and Fensterseifer, 2002; Nonaka, 2006; Kangas, 2006; Uden andNaaranoja,


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2011). It is important for service organizations to improve the quality of existing services and to

develop new services constantly in order to gain a competitive advantage. The literatureconcludes that knowledge-centred support and service innovation are critical to the success ofsupport organizations. This paper describes the real-time experiences of a campus facultysupport organization that has successfully implemented and integrated knowledge-centredsupport in its day-to-day operations. In the paper, a knowledge-centred support framework forfaculty support and service innovation is validated with evidence from a faculty supportorganization and is presented in order to provide guidance and inspiration to other similarsupport organizations, in the hope that it will stimulate them to follow, fine-tune, and expand thisframework.

Few empirical studies are conducted to determine the effects of KM and innovation on

improving organizational performance (Hassan and Al-Hakim, 2011). In particular, an extensivesearch on the Internet and across academic databases shows that few articles discuss the ways inwhich faculty support organizations have used knowledge management approaches to increasetheir service quality and innovation. This paper notes this shortage in the literature and asattempts to provide a starting point that will motivate other faculty support organizations to sharetheir knowledge management experiences regarding the improvement of service quality andinnovation.

Future work will focus on the further identification of obstacles to service innovations and willexplore the role of informal knowledge sharing in service innovation as well as the effect ofservice innovation on service performance. CLT also plans to expand its effort in using social

media to encourage and enable multiple-level interaction and collaboration aimed at developingideas, solving problems, sharing knowledge, and improving responsiveness and innovation

productivity. And CLT would also like to find ways to further enrich its knowledge base andthus improve the rate at which faculty use self-service before they request person-to-personassistance.

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Figure 1. A knowledge-centred support framework for faculty support and service

innovation

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Emerald Article an Online Knowledge-Centred Framework for Faculty Support

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