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ABSTRACTFor a knowledge‐ and skill‐centric organization, the process of knowledge management encompasses three important and closely related elements: (i) task assignments, (ii) knowledge acquisition through training, and (iii) maintaining a proper level of knowledge inventory among the existing workforce. Trade‐off on choices between profit maximization in the short run and agility and flexibility in the long term is a vexing problem in knowledge management. In this study, we examine the effects of different training strategies on short‐term operational efficiency and long‐term workforce flexibility. We address our research objective by developing a computational model for task and training assignment in a dynamic knowledge environment consisting of multiple distinct knowledge dimensions. Overall, we find that organizational slack is an important variable in determining the effectiveness of training strategies. Training strategies focused on the most recent skills are found to be the preferred option in most of the considered scenarios. Interestingly, increased efficiencies in training can actually create preference conflict between employees and the firm. Our findings indicate that firms facing longer knowledge life cycles, higher slack in workforce capacity, and better training efficiencies actually face more difficult challenges in knowledge management.

AbstractSome significant insights in relation to science and its claims emerged in early sociology. However, sociologies of knowledge and science remained separate until the late 1960s. Questioning scientific knowledge raised questions about career interests, language, interaction, class and gender in shaping scientific claims. Offering insights, this new sociology tended towards 'epistemological polarisation'. New waves further distanced themselves from the validity claims of 'scientists'. Insulating within a self‐referential field of peers, journals, conferences and subdisciplinary norms, epistemological polarisation, emulated natural sciences, but had a marginalising effect. Attention to symmetry in the social study of scientific beliefs, such that social causation of belief is not said to invalidate such belief, was often ignored, and the sociology of scientific knowledge tended towards debunking. This article challenges this spiral and suggests a 'reflexive epistemological diversity' that recognises the value of many forms of explanation, promoting interaction between different explanations, at different levels of causation, and across the divide between natural and social sciences. Recent feminist science studies go furthest in developing this trend. In line with recent developments in the natural sciences, such an approach does not suggest that 'anything goes', yet opens up explanation beyond narrow conceptions of expertise, reductionism and relativism.

In the area of moral epistemology, there is an interesting problem facing the person in my area, ancient philosophy, who hopes to write a historical paper which will engage with our current philosophical concerns. Not only are ancient ethical theories very different in structure and concerns from modern ones (though with the rapid growth of virtue ethics this is becoming less true), but the concerns and emphases of ancient epistemology are very different from those of modern theories of knowledge. Some may think that they are so different that they are useful to our own discussions only by way of contrast. I am more sanguine, but I am quite aware that this essay's contribution to modern debates does not fall within the established modern traditions of discussing moral epistemology.

In a collaborative knowledge sharing system each source is associated with knowledge base system that participates in knowledge sharing with other sources. Acquaintances of sources build a collaborative knowledge sharing system or network in which each source is acquainted with other sources. The network of sources can be either acyclic or cyclic, meaning that they can contain acquaintance chains that are acyclic or cyclic. Updating knowledge in the sources involved in an acyclic logical network of sources is done by propagating an update from the originating source until the update reaches the leaves of the network. However, cyclic cases may create complexities due to conflicts that may arise between different versions of propagated updates. The author examines update propagation in both cyclic and acyclic networks. Moreover, the authors considers cases where a source is temporarily unavailable or offline. Here the author's propagation mechanism keeps track of every source even if the source is not available for a certain period of time until that source becomes available. Once a source comes back online the system must propagate the update destined to the returning sources to keep its knowledge consistent with other sources. The author has implemented this mechanism and evaluated it on a small collaborative knowledge sharing system.