Cross-university Platforms as an Enabler for Knowledge

Management and Transfer

Claudia Doering

, Finn Reiche

and Holger Timinger

Institute of Data and Process Science, University of Applied Sciences Landshut, Germany

Keywords: Knowledge Management, University, Platform, Collaboration, Literature Review, Transfer.

Abstract: Collaboration Platforms are virtual or physical places that serve as an intermediary or medium for the

exchange of technology, knowledge, products or services between previously independent actors or

institutions. In academia, they can facilitate the collaboration between universities. One increasingly

important area of collaboration is knowledge management and transfer. In this paper, a literature review is

applied in order to derive the state of the art of university platforms for knowledge management. Based on

this, the purpose of such platforms is analysed. The results indicate that knowledge transfer focuses on

teaching, research, and transfer activities. Often, e-learning platforms are used to facilitate cross-university

transfer of knowledge. The motivation to use such platforms is to share knowledge, to make use of synergies

in cooperation and to gain more visibility. It is also shown in this paper, that despite its common application,

there is a gap in scientifically evaluating the effective contribution of such platforms as enabler for knowledge

management.

1 INTRODUCTION

Collaboration with other research facilities and

universities is of growing significance for

universities. Dedicated platforms and related business

models facilitate such collaborations and are

increasingly being applied within the university

landscape, for example within the field of teaching or

the sharing of knowledge about transfer activities

(Gawer 2014). Successful knowledge management

(KM) is an important competitive advantage of

universities as it supports the identification, sharing,

and adoption of good practices beyond university

borders. Knowledge management focuses mainly on

the core components of „People, Processes and

Technology”. People have an important impact on

knowledge management as they generate, engage and

encourage the sharing of knowledge (Stylianou and

Savva 2021). Processes describe methods for

acquiring, generating, transferring and also sharing of

knowledge. Technology describes how organizations

administer their knowledge (Chugh 2019). This

includes accessible databases with knowledge

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3727-8773

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2066-7323

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7992-0392

generated by people. When universities are working

closely together and form so-called “platforms” they

can benefit from the sharing and transferring of

knowledge with each other. In this situation the

universities are in a situation of cooperating and

competing with each other at the same time. This

relates mainly to the fact that often universities with

similar teaching and research areas or universities in

the same geographic region form these platforms or

collaborations. Therefore, they do not only compete

against each other for students, but also for projects

and funding (Doering and Seel 2019). Knowledge

management and the transfer of knowledge is widely

described in various research publications, but mostly

it relates to knowledge management between transfer

partners from industry. Therefore, the following

research questions arise:

RQ1: What is the state of the art of knowledge

management and transfer in university platforms?

RQ2: For which purpose do universities form

platforms to share knowledge?

Doering, C., Reiche, F. and Timinger, H.

Cross-university Platforms as an Enabler for Knowledge Management and Transfer.

DOI: 10.5220/0011548500003335

In Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2022) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 185-191

ISBN: 978-989-758-614-9; ISSN: 2184-3228

185

Figure 1: Dimensions of Transfer of Universities (own representation).

This article will firstly describe the research

background of knowledge management and transfer

within university platforms and then outline an

extensive literature review and analysis on this topic.

2 RESEARCH BACKGROUND

Knowledge itself is one of the most valuable assets an

organisation can possess (Levy and Linn 2020).

According to P

ETER DRUCKER, who first described

the term „Knowledge Worker”: „Knowledge is the

only meaningful economic resource” (Drucker 1995).

The term "knowledge" can refer to various forms of

knowledge, e.g. factual knowledge (data, facts,

events), process knowledge (knowledge about

procedures and cause-effect relationships) or

knowledge of action (know-how, problem-solving

knowledge) (Armstrong 2008; Goldman 2004;

Hedlund 1994). Each type of knowledge has both

tacit and explicit parts (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995).

Explicit knowledge summarizes the more easily

transferable, organizational and factual knowledge,

tacit knowledge is inherent to the person knowing

(Polanyi 1983). In university platforms a voluntary

exchange of knowledge, ideas, technologies,

experiences between the different universities can

take place. Transfer with external partners from

industry and society is not a new concept for

universities. Since the 1980s theoretical concepts for

transfer were developed, e.g. the theory of

"entrepreneurial universities" (Clark 1998), "Mode 2"

(Gibbons et al. 1994) and "Triple Helix" (Etzkowitz

and Leydesdorff 2000). All these theories incorporate

the idea that universities interact with their

surroundings in a deep knowledge transfer.

Knowledge transfer refers to the process of

transferring relevant knowledge. Knowledge transfer

refers to diffusion, distribution and reproduction of a

transfer object and is not an accidental event, but

always an explicit and controlled process, which can

take place in different dimensions (see Figure 1).The

micro-level refers to transfer within an institution

(e.g. university), the meso-level refers to transfer

between peer institutions (e.g. multiple universities or

research institutions), and the macro-level refers to

transfer between different partners outside the

institution (e.g. partners from industry/society)

(Wilkesmann 2007). Transfer on the meta-level refers

to a profound knowledge society in which knowledge

is shared between all partners. One task of

universities is primarily only the transfer of

knowledge from the micro to the macro-level and also

eventually take part within the meta-level.

Knowledge management and transfer on meso-level

illustrates the situation of university collaborations or

platforms.

The word platform was already used in the Middle

Age. According to the Oxford Dictionary it refers to

a construction, a raised, flat surface on which things

can be placed, intended for a particular activity or

operation. In research, the word platform has been

used in very different contexts. W

HEELWRIGHT and

CLARK (1992) dealt with platform products, KOGUT

and K

ULATILAKA (1996) examined platform

investments, K

IM and KOGUT (1996) platform

Technologies, SAWHNEY (1998) platform thinking

and R

OCHET and TIROLE (2003) platform from the

perspective of industrial economists.

Platforms can take on different dimensions.

VANS and GAWER (2016) describe transaction,

innovation, integrated and investment platforms.

Transaction platforms connect previously

independent actors and facilitate or enable the

KMIS 2022 - 14th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

186

exchange of technologies, products or services.

Services are considered differently and can be

distinguished as Acts-Based Services or Ownership-

Based Services. Services can be created and built

upon either through acts of somebody or through the

ownership of physical or intangible assets (Kayastha

2011).

Universities often act as transactional platforms in

the context of knowledge management by providing

access to their knowledge or technology to other

actors or institutions under the ownership-based

service theory. The attractiveness of a university

depends either on the number of actors on its own side

(for example in a network of several universities) or

on the number of tangible and intangible assets,

knowledge or patents.

3 METHODOLOGY

The literature review and analysis is structured by the

framework from

VOM BOCKE et al., with a definition

of scope by the taxanomy of COOPER and a concept

matrix by WEBSTER and WATSON (Vom Brocke et al.

2009). Vom B

ROCKE et al. emphasize, that the

process of a literature search must be described in a

comprehensible way, so that readers can check the

completeness of the literature search and, if necessary

can then use it for their research (Vom Brocke et al.

2009). The phases in which this review and analysis

is described by Okoli (Okoli and Schabram 2010).

Planning Phase: to determine the scope of the

literature review, the taxonomy by COOPER was used

and is displays in Table 1 (Cooper 1988). The focus

of this literature review is on published research

outcomes and theories in the field of knowledge

management and transfer within university platforms

by investigating the current and previous state of

research. With taking a neutral position and a

conceptual representation in this review, works that

are based on the same abstract idea are considered

together. The coverage of this review is exhaustive

and is described for specialised scholars and experts.

To identify a relevant search string for the

literature review, first an overview about the topic

was gathered in an iterative search, which

consequently resulted in a keyword with an extension

phrase. The developed search string is:

TITLE(„knowledge”) AND („academi*” OR

„universit*” OR „higher education” OR „HEI” OR

„platform”)

Table 1: Taxonomy of the literature review.

Feature Specification

Focus

Research

outcomes

Research

methods

Theories Applications

Goal

Investigation Criticism Challenging

Perspective

Neutral perspective Taking a position

Organisation

Historical

Conceptual Methodological

Coverage

Exhaustive Fully

selective

Representative Central

Target

Audience

Experts General

scholars

Practitioners/

politicians

General

public

The search was conducted in the databases

Scopus, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct and ECONBIZ,

with no restrictions on years or on specific journals or

conferences. Nevertheless, abstract, editorials, tables,

chapters, notes, book reviews and commentaries were

removed.

Selection Phase: a total of 2659 sources were found

in an initial search in July 2022. Finally, only 53

sources were considered. The initial search was

administered with the search term mentioned above

(for results see Table 2). All these publications were

then scanned for duplicates and irrelevant

publications. For example, many publications

contained research about knowledge management

systems in libraries of universities, which is not

relevant for this publication. In the next step, the

abstracts of the remaining publications were

examined depended on their abstract, which led again

to a sorting out of irrelevant publications. For

instance, multiple publications show individual

concepts of single universities, which are not

representative in general. All these publications were

sorted out. The entire remaining publications were

then studied and evaluated.

Extraction Phase: According to the proposed research

questions and the research objective on existing

concepts on knowledge management in university

platforms, the publications were allocated into a

concept matrix suggested by W

EBSTER and WATSON

(Watson and Webster 2020).

Execution Phase: All papers, which remained after

the last deletion step, were then fully read, examined

and then categorized into the concept matrix (see

Table 3). Only 13 main papers were categorized into

the concept matrix, as the remaining 40 papers did not

fit into exactly into to our research scope (e.g.

platform context was missing).

Cross-university Platforms as an Enabler for Knowledge Management and Transfer

187

Table 2: Results per search string and database.

initial search

Scopus

IEEE

Xplore

Science

Direct

ECON

BIZ

“knowledge*” AND “academi*”

182 68 17 465

“knowledge” AND “universit*”

464 208 48 328

“knowledge” AND “higher

education”

106 61 8 273

“knowledge” AND “HEI”

11 0 1 4

“knowledge” AND “platform”

63 231 14 107

deletion of

duplicates

Scopus

IEEE Xplore

Science Direct

ECONBIZ

142 8 4 124

234 10 9 96

22 3 0 71

11 0 0 0

11 19 3 5

deletion after review of

abstract

Scopus

IEEE Xplore

Science Direct

ECONBIZ

9 0 0 2

16 2 1 3

14 0 0 1

0 0 0 0

4 1 0 0

The findings will be presented and discussed in

the following sections of this paper.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Existing research has mainly focused on universities

having two main tasks: teaching and research. This is

also reflected by the conducted literature review and

analysis. The created concept matrix was developed

on basis of the guidelines by W

EBSTER and WATSON

(Watson and Webster 2020). The authors are listed

alphabetically and then the research areas of the

publications are presented. These divide into the areas

of KM (knowledge management), platforms, transfer,

KM systems and others. Many publications focus on

KM system establishments, especially in the field of

education, and describe them with individual cases of

universities.

The type of research is the grouped into three

types. D stands for research which is in development

or construction. T stands for the application of new

theories or concepts and E indicates research which is

an examination or discussion. C

ALVO examines how

universities can make their research outcomes and

knowledge in general available to others through IT

solutions (Calvo et al. 2019). C

ASTRO PEIXOTO show

with the usage of the SECI-model by N

ONAKA and

TAKEUCHI how knowledge can be shared in

collaborations (Castro Peixoto et al. 2022). Also

OERING shows knowledge sharing and transfer in

university platforms with proposing a concept for

collaboration (Doering and Seel 2019). Although

ARCIA MORENO focuses only on private universities

in their research, they propose a knowledge

management concept for knowledge sharing within

such types of institutions (Garcia Moreno et al. 2018).

ENG shows in a pilot study of Chinese and American

universities how knowledge can be shared and

transferred in these institutions and which tools and

structures are needed (Geng et al. 2005). Another

knowledge management concept which uses an IT

solution was published by G

ENTILE and shows how

universities could benefit from this solution,

especially in their teaching and the sharing of

knowledge over university borders (Gentile et al.

2016). IT solutions can contain risks, such as ethical

or legal issues, which are examined by K

YOBE on the

field of university collaborations (Kyobe 2010).

AKANI investigates how research in university

networks can be handled through a research data

management support-system (Makani 2015). To

investigate and measure knowledge sharing in such

systems, M

EDINA GARCÍA propose a set of indicators

to evaluate knowledge management in universities

(Medina García et al. 2021). P

AEZ-LOGREIRA show

the relationship between knowledge management,

innovation and research, including processes and

operations performed by universities around these

(Paez-Logreira et al. 2016). The sharing of

knowledge just between lecturers of different

universities is examined by P

RABOWO who present a

case study with lecturers from separate higher

educational institutions (Prabowo et al. 2018). In a

literature analysis S

ECUNDO investigates that tools

and models for knowledge management in

universities are still published only fragmented and

more research is still necessary in this research area

(Secundo et al. 2019). S

MITH outlines that

governments need to encourage higher educational

institutions to collaborate and share knowledge with

each other (Smith 2001).

deletion after review of

title

Scopus

IEEE Xplore

Science Direct

ECONBIZ

75 0 0 13

90 4 3 43

20 0 0 13

0 0 0 0

5 3 1 0

KMIS 2022 - 14th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

188

Table 3: Concept Matrix of Literature Search and Analysis.

Type of Research

Authors

Platforms

Transfer

KM Systems

Others

D T E

Calvo

(2019)

× × ×

Castro

Peixoto

(2022)

× × ×

Doering

(2019)

× × × × ×

Garcia

Moreno

(2018)

× × ×

Geng

(2005)

× × × ×

Gentile

(2016)

× × ×

Kyobe

(2010)

× × × ×

Makani

(2015)

× × × × ×

Medina

García

(2021)

× × ×

Paez-

Logreira

(2016)

× × × ×

Prabowo

(2018)

× × ×

Secundo

(2019)

× × × ×

Smith

(2001)

× × × × ×

5 CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK

Knowledge is a core competency to build or maintain

a competitive advantage for universities. These

institutions build and share knowledge in form of

research, teaching and transfer activities. The current

state of the art on how universities handle this, was

examined in this paper (RQ1). Within the scope of

this research a literature review and analysis of 2659

sources was conducted. The whole process was

structured by important and respected theoretical

guidelines. The focus was on publications in the field

of knowledge management in university platforms.

With the help of a concept matrix, all found research

was grouped and categorized.

Overall, the large number of publications was

expected, since knowledge management is one of the

main tasks of universities. In general, concepts and

studies on this topic were overrepresented (see

column “E” in Table 3).

There is comparatively limited theory and

analysis on how universities, who collaborate with

each other could share their knowledge with each

other. Also, knowledge management in universities is

very often connected with the idea of transfer or the

so-called “third mission”.

It is not surprising that quite a large number of

publications cover the topic of knowledge transfer for

educational reasons in universities. At the very latest,

the Covid-19 pandemic has shown universities that

knowledge management and therefore their teaching,

but also research and transfer activities, are important

to manage by the usage of knowledge management

systems with e.g., e-learning systems.

It is also remarkable that no published research

was discovered on the evaluation of already

implemented knowledge management systems in

universities (or even university platforms). This

shows that there is in fact a lot of theory around this

topic, but no tested and proven concept which

universities can apply.

It also became clear that the topic of knowledge

management in university platforms is a quite “new”

topic, as the oldest, relevant publication in this

literature analysis is from 2001 (Smith 2001). This

shows that this topic is of growing importance in

research.

In the literature review and analysis it was also

investigated for which purpose universities form

platforms to share knowledge (RQ2).

By harmonizing knowledge and reducing

redundancies via platforms, process and data

continuity can be achieved, which can lead to synergy

effects in terms of science (new research activities,

continuation of previous research projects, etc.) but

can also result in cost reductions. Platforms also

allow, especially smaller, universities to increase

their visibility and to benefit from each others’

knowledge on research and transfer projects. This can

give them the possibility to deal with complex

projects. In the case of knowledge transfer for

education, Massive Open Online Courses or other e-

learning systems offer a way to reach a broad

audience through a one-time effort in creating the

courses without having a proportionally increasing

effort as the number of participants increases.

Through this channel (MOOC platforms),

universities can take advantage of the network effects

that platforms offer and address large numbers of

participants.

Shared data management, for example via a

platform for research data management organized

Cross-university Platforms as an Enabler for Knowledge Management and Transfer

189

according to the Guidelines for Responsible Data

Management in Scientific Research (Coulehan and

Wells 2006) offers the possibility to present a

repository. Templates, lessons learned, checklists or

shared research data can be stored there. A uniform

process can also be defined and modeled there so that

there is a common understanding of knowledge

management throughout the institution.

For future work, the gap of research in knowledge

management and transfer within university platforms

needs to be closed. There is a lack of platform theory

concepts in the university landscape, especially in the

areas of research and transfer, which needs further

research. This can be solved by the application of

existing platform concepts on higher educational

institutions or by the design of own concepts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The transfer project "Transfer and Innovation East-

Bavaria" is funded by the "Innovative University of

Applied Sciences" East-Bavaria 2018 – 2022

(03IHS078D).

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