Questionnaires summary
The survey of 561 sites or departments managed by 244 participants show a modest 20.26% presence of knowledge artefacts, under half of which are up-to-date (9.51%). Overall, the levels of knowledge artefacts are higher in operations with legal requirements. The data figures visually show that the four cultural heritage objectives tend to have an increasing level of present and updated knowledge artefacts, from the low levels in the intangible objectives (Cultural education and Social participation) towards the higher levels of the tangible objectives (Economic development and Environmental preservation). The increase of present and updated levels from intangible to tangible objectives is consistent across the three countries and the three UK nations that participated. The conversion rate of present to updated knowledge artefacts is similarly higher in the tangible operations. Having and maintaining recorded knowledge, therefore, appears more difficult in intangible, social-sciences related operations compared to tangible, physical, natural-sciences operations.
Performance with absence of knowledge artefacts is 47.93%, and with the current level of knowledge artefacts performance is 54.97%. For every 1% of operations with knowledge artefacts, performance increases by 0.59%, or by an additional 0.80% if the knowledge artefacts are up-to-date. Economic development is the objective with the lowest performance in all countries and nations, highlighting the financial difficulties across the cultural heritage ecosystem. The conversion rate of present to updated knowledge artefacts varies across these countries and nations, influencing the volumes of updated knowledge artefacts in each. High volumes of present knowledge artefacts do not always relate to equally high performance, hinting towards nation-wide barriers in some countries, perhaps bureaucratic, financing, or operational isolation, that limit the organisations’ ability to benefiting fully by the knowledge artefacts (such social demographic influences are examined in the following sections).
Local sites have high volumes of present and updated knowledge artefacts (presumably those need them the most), whilst regional sites have the lowest of both, possibly having organisational barriers to adopting cultural heritage specific knowledge artefacts. These levels are directly reflected in the highest performance (by local sites) and lowest performance (by regional sites) respectively. National sites have better performance from lower levels of knowledge artefacts, possibly due to more expertise available in their teams. Local, private, and independent sites have higher levels of knowledge artefacts in the intangible operations, whilst regional and child-sites have more knowledge artefacts in the tangible operations.
Local sites, independent charities, and single-site organisations, whilst generally being smaller organisations, must still cover all operations. But they do so with smaller teams (less tacit knowledge), so they have and update more knowledge artefacts as they seem to depend more on the recorded, explicit knowledge. Their performance directly increases with the higher levels of knowledge artefacts. Volumes of knowledge artefacts increase when organisations have physical sites, and as the number of visitors increase. The very large visitor sites, similarly to multi-site organisations, achieve high performance as they potentially have more tacit knowledge to supplement lower levels of knowledge artefacts. Large paid-staff teams have much higher performance with more modest volumes of present and updated knowledge artefacts; here lies an opportunity as higher knowledge artefact levels in large teams produce exponentially increased performance. Volunteer teams of all sizes have and update more knowledge artefacts and in doing so, achieve increased performance, but not at the same high-performance rate as large paid-staff teams. Crucially, providing training and the tools that the teams need relates to dramatic positive increase in knowledge artefacts and around a three-quarters increase in performance. Training and equipping teams is the single most important demographic category for improving not only the tacit knowledge within people but also the recorded and up-to-date knowledge in the organisation, and makes the greatest difference in performance increase.
The presence of knowledge artefacts across the habitats varies depending on their specialism. It follows naturally that different habitats have different priority objectives and therefore higher levels for those. The range starts at very low levels with presence of knowledge artefacts in only one in ten operational flutes, to higher levels of one in three operational flutes, which is still relatively moderate. All habitats with buildings and collections are positively influenced in Environmental preservation by the better provision in that objective. Updating varies considerably, leading to some habitats with fewer present artefacts but higher updating conversion rate, to having more effective explicit knowledge and higher performance. There isn’t an apparent distinction in knowledge artefacts between arts and heritage sites. However, the Galleries from the GLAM cluster benefit much more from knowledge artefacts compared to the Library, Archive, and Museum (LAM) sites.
The role of legal requirements, national policy or culture, size of operations and teams, habitat specialism, but also the ease of updating for each habitat objective, are therefore significant factors to consider. And the most significant is the provision of training and tools for the teams to perform their tasks knowledgeably.
The social, financial and technological sections gradually painted a picture, adding colour and viewpoints from each demographic. The potential is revealed in the complementarity of these social demographic contingencies.
Accreditation had a consistent positive relation in all participating countries, mainly in the two tangible objectives, however, accreditation appeared to be hindered in countries and sites with tight parent organisation-child site control. Local museums benefited the most from accreditation. Whilst both museum and archive accreditation related positively to development of knowledge artefacts and performance increase, museum accreditation related to higher volumes of knowledge artefacts than the archive equivalent, possibly because museum accreditation had a larger support mechanism behind it. However, the archive accreditation was more effective in increasing performance. Educational awards had a positive relation too, this time more in the intangible objectives. Presence of educational awards converted to high levels of updated knowledge artefacts and high performance. Visitor awards had a positive relation across the objectives, especially the middle socio-economic objectives, linking the tangible and intangible operations. The Visitor awards relation, however, varied by country, potentially depending on which objectives were supported more. The Other awards had a positive relation mainly across the intangible objectives but also on Economic development. Networking through memberships had the highest positive relation to Economic development, and also significant relation to the intangible objectives. However, easy and free membership access related to higher knowledge artefact and performance increases across all objectives.
Funding was around 55% self-generated. Government funding is associated with both security and parent organisation-child site restrictions, whilst grant funding provided a short-term boost and unsustainable effect on knowledge management. A self-funded level at two-thirds of the total operational cost, supplemented by the other two streams could relate to the highest levels of knowledge artefacts and highest performance. Grant funding had more positive relation in sites requiring intervention for their building’s or collection’s poor condition. Good building condition related to higher volumes of knowledge artefacts and higher performance in the tangible operations, whilst good collection condition related to benefits in all operations, as participation and education are enabled through the collections. Lack of budget for promotion, education, programming, and training, forced sites to better look after and update the few knowledge artefacts they had. With more adequate budgets, the knowledge artefacts and performance, however, did improve in all objectives. This was more evident with the training budget relating to 41% more present and 32% more updated knowledge artefacts, and 26% higher performance, compared to sites with no training budget.
The presence of software as knowledge artefacts, related to higher volumes of other knowledge artefacts and around 50% higher performance across all objectives. The software’s positive relation in Economic development performance was the highest of any demographic contingencies.
In-house creation of knowledge artefacts and the recruitment of an expert were the two most common sourcing options, but adoption of existing knowledge artefacts appeared difficult and an improvement opportunity for the knowledge curating design. In modelling the sourcing options, two aspects emerged that could help improve the volumes and effectiveness of knowledge in the sites: 1) make knowledge artefacts (explicit knowledge) easier to find and adopt, and 2) enhance continuity and the benefits of having knowledgeable people in the teams; this can be achieved through the judicious employment of experts within the teams, which appears to improve performance sufficiently to cover the payroll cost. What amplifies the connection of explicit and tacit knowledge, however, is for all the people in the teams, staff and volunteers, having access permission, being able to find what exists, and having equitable accessibility to internal knowledge artefacts. Enabled access related to 98% higher presence, 90% more updated knowledge artefacts, and increased performance by 26%.
The findings also showed that provision can be better informed and joined-up, by complementing the providers’ strengths. Figure 6‑49 shows the schemes (accreditation, educational award, visitor award, other awards, memberships) as social demographics that peak in different objectives. The first observation is the potential of a closer operational knowledge curation partnership between accreditation (tangible objectives positive relation) and educational awards (intangible objectives positive relation). Additionally, knowledge co-ordination from that partnership with the providers of knowledge resources from Other awards and with membership organisations would strengthen organisational knowledge and performance in the middle objectives of Social participation and Economic development. And operational knowledge curation collaboration in the software application would maximise the results in all objectives and especially Economic development.
As seen in the funding streams and the source types modelling, it is the wise combination of the available resources that produce the greatest results. Figure 6‑50 shows the current average per objective (lowest performance), the improved performance related to the schemes’ average (middle performance line), and the even higher levels of performance (23% higher) that can be achieved by realising the top provided scheme(s)’ current performance in each objective.
We can look for further complementarity opportunities for user organisations. The diversity in habitats relates to the different objectives that are more significant to each habitat’s purpose. The question is, do all habitats have the level of capacity required to manage that core objective without dropping the quality or performance in the other objectives? In general, for local sites, independent charities, single-sites, low visitor sites, and sites with small teams, the answer appears to be no. They have in common not only limited capacity, but also less internal expertise. They, therefore, depend more on the explicit knowledge encoded in knowledge artefacts. To utilise explicit knowledge, an applicable knowledge curating design will need to help overcome the barrier of limited capacity. Similarly, large operationally sites, and multisite or national organisations, have more expertise and can perform well by combining explicit and tacit knowledge, but are not utilising explicit knowledge effectively. Overall, substantial but targeted and balanced levels of updated knowledge artefact relate to best performance; not having too little explicit knowledge on one hand, and not being too bureaucratic on the other.
A final demographic pattern to keep in mind is the parent organisation-child site relation on conversion of present to updated knowledge artefacts. Whilst child sites have access to knowledge flows through their parent organisation larger teams and networks, and to stocks of (usually non-cultural heritage) knowledge artefacts which exist in the parent organisations, the child sites seem shackled and unable to utilise the cultural heritage ecosystems’ resources, such as those provided through accreditation.
We have seen then that there is a clear relation between the demographic categories and knowledge artefact characteristics (quantitative analysis objective 1). The presence, updating, and rate of conversion from present to updated, are all affected at different rates by different demographics. The observed levels of present and updated knowledge artefacts were low, however, simply having high volumes is not a wise aim. Knowledge artefacts are needed more in the absence of tacit knowledge, and for the objectives that are core to each habitat. Operating under limited capacity requires a judicious collection and management of knowledge artefacts, achieving a balance between bureaucracy and lack of accessible knowledge. Managing high levels of updated knowledge artefacts from a modest library of present knowledge artefacts is a wiser management strategy than being buried in a fog of out-of-date knowledge artefacts. Wise sourcing and management of knowledge artefacts (by each specific habitat) has significant positive relation to performance (quantitative objective 2). Validating Nonaka’s consideration for continuous relation of tacit and explicit knowledge, we see that training provision, training budgets, and enabling internal access to the organisation’s quality and up-to-date recorded knowledge, are strategies that cultural heritage organisations can use to improve their knowledge and performance the most. As an ecosystem, the wise complementarity of available schemes and of existing funding can produce much higher levels of performance, compared to the existing fragmented approach. As presented in section 5.1, the role of knowledge artefacts on performance was dampened, and the potential is that the disconnected demographic categories can be wisely partnered to significantly increase performance in each of the four organisational objectives and significantly improve overall performance.
Knowledge artefacts and performance were explored using induction and deduction. We gained new insight, but also more questions were raised. In the features sections, the unanswered questions are summarised and explored through abduction.
In the discussion section, the new knowledge from the literature, pilots, interviews, questionnaires, and abductive investigation, is unified. From the joined-up findings, opportunities arise to improve the cultural heritage sites’ organisational knowledge and performance. These opportunities and their theoretical implications are integrated in the knowledge design.
