PhD research,
Institute for Sustainable Heritage, UCL

 

​​Literature and practice show that

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knowledge grows the most when shared

 

The purpose of this mixed methods doctoral research was to develop a collaborative operational knowledge curating design for historic Environment, Culture, Heritage, and Arts (ECHA [EE-kah]) organisations. The aim was to empower individuals and to improve organisational sustainability.

 

The research experienced high participation and received significant interest:

      ‘I'm interested to know what comes out of all the work that you do, because I think it is a really useful            question. It's much needed and it's always better to be joining things up, making sure that what we're          doing is actually making a difference.’ Participant P1

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​The research focused on the interaction of human experience (tacit knowledge), with recorded knowledge (explicit knowledge) in a variety of accessible formats (knowledge artefacts). Knowledge artefacts in this research are appreciated for purposefully revealing and sharing their recorded knowledge, not for concealing it as in competitive advantage strategies. 

 

The research demonstrated that accessible and up-to-date knowledge significantly improves processes and organisational performance. It also showed that the current, fragmented, sectorial approach is dampening such improvement; it is the wise combination of the available resources that produce the greatest results. Barriers in creating, sourcing, and maintaining knowledge artefacts limit their presence to about 20% of their operations, with only half of them being up-to-date. Whilst that limited application of up-to-date knowledge artefacts related to 15% higher organisational sustainability performance, a more complementary provision could relate to an additional increase of 19% - 26% at least, or potentially much higher through an applied design.

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Participants would like to see a joined-up, strategic approach to mapping gaps and needs, creation and distribution of easy to access and easy to use variety of quality knowledge artefact formats, that are a package with continued professional development training and support specialist networks.

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Cultural and artistic values enrich the historic environment and heritage assets in which they reside. The public-good objectives of historic Environment, Culture, Heritage, and Arts (ECHA) organisations are interdependent and have common operations and knowledge needs. The joined up approach starts by understanding them as the ECHAsystem [EE-kah-siss-tuhm], comprising 15 habitats (not sectors) with 16 common operations. The relation of the ECHAsystem, operational knowledge enablers, and associated performance, form the ECHAsystem organisational sustainability framework. This is summarised in the Organisational sustainability framework webpage and its full detail will be available through an upcoming paper.

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The detailed findings are in the Findings webpage, showing interview, questionnaire, features (mini case studies), and the discussion that brings their knowledge together. These have been presented in themed pages to make easier to use, and include a wealth of learnings and information.  ​

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The research has proposed the Athena [ah-thee-NAH] design: a Knowledge Alliance coordinating the Operational Wisdom Library (OWL), informed by 31 networks across the ECHAsystem’s habitats and operations. The design can help individuals to grow professionally, organisations to thrive, and the ECHAsystem to achieve its aspirations. The research advocates a unified ECHAsystem benefiting from collaborative application of knowledge to deliver its public-good, intergenerational, organisational sustainability objectives.​ The design is summarised in the Athena design webpage, showing its structure, design principles, benefits, and policy recommendations.

 

Initial planning for the establishment of the Knowledge Alliance in the UK is now taking place. If you are interested in being involved, or would like more information, please contact Ari Volanakis using the email address below. A post-doctoral research project is also being developed, in partnership with six leading organisations in the ECHAsystem, to provide ongoing research support to the development of the Knowledge Alliance and the OWL. 

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Feel free to use the content of this research. Please credit Ari Volanakis and cite this website.