A key issue in many organizations is how to disseminate information in an effective way and, more importantly, how to make use of this information in order to create new knowledge. One way of addressing this problem is to focus on how information is socially transformed into knowledge. This includes how knowledge is handled in practice and how the knowledge produced is qualified as being something worth knowing and acting upon. Two well-established practices for doing this are the refereeing system and the peer review process. These are used in scientific communities as a means of validating and legitimating knowledge, for example by reviewing journal papers before publishing or project proposals before granting funds, etc. This paper argues that peer review is a useful concept when looking at knowledge creation and legitimization in organizations. The social meaning of peer review is to legitimize new knowledge by organizationally sanctioning it and thereby creating a platform for collective sense making. This paper uses an example from a field study in a pharmaceutical company in order to illustrate this argument. The study took place in a quality support department where the quality of health care products and processes was assessed. The organization had a need for fast and reliable updating of information that could influence how the production process of pharmaceuticals should be carried out. In order to cope with these problems the department established an 'evaluation loop', which shared several characteristics with the peer review process.

This paper introduces the concept of Organizational Performance (OP). Werefer to OP as a management concept, which further develops the research andpractise within Knowledge Management (KM). Our implications suggest Empowerment as a complementary concept to KM. Based upon a practitioner'sreflections on different OP-related problems identified from different consultancy projects within Swedish Industry Bureaucracies we discuss the similarities and differences between different KM/OP management theories andpractises. In such settings, relations between knowledge workers and managersare not satisfactory matched. We discover that different management mindsets are applied from the understanding of work practise. We refer to these mindsetsas Controlling figures respective Managing Knowledge. As a result, we relate experienced-based stories to theoretical concepts within different management mindsets in order to identify implications for a sound organizational performance.

In order to design useful knowledge media spaces to knowledge workers it is essential that we understand the nature of the work conducted and the knowledge applied in real settings. This paper reports from a study of how a group of quality assurance specialists gather, structure and distribute information and knowledge. Based on the findings a number of overall requirements for knowledge mediaspaces are identified and discussed. The essential findingswere that information and knowledge are created and  handled in many different ways and have many differentforms. The core issues of our lessons learned so far are that we carefully need to consider knowledge media spaces both in terms of communication channels and knowledge archives. Knowledge media spaces should be seen as spaces in which knowledge and information is exchanged, filed,retrieved, presented and refined by actors having different vocabulary and perspectives on the knowledge. These characteristics must be taken into account when designing IT and multimedia based knowledge media spaces.

It is widely acknowledged that knowledge is one of the most important assets of today's organizations. According to Davenport and Prusak (1998), knowledge is often a company's greatest competitive advantage in a global economy. How to support the company's knowledge-intensive work processes (e.g., quality support, product design or strategic planning) is therefore becoming a vital issue in many organizations worldwide. Identification, analysis and characterization of the knowledge-intensive work processes become essential in order to qualify a discussion of how to support knowledge management processes. This chapter presents, discusses and reflects upon findings from a study of how highly skilled actors manage information and knowledge, i.e., how information is gathered from a wide range of sources, structured according to needs and relevance for the users, and disseminated to the relevant suppliers in the organization. The aim of the chapter is two-folded: first, to contribute to the general empirical body of knowledge about knowledge-intensive work, especially focusing on the central characteristics of the knowledge management processes; secondly, to initiate a discussion of which overall requirements we must set up for how knowledge management processes could be supported by means of information and communication technology. Knowledge-intensive work processes often concern collaborative problem-solving and mutual support that require effective ways of handling information and knowledge between different people, both in short-term and long-term situations. The distributed and dynamic nature of knowledge management work also imposes a high degree of complexity involving many different actors with different conceptualizations, interpretations, perspectives, needs, etc. of the knowledge produced and approached. The various actors have different perspectives on the concept of knowledge. The work needed to articulate knowledge and make information and knowledge accessible becomes extremely demanding and complex. Often face-to-face interaction is required. However, in complex and collaborative work settings the problem of articulating knowledge by rich interaction and communication is obvious. The actors are distributed both geographically and temporally. There is a need for computer-based mechanisms for interaction and coordination of information and knowledge (cf. e.g., Carstensen and Wulf, 1998).

Plasma spraying operations performed with high carrier gas flow rate may improve the coating properties but they can also lead to lump formation and thus coating defects. The damaged work piece must then be stripped and re-coated, which implies a considerable waste in terms of coating powder, energy and time. The aim of this study was to determine the cause of the lumps, and propose process modifications for avoiding their formation while keeping the coating quality. Numerical simulations based on 3D turbulent Navier-Stokes equations in local thermal and chemical equilibrium were carried out to understand the problem and estimate the feasibility of the proposed solutions. The computational results were supplemented by experiments for validation. A first set of investigations was focused on the location and orientation of the powder port injector. It turned out that it was not possible to keep the coating quality while avoiding lump formation by simply moving the powder injector. A new geometry of the nozzle exit was then designed and successfully tested for a first application with Ni-5Al powder used in production.