Enterprise information portals: potential for evaluating research for knowledge management and human capital assets using social network analysis

Abstract

Enterprise Information Portals (EIP) are being increasingly referred in the literature as one interesting technological solution to support organizations in their knowledge management initiatives. This paper seeks to explore the hidden potential of enterprise information portals to support knowledge management initiatives through the usage of social network analysis on research results and co-authorship/co-work relationships that may suggest ways to more effectively utilize knowledge capital and other organizational resources. For that purpose in this paper we will present field research results on evaluating knowledge management and human capital assets based on EIP data repositories using social network analysis. This evaluation will be made through the use of social network analysis techniques applied to authorship data from papers published in international journals with refereeing covering the last twenty years of research activities from a Portuguese leading research institution in the field of telecommunications - Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT).