Trend and patterns in explicit organizational knowledge: A correspondence analysis and cluster analysis

SummaryTo study the explicit organizational knowledge pattern of an education and research institute is a tedious process as it deals with multiple subjects. Also, many qualitative and quantitative indicators such as peer review process, awards and honors received by the constitute members of the institute, national and international grants, and different types of publications can be considered to study the pattern followed in different disciplines over a period of time. Not all of these indicators will be giving the same message, and the choice of which one to select will depend on the type of research being evaluated. In this study to analyze explicit organizational knowledge, publications of Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in different disciplines over a span of 10 years from 1996 to 2005 are considered as given in the multidisciplinary database SCOPUS using correspondence analysis and cluster analysis.According to correspondence analysis, the study indicated that publication productivity of IISc is on the rise during the study period and research in Engineering, Agriculture & Biological science, Chemistry and Life sciences is high. Although a cluster analysis is carried out to find out demarcations between row elements and column elements, no useful interpretation could be drawn.However, this analysis has to be carried out further, by factoring indicators from research input as well as other socio-economic political, and cultural factors affecting the explicit organizational knowledge. Correspondence analysis and cluster analysis highlights what is interesting, and indicates the direction in which further inquiry should be done.