The value of an organization is given not just by its tangible assets but also by the knowledge embodied in its employees and in its internal and external structures. While explicit knowledge can be shared as information and is easy to handle, this tacit knowledge has been neglected by effectiveness-oriented management techniques but is crucial for both the operational efficiency and the core competencies of an organization. This book provides a survey of the use of information technology for knowledge management, and its chapters present specific research on how technologies such as computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), workflow, and groupware can support the creation and sharing of knowledge in organizations.

Reasoning is an integral part of intelligent systems in fields like databases, logic programming, robotics, knowledge engineering, human/computer interfaces, programming environments, etc. In reality any such system has to cope with a changing world and its dynamics. Hence it is of great importance that reasoning must account for coping with change in order to be truly useful in practice. The book comprises several contributions to current ways of approaching this problem. On the one hand it surveys and synthesizes recent research work, while on the other hand new research results are included. Among the topics treated are logics for reasoning about actions and planning, belief revision and the reconciliation of logically conflicting inputs, resolving of conflicts by merging of knowledge and issues in the evolution in object-oriented databases. The book is aimed at the researcher and advanced student active in this field.

As we approach the beginning of the 21 st century, we are beginning to see the emer gence of knowledge management as a natural evolution of the focus and importance of quality in the 1980s and reengineering in the I 990s. Quality placed a huge em phasis on getting all employees to use their brainpower better. Reengineering em phasized the use of technology to streamline business processes and take out costs. With the lessons of quality and reengineering firmly embedded in our everyday op erations (continual cost containment and higher quality is a way of life), businesses are now turning their attention to growth. Growth is a common pursuit. Customers are calling for it. Financial markets are calling for it. Employees are asking for it because they want an exciting and stimu lating environment in which to work. If a business doesn't grow, it will eventually die because knowledge workers ofthe 21 st century won't want to work with or for a business that's not growing. Skilled workers have plenty of options to choose from as demand for knowledge workers escalates around the world."

Reasoning is an integral part of intelligent systems in fields like databases, logic programming, robotics, knowledge engineering, human/computer interfaces, programming environments, etc. In reality any such system has to cope with a changing world and its dynamics. Hence it is of great importance that reasoning must account for coping with change in order to be truly useful in practice. The book comprises several contributions to current ways of approaching this problem. On the one hand it surveys and synthesizes recent research work, while on the other hand new research results are included. Among the topics treated are logics for reasoning about actions and planning, belief revision and the reconciliation of logically conflicting inputs, resolving of conflicts by merging of knowledge and issues in the evolution in object-oriented databases. The book is aimed at the researcher and advanced student active in this field.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECCOP '94), held in Bologna, Italy in July 1994. ECOOP is the premier European event on object-oriented programming and technology. The 25 full refereed papers presented in the volume were selected from 161 submissions; they are grouped in sessions on class design, concurrency, patterns, declarative programming, implementation, specification, dispatching, and experience. Together with the keynote speech "Beyond Objects" by Luc Steels (Brussels) and the invited paper "Putting Objects to Work" by Norbert A. Streitz (GMD-IPSI, Darmstadt) they offer an exciting perspective on object-oriented programming research and applications.