Organizational knowledge management is a broad and multi-faceted topic involving socio-cultural, organizational, behavioral, and technical dimensions. Subsumed under the knowledge management rubric is a large set of behavioral strategies (e.g. learning organization and communities of practice), information-based approaches (e.g. best practices and competitive intelligence), and technologies (e.g. data mining and knowledge repositories). Knowledge and knowledge management are not new phenomena. Organizations are continuously engaged in the creation or acquisition, accumulation, and application of knowledge. According to Penrose (1959), the accumulation of knowledge is built into the very nature of firms. In the 1990s emphasis on organizational knowledge and knowledge management increased among researchers and practitioners. This can be attributed to several factors including globalization of the economy and markets, volatility of business and competitive environments, and a trend toward knowledge-intensive products and services as well as rapid progress in information technologies (Alavi, 2000).
Effective knowledge management in organizations involves a combination of technological and social elements. Considering the pervasiveness and advances in information technologies, this chapter focuses on the technological components of knowledge management and the potential relationships between technical and social dimensions. This focus is based on the premise that large-scale knowledge management initiatives in complex organizational settings can be enhanced and facilitated through the application of advanced information technologies. In fact, it can be argued that the availability and ubiquity of certain new technologies such as Web 2.0 tools and high-speed mobile communications can expand, facilitate, and expedite organizational knowledge management.
In this chapter, we first provide a perspective on organizations as knowledge systems and describe the four underlying knowledge management processes: knowledge creation, knowledge storage and retrieval, knowledge transfer, and knowledge application. We then present an overview of various categories of Web 2.0 technologies and present case examples of their applications in support of knowledge management processes in organizations.