In this chapter we have explored the information technology dimension of knowledge management, focusing on the emergence of an increased focus on practice and on the applicability of Web 2.0 tools to support it. We adopted Alavi and Leidner’s (2001) framework that views firms as systems generated for creating, storing/retrieving, transferring/sharing, and applying the knowledge required for development and delivery of products and/or services. We also adopt the concepts of communities and networks of practice, where both are composed of individuals sharing common interests and the desire to participate in a knowledge community (Lave and Wenger, 1991), while the latter is differentiated by its greater geographical dispersion, decreased face-to-face interaction, and reliance on electronic tools (Brown and Duguid, 2001). Our discussion complements and extends earlier work by Alavi and Tiwana (2003) that explored the enabling use of IT on knowledge management processes.
Traditional uses of ITs to support knowledge management have included the support of acquisition and retrieval of codified knowledge in formal systems (Huysman and Wulf, 2006). Organizations are expanding and complementing structured knowledge management systems with Web 2.0 applications. Wagner and Bolloju (2005) note that many Web 2.0 applications are conversational in nature, showing less formal structures than traditional knowledge management tools, and hence do not require structured databases of knowledge interpretation mechanisms. These lightweight tools do, however, require the ability to capture content and its social context within a community. In studying the impact of Web 2.0 tools in knowledge management, we have focused on differentiation along the lines of primacy of support for content or social networks, reflecting two key principles of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2006).
We defined content publication platforms as Web 2.0 tools whose primary characteristic is the adherence to the principle of data being the next ‘Intel Inside.’ With their accretion of chronological authored content, blogs form a social space for knowledge creation and sharing, a repository of individual knowledge, and, taking the blogosphere as a whole, a collection of interest-sharing networks of practice. Using podcasting as a base technology to support the proliferation of audio and visual content, multimedia aggregators support the storage and retrieval of oral and visual histories and the communities and networks of practice that are generated and sustained by them. As a topically-organized knowledge repository using lightweight software, wikis support easy storage and retrieval of knowledge that can be applied quickly within an organization. With their collaborative nature and underlying social norms, wikis facilitate sharing within networks of practice and enable the social space for novel recombination of existing knowledge in the knowledge creation process.
We defined social media platforms as Web 2.0 tools whose primary characteristic is the exploitation of network effects. Through the aggregation of collaboratively-generated metadata on web pages and its convergence to stable distributions known as folksonomy, social tagging supports the sharing and absorption of new knowledge, the storage and retrieval of existing knowledge, and the navigation of networks of practice as represented by their shared interests. The combination of characteristics of virtual worlds that enable synchronous interaction of geographically dispersed individuals in replications of reality make them effective tools for knowledge sharing through the provision of social cues and visualization and the development of common understanding needed for knowledge application. Social networking software allows users to manage their contacts, share personal information, and socialize online, functions which are useful for developing a sense of community and linkages with it to apply the four knowledge processes.
Looking at the existing state-of-the-art in IT support to knowledge management, Alavi and Tiwana (2003) noted that ITs were starting to overlap the knowledge processes, an observation that we have supported in this chapter. While it is the network that is important, rather than content, the failure of SixDegrees.com, an early social networking site, was attributed to its lack of content—users complained that there was little to do once networks were created (Boyd and Ellison, 2008). Therefore, pure network with no content is unlikely to succeed and pure content with no network is a static, Web 1.0 presentation. Following this trend towards convergence of IT towards supporting processes and practice, content and networks, we extend our consideration of future research opportunities into two areas: mashups and Web 3.0.
Enterprise mashups are hybrid applications combining data and code from more than one existing source. They are ‘situational’ applications, in that they are created to address at-hand issues using available resources (Cherbakov, Bravery, Goodman, Pandya, and Baggett, 2007). The synergy of hobbyist programmers, available mashup-making tools, mashable data sources, and enterprise mashup hubs has provided a rich environment for the proliferation of these tools (Majchrzak and Maloney, 2008). The open-source origins of many individual Web 2.0 tools make them ideal for mashups which combine multiple applications into a single platform. Rapid interoperability is the key benefit of mashups, which makes the use of open data sources and application programming interfaces (APIs) essential to this technology (Kavanagh, 2010). Many SNS may already be considered mashups, for example the integration of Google Maps within Flickr or the proliferation of third-party applications in FaceBook. The reuse of existing enterprise applications and data to create new services is a key component of the value propositions of mashups (Majchrzak and Maloney, 2008) which is analogous to the firm’s benefits of recombining existing knowledge to create new knowledge. In this manner, we would expect the parallel development of best practices in knowledge management and the IT supporting it to be beneficial to the organization and to warrant further empirical investigation.
The logical extension from Web 2.0 is to Web 3.0, which involves an evolution to the Semantic Web and artificial intelligence (AI) for platforms and increased personalization and mobility for users (Strickland, 2007). The Semantic Web is an initiative started by the World Wide Web Consortium to create a technological framework and medium for the exchange of data by automated tools as well as by people (Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila, 2001). The AI sub-discipline concerned with constructing models of the world is related to knowledge representation (Lassila and Hendler, 2007). The marrying of AI with semantics was thus conceived to deal with the vast amount of data on the web and a growing interoperability problem (Hendler, 2008), both being significant issues for knowledge management. For the user, Web 3.0 will bring increased mobility and personalization, leading to a potential increase in personal knowledge management or PKM (Razmerita et al., 2009). This will allow for a differentiation between community- or organization-oriented Web 2.0-supported knowledge management tools and individual-oriented Web 3.0-supported PKM tools. The dual impacts of semantic-enabling and PKM are areas for further study.
In summary, Web 2.0 tools have the potential to provide significant support to organizational knowledge management initiatives. Technologies that support collectively-held knowledge should facilitate the exchange of ideas, the provision of expertise and the debating of issues in the community (Wasko and Faraj, 2000). Important success factors that relate to an ideal KMS itself include ease of use, value and quality of knowledge, system accessibility, and user involvement (Nevo and Chan, 2007). Web 2.0 tools can be seen to meet each of the success factors that previous developer- or expert-delivered tools may not have. We still hold that the information technology dimension of knowledge management, including the exploitation of Web 2.0 tools, remains understudied. Further empirical research on this facet of knowledge management offers unprecedented opportunities for connecting and unleashing the potential of what continues to be the most original source of new knowledge: the human mind.
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1 The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Amrit Tiwana to an earlier version of this chapter.