Knowledge management systems: finding a way with technology

ARTICLE SUMMARY & REVIEW (Week3-Class4) by Fatemeh Hosseini

(Group: KMx6- Fatemeh, Skalk, Bee, Lanoi, Max, Roger)

Article: John S. Edwards, Duncan Shaw & Paul M. Collier (2005). Knowledge management systems: finding a way with technology. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 9 (1), 113-125.

Summary:

This article aims to consider the role of technology in KM in organizations (both current role and desired one). The authors review the literature with a focus on technology and KM Systems, while acknowledging that KM involves all 3 of organizational, human, and technical issues, and technical aspect is not the most important one. The literature review found out that the expert and knowledge-based system software have a role to play in supporting the KM, but so does the more conventional/general software (such as; email, search engines, discussion forums, databases, and etc.).

The research was carried out by conducting 10 workshops on 10 different organizations (with a variety of sizes and types), with 5-10 participants from the same organization attending each workshop.

The research result showed that use of general IT tools (e.g. emails, shared databases, and intranet) were among the most common tools to support KM activities rather than use of specific tools to KM. But the issue about the use of general IT tools for most organizations seems to be how to use them effectively in supporting KM.

The authors conclude that, each organization need to find a solution for their use of technology to support KM that is right for them and there is no “one size fit all” solution. But the article identifies 4 types of tensions that can influence the decisions about IT and KM and each organization needs to resolve them in order to support KM:

1) Quality Vs Quantity of information and knowledge that is being managed: e.g. existence of unfocussed and irrelevant content of shared databases
2) Centralized Vs Decentralized organizations: does KM imply a more centralized organization? What about importance of informal organizations (e.g. social networks)?
3) “Head office" Vs Operational knowledge. who should decide which knowledge needs to be managed?
4) “Push” Vs “Pull” information/knowledge strategies: How to get the right balance?


Review:

This was an empirical research article going into extensive details about description of the methodology used for data collection (i.e. observation in the workshops). It also mentions specific findings of the research about each participated organization and their extent of technology use in KM (and examples), organization’s overall focus of KM (on people, technology, or processes), issues and concerns of the current KM, and their desired level of KM. This was an easy-to-read article with lots of examples, but the examples are very general and don’t give specific information about how the organization is using the technologies and what could be changed to make them more effective.