CCT 355: E-Business Technologies

Class 4: Content/Knowledge Management Systems

Administration

• Check your presentation date• Case study questions? • Should be a narrative – not an

information/interview dump – what would your audience (e.g., me) think interesting about what you learned in your conversation?

• Due Tuesday Oct 11 by email (mlwjones@gmail.com will do…)

KM

• Remember data, information, knowledge, wisdom?

• KM systems are between info -> knowledge – repositories and channels to coordinate information to create knowledge

Common Information Channels

1st/2nd generation KM

• 1st generation – technology centered – focused on data architecture, access, rights management, etc. - basically, build a database and release it

• Problems?

Information Politics

• Collective ownership of information complicated

• Orlikowski and Lotus Notes – consultants resisted sharing – why?

• Still a common problem – must build a culture compatible with system and a reward structure to encourage use

• Carrots v. Sticks

UX Issues

• UX = User eXperience • Early KM systems roots in CS/digital libraries –

made sense to information scientists, few others

• Difficult UI/UX = frustrations in adoption and use and negative attitudes to use

Information Overload

• KM = too much of a good thing?• Knowing everything is not possible or

pragmatic • Information shutdown usually the result of

trying• Coping mechanisms?

Information Sharing/Access/Control

• KM systems can and do limit access• Access limitations often make sense –

examples?• Sometimes don’t – examples?• Establish proper levels of access and workflow

a concern

Suggestions

• Ensure wide benefits and limited consequences

• Create incentives for use – intrinsic and extrinsic

• Promote (and capture?) multiple channels of learning

• Understanding work practice and culture

Tacit and Explicit Knowledge Sources

• Explicit knowledge – recorded information, can be transferred with relative ease

• Tacit knowledge – “know how” or “know why” – built from experience, cannot be easily captured and transferred

• Examples?

SECI and Ba: Nonaka and Takeuchi

SECI Process

• Socialization – beginning of transfer of tacit knowledge

• Externalization – conversion to explicit knowledge• Combination – integration/synthesis of other

explicit knowledge pieces• Internalization – reembodiment of new

knowledge as standard practice• Cyclical process moving up from individual to

group knowledge

Ba?

• Less process than context• Somewhat of an art – context and its

manipulation to create a positive ecology/environment for information sharing

Four types of “ba”

• Originating – where people share stories• Interacting – a more consciously designed

structure of social interaction, transfer of tacit stories to explicit knowledge

• Cyber/systemizing – role of IT in integrating explicit knowledge

• Exercising – synthetic application and return to information sharing environment

Information and Time

• Information sometimes decays over time – examples?

• Information about past can nevertheless be valuable – examples?

• KM and organizational turnover – in high-turnover domains, information transfer especially complicated

GPO

• Information sharing in a campaign – different channels (and different silos)

• Learning from tacit knowledge (…and its limitations)

• Between campaigns – hopefully you collect and store knowledge to share for future years

• Information over time challenges

FSAE

• KM challenges – 2000 reports – how to access?• Database a failure – why? • Google solution – great but impossible at time

(now, different story)• Work on creating/maintaining ba• Limitations of ba• Information over time challenges – maintaining

success over even five years difficult

In-class assignment

• Consider a work/organization environment (your choice – just note what it is.)

• What are common tacit knowledge sources? Explicit knowledge sources?

• How may an information system help manage explicit knowledge in this case?

Presentations

• Ignite presentation tips