Knowledge management software

Abstract: We present a reflexive retrospective account of a UK government research council funded project deploying knowledge management software to support environmental sustainability in the construction industry. This project was set up in a form typical of a Mode 2 research programme involving several academic institutions and industrial partners, and aspiring to fulfil the Mode 2 criteria seen as transdisciplinarity and business relevance. The multidisciplinary nature is analysed through retrospectively reflecting upon the research process and activities we carried out, and is found to be problematic. No real consensus was reached between the partners on the 'context of application'. Difficulties between industry and academia, within industry and within academia led to diverging agendas and different alignments for participants. The context of application does not (pre-)exist independently of institutional influences, and in itself cannot drive transdisciplinarity since it is subject to competing claims and negotiations. There were unresolved tensions in terms of private vs. public construction companies and their expectations of ICT-based knowledge management, and in terms of the sustainable construction agenda. This post hoc reflexive account, enables us to critique our own roles in having developed a managerial technology for technically sophisticated and powerful private industrial actors to the detriment of public sector construction partners, having bypassed sustainability issues, and not reached transdisciplinarity. We argue that this is due to institutional pressures and instrumentalization from academia, industry and government and a restricted notion of business relevance. There exists a politically motivated tendency to oppose Mode 1 academic research to practitioner-oriented Mode 2 approaches to management research. We argue that valuing the links between co-existing Mode 1 and 2 research activities would support a more genuine and fuller exploration of the context of application.

Abstract: Practice, then, both shapes and supports learning. We wouldn't need to labor this point so heavily were it not that unenlightened teaching and training often pulls in the opposite direction. Brown & Duguid (2000, p. 129) In their book The Social Life of Information , Brown and Duguid (2000) analyze examples of learning in the context of professional practice and the ways in which information technology supports or fails to support professional learning. Failure is related to neglect of ways in which people learn, their resourcefulness in solving problems, and the communities of practice in which they participate. As the opening quotation suggests, training (and technology that supports a training model of learning) tends to pull professionals away from their practice, focusing on information about a practice rather than on how to put that knowledge into practice. Only by engaging in work and talking about it from inside the practice can one learn to be a competent practitioner. They conclude that “practice is an effective teacher and the community of practice an ideal learning environment” (p. 127). Over the past several years, we have been developing and refining the sociotechnical infrastructure of a virtual environment called Tapped In ® (www.tappedin.org) that is intended to support the online activities of a large and diverse community of education professionals. We have described the design principles that underlie our efforts and documented how educators have used the environment for their own purposes and in the context of formal professional development (Schlager & Schank, 1997; Schank, Fenton, Schlager, & Fusco, 1999).

Abstract: Knowledge Management Software must be embedded in processes of knowledge workers' everyday practice. In order to attain a seamless design, regarding the special qualities and requirements of knowledge work, detailed studies of the existing work processes and analysis of the used knowledge are necessary. Participation of the knowledge owners and future users us an important factor for success of knowledge management systems. In this paper we describe characteristics of knowledge work motivating the usage of participatory design techniques. We suggest a design process for developing or improving knowledge management, which includes ethnographic surveys, user participation in cyclic improvement, scenario based design, and the use of multiple design artifacts and documents. Finally we explain the benefits of our approach. The paper is based on a case study we carried out to design and introduce a knowledge management system in a training company.

Abstract: Purveyors of knowledge management software have a disconcerting tendency to promote the myth that all problems may be solved by more powerful tools for the exchange of information in the workplace. This fallacy is based on the faulty assumption that knowledge management is about the management of knowledge (as if knowledge were a commodity that could be managed), as opposed to the management of people whose work depends critically on what they know. The origins of knowledge management are far more firmly rooted in the psychological legacy of organizational communication than they are in the technological legacy of information management systems. However, even organizational communication is an inadequate foundation, since various schools of thought in social theory, particularly the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens, inform us that interaction (in the workplace or in any other social setting) is not strictly limited to communication. Knowledge management thus requires moving beyond simplistic models of information exchange to more challenging problems of leveraging social interaction to the advantage of the enterprise. This paper focuses on the claim of structuration theory that the dimension of communication should be supplemented with additional dimensions of power and sanction. This perspective is then examined in light of a case study of crisis management practices, and the case study provides a basis for addressing implications for technological support.