Folksonomy

I used Mendeley for my citation manager after first using citeyoulike and deciding I didn’t like the interface. Tagging the articles was a bit harder than I has anticipated. Most articles were long and involved many theories and concepts, and though it would have been easiest to simple tag everything “knowledge management” deciding how to tag each article took some thought. I ended up using 50 unique tags throughout the course of the 33 readings, though many of those were used on multiple articles. I had an average of 2-3 tags per article and struggled more with not having too many tags than with not having enough.

I had not been familiar with citation managers before I took this class and I;m not sure I would use one in the future. They still seemed to be a lot of work, and of course I don’t read many scholarly articles in my free time. I suppose if I were a professor or researcher I might find a citation manager pretty useful, as many articles have very similar titles and would be hard to keep straight.

Aaaand done!

Beginning in the 1950’s, technologies based on knowledge and information production have led the economies of developed countries. The advent of personal computers followed by the internet and email has massively influenced the economy. In Powell and Snellman’s The knowledge economy the authors talk about how industrialized nations are transitioning from natural resource-based economies to economies based on intellectual assets.

Knowledge economies are “production and service based on knowledge-intensive activities”, this causes technological and scientific advancement at a rapid pace. Reliance of intellectual capabilities, rather than natural resources, is the main component of a knowledge economy. Finding ways to improve production processes is also a large factor, from research and development through to customer interactions. One measure of the knowledge economy is by how rapidly knowledge management is being taken up by consulting firms, as knowledge management is an integral component of a knowledge economy.

There are three main lines of research relating to knowledge economies. The first emphasizes the rise of science-based industries and how they play into society and the economy. Another line of research the authors mention is whether new kinds of work and work organization have been developed in the last few years, and the third line of research focuses on the role learning and innovation inside organizations plays. Researchers are interested to know whether the good knowledge production and transfer skills exhibited by some organizations can be copied.

Informational cities: analysis and construction of cities in the knowledge society by Stock talks about the importance of city-level knowledge management. In Stock’s opinion, information cities will be the norm in the information society. Information and communication technologies (ICT) as well as cognitive infrastructure are of very important to informational cities. ICT can have an influence on the development of cities and countries. The ICT infrastructure, i.e. the telephone, computer, and internet access, the ICT usage, i.e. internet and mobile users, and ICT abilities, i.e. the number of people able to use ICT is a main component of informational cities. The second component, cognitive infrastructure, refers to “soft” factors such as research, training, technology, and innovation.

In an informational city there are two central types of cognitive activity: scientific-technical-medical, and creative-artistic. There are also four types of enterprises that are dominant in an informational city: financial service providers, high-tech industry, companies of the information economy, and creative and knowledge-intensive services. Each of these relies heavily on the aforementioned ICT and cognitive infrastructures. If you would like to read more about informational cities (and who wouldn’t?) see Whitney’s blog over here.

In The Information society: from Fordism to Gateism, Trembaly takes a slightly different approach to the questions surrounding information societies. He hypothesizes that it is not necessarily information that is changing our society but capitalism. As information and communication are more and more integrated into our economy, information, communication, and culture are becoming commodities.

By Fordism the author is referring to the form of capitalism involving a norm of production, consumption, and regulation system. Gateism is more involved with contemporary society. Bill Gates is a self-made man and represents the new era of informatics and telecommunications. Much progress has been made in the last few decades in the fields of informatics and telecommunications, but this is a result of social, political, and economic conditions.

 

 

Powell, W. and Snellman, K. (2004). The knowledge economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 199-220.

Stock, W. (2011). Informational cities: analysis and construction of cities in the knowledge society. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(5), 963-986.

Tremblay, G. (1995). The information society: from Fordism to Gateism. Canadian Journal of Communication, 20(4), 461-482.

A little more…

Our society is turning into a “knowledge society”, where knowledge is playing an increasingly important role. How organizations process and create knowledge is critical in a constantly changing environment. As organizations innovate new knowledge is created. This new knowledge can have a ripple effect in creating new, related knowledge. This can put a strain on the organizations knowledge system if the organization is not well prepared to change and adapt as new knowledge is created.

Nonaka’s paper focuses on the process of creating organizational knowledge. He believes that organizational knowledge is created through a continuous interaction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. The author identifies four ways in which tacit and explicit knowledge interact: socialization, combination, internalization, and externalization. Socialization is the process of converting tacit knowledge through interaction between individuals. One individual passes on their tacit knowledge to another by showing them how to do something during a shared experience. Conversion is where social processes are used to combine explicit knowledge of one individual with the explicit knowledge of another through meetings or phone calls, etc. Externalization is the conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, and internalization is the opposite, or converting explicit to tacit. For a deeper understanding of Nonaka’s article this blog post is a good place to start.

Information sharing during incidents can be stressful. Major incidents can be time-sensitive, complex, and uncertain. In Ibrahim and Allen’s paper Information sharing and trust during major incidents: findings form the oil industry, the information sharing on oil rigs during major incidents was studied. Communication and information sharing are vitally important during these incidents and most of the failures that occur can be traced back to communication and management failures.

Ibrahim and Allen, like Lucas in The impact of trust and reputation on the transfer of best practices, acknowledges that trust is an important part of the communication and information sharing equation. Trust can collapse during volatile and stressful situations, requiring that trust be rebuilt afterward through information sharing. During an incident however, if information sharing fails it can mean failure for the whole effort.

I probably should have read What is organizational knowledge? By Tsoukas and Vladimirou much sooner than I actually did considering how many articles I have already read on the subject. Tsoukas and Vladimirou’s paper talks about how individual knowledge becomes organizational knowledge, and that to an extent all knowledge is collective knowledge. This paper does go against Nonaka’s though in claiming that tacit knowledge cannot be made explicit. I don’t think I agree with that however, I think the deeper an understanding someone has of their knowledge the more likely it is that they can make at least some of that knowledge explicit.

Tsoukas and Vladimirou talk about individual knowledge in terms of being able to make distinctions based on context, theory, or both. According to the authors this knowledge then becomes organizational when, in addition to drawing distinctions throughout their work, individuals act upon a “corpus of generalizations” in the form of the organization’s rules.

 

 

Ibrahim, N. and Allen, D. (2012). Information sharing and trust during major incidents: findings from the oil industry. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(10), 1916-1928.

Nonaka, I. (1994). A Dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science, 5(1), 14-37.

Tsoukas, H. and Vladimirou, E. (2001). What is organizational knowledge? Journal of Management

 

Almost there…

In Organizational learning and communities of practice, Brown and Duguid talk about working, learning, and innovating as interrelated and potentially complementary, not conflicting as many would believe. This view of working, learning, and innovation as unified allows for collaboration rather than conflict among workers, learners, and innovators.

According to Brown and Duguid, within an organization different communities are formed with a specific power distribution among these communities. The way information is created and travels through an organization depends on these communities. Within organizations communities are constantly changing and adapting to new circumstances, meaning communities can be important sites of innovation and therefore studying the workings of these groups can lead to insights on knowledge and innovation.

Organizations need to understand how working, learning, and innovating among members of the organization works since often they are at odds with an organization’s core beliefs. Because of this, many of an organization’s processes and technologies, especially the ones that are designed to downskill, threaten the workplace communities that might otherwise be working, learning, and innovating. In order for an organization to foster rather than hinder these, the gap between espoused and actual practices needs to be closed. The authors believe that this can be accomplished through a larger degree of autonomy within communities in the organization.

In Context matters: the experience of physical, informational, and cultural distance in a rural IT firm Goggins and Mascaro conducted a 3-year ethnographic case study on a rural outsourcing firm. This study was intended to develop a better understanding of the role that geographical, cultural, and informational distance plays in distributed work. Cultural distance refers to the rural firm’s technology workers inexperience with the organizational communication and coordination methods that are commonly used by more urban work places. Informational distance refers to the gap in the skills, social relationships, and experience that one needs to be able to innovate and apply new knowledge within an organization. If you’re interested in reading a discussion on the ICT aspects of the study, Whitney wrote about that over here.

In Goggins and Mascaro’s study, at the Small Town Co. (STC) employees were put through boot camp style training rather than requiring the formal education that urban employers generally do. Brown and Duguid wrote about a similar concept when they said that many organizations believe complex tasks can be completed by following canonical steps, without having much understanding or insight into the situation.

Cook and Brown’s Bridging epistemologies: the generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing discusses the distinct forms of knowledge and asserts that their differences are relevant to understanding organizations. Knowledge is usually talked about in regards to groups and individuals, explicit and tacit. The authors claim that these four categories of knowledge is a distinct form and is equal to the other three forms, no one category is more important.

The authors also discuss knowledge as part of human action, either that which is possessed in the head or that which is part of practice. The category of knowledge that is part of practice refers to the act of using knowledge as a tool, also referred to as “generative dance”.

 

Brown, J. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. Organization Science, 2(1), 40-57.

Cook, S. and Brown, J. (1999). Bridging epistemologies: the generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing. Organization Science, 10(4), 381-400.

Goggins, C. and Mascaro, C. (2013). Context matters: the experience of physical, informational, and cultural distance in a rural IT firm. The Information Society, 29(2), 113-127.

Lucas’ The impact of trust and reputation on the transfer of best practices (also written about by Melinda here) talks mainly about how knowledge is transferred among employees. According to Lucas, for knowledge transfer to take place people must be willing to change the way they do things. This doesn’t seem like much to ask but has been found in practice to be difficult. For an employee to change their ways of doing things they need to see the benefit in doing so. One problem in knowledge transfer is finding an effective way to make employees aware of what information is available, where it can be found, and what ways are available for it to be transferred.
Lucas’ study focused on understanding the process of knowledge transfer and why some efforts at knowledge transfer fail. Trust and reputation were found to be vital to the process. When there is trust among employees, resource exchange between them is increased and the transaction costs are decreased. Reputation, the opinion of others about an individual’s abilities, is also important as people are less likely to trust someone with a poor reputation. The reputation of the people involved in the knowledge transfer transaction may either willingly participate or limit their participation. For effective knowledge transfer in an organization employees must trust coworkers enough to accept new information from them and share information with them. The findings of Lucas’ study show that much attention needs to be paid to the issues of trust and reputation. Efforts in implementing a knowledge transfer strategy are likely to fail if one does not have a sufficient understanding of the ways the interpersonal relationships affect knowledge transfer.

Chalmeta and Grangel, in Methodology for the implementation of knowledge management systems, wrote about knowledge management (KM) as understood to mean the “capacity to create, collect, organize, access, and use knowledge”. For an organization to use KM correctly a knowledge management system (KMS) must be developed and implemented. This system must support KM and allow new knowledge to be created and shared. This generally involved the codification, storage, and distribution of this knowledge throughout the organization. In order for organizations to effectively implement KM practices, both the management and the employees must recognize its value and be willing to implement KM practices.

Information systems are an effective way to help manage an organization’s knowledge. Lucas discusses a project called “Methodology for Knowledge Management” whose objective was to develop a methodology to be used in developing and implementing a KMS. This methodology has five stages for dealing with the target knowledge: analysis and identification, extraction, classification and representation, processing and storage, and utilization and continuous improvement.  
An organization’s role is to integrate pieces of knowledge and use them to help attain the organization’s objectives. In Knowledge risks in organizational networks: and exploratory framework by Trkman this thinking is extended to networks as well. Trkman believes that networks are critical in acquiring knowledge resources and capabilities for an organization. For this to occur, knowledge must be properly shared, as a loss of knowledge can occur if during knowledge sharing if it is shared improperly. Loss of information can be a disaster to an organization. Organizations face challenges within networks, including how to manage the risks associated with knowledge sharing.  It is critical that a balance between too much and not enough knowledge sharing is reached, as well as making sure knowledge is secure as it is being shared. Corporate knowledge that falls into the hands of a competitor could have a disastrous result on the organization and possibly the whole network.  

Chalmeta, R. and Grangel, R. (2008). Methodology for the implementation of knowledge management systems. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(5), 742–755.

Lucas, L. (2005). The impact of trust and reputation on the transfer of best practices. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(4), 87-101.

Trkman, P. (2011). Knowledge risks in organizational networks: an exploratory framework.
 Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 21(1), 1-17.

7 down…

In Knowledge management, codification, and tacit knowledge, Kimble talks about how knowledge must circulate and be exchanged for it to be beneficial. This seems to be a common understanding among knowledge management articles, and it’s sort of obvious when you think about it. What good is knowledge if it can’t be accessed or applied?

Kimble also talks about how knowledge is created during the process of learning by doing, especially tact knowledge. Tacit knowledge is usually seen as being acquired by personal experience. This is why it is so hard to identify and capture this type of knowledge. Kimble writes about two separate views of tacit knowledge, that put forth by Polanyi in 1966 and another put forth by Nonaka in more recent years. According to Polanyi, tacit knowledge is located in the mind of an individual and is inaccessible to the conscious mind. According to Polanyi, knowing is the act of integrating tacit knowledge with explicit knowledge. Nonaka believes in knowledge conversion, where one form of knowledge is converted to the other. During knowledge conversion a SECI cycle takes place involving socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization. Thus knowledge starts out external and becomes internal over time.

In What’s your strategy for managing knowledge? Hansen et al discuss knowledge management in corporations. Executives have been talking about knowledge management since the 90’s. Consultants use two different knowledge management strategies: codification or personalization. In the codification strategy knowledge is codified and put in a database, whereas with the personalization strategy knowledge is closely tied to the person who developed it and is mainly shared person-to-person.

Both strategies have their pros and cons. With codification strategy, knowledge is opened up and able to be retrieved and reused without having to go through the person who originally created the knowledge. Personalization leads to meetings and brainstorming sessions that can lead to deeper insights into the subject. Successful organizations focus on one of the strategies and use the other as support, rather than try for both. The authors suggest a 80/20 split is the best route, focus most of your resources on one strategy but use the other strategy as a backup.

In Knowledge outsourcing: an alternative strategy for knowledge management, Lam and Chua focus on knowledge outsourcing (KO). Knowledge management is generally viewed as an internal strategy where an organization’s knowledge is leveraged. In KO, external experts are contracted for knowledge management. Those external experts generate knowledge assets which are then internalized by the organization.

The authors used Fenton University (FU) as a case study to study KO, as FU (haha) uses KO to create the online courseware used in teaching. This was done to answer 3 questions: when an organization would want to use KO (motivation), how KO would be carried out (scope and performance) and how to make sure the KO was successful (risk). FU has an academic staff of only 7 with many of the course development tasks outsourced. Because of outsourcing, FU was able to tap a larger knowledge base than would otherwise have been available to them and saved money by not having to hire the full-time staff that would be required to create their own content. Of course KO has drawbacks. They were found to include the effort required to manage outsourcing and the level of quality of the outsourced services. For more on FU’s knowledge outsourcing, Melinda wrote about it on her blog over here.

 

 

 

Hansen et al (1999). What’s your strategy for managing knowledge? Harvard Business Review, March-April.

 

Kimble, C. (2013). Knowledge management, codification and tacit knowledge. Information Research, 18(2). Retrieved from http://www.informationr.net/ir/18-2/paper577.html#.U2BW4le5ZfZ.

 

Lam, W. and Chua, A. (2009). Knowledge outsourcing: an alternative strategy for knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13(3), 28-43.

I tried to spread these out…

Wikis as a KM tool talks about how many corporations are abandoning KM systems in favor of Web 2.0 applications. This seems natural as it keeps with the general progression toward Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies. Web 2.0 applications are free or little cost, and people are increasingly comfortable with their use. When you think about it, Web 2.0 applications have the desired qualities of a good KM system and it makes sense that companies are noticing the potential benefits. One Web 2.0 application, the wiki, allows people in different locations to collaborate and create new knowledge. The example of a wiki the author gives is Wikipedia, where people from all over the world have worked together to create an incredibly extensive knowledge site. A major benefit of companies using wikis is that they do not require advanced programming knowledge to update and maintain them. There is a relatively simple interface that allows novices to input their information and share it with anyone who has access.

Wikis can also help capture tacit knowledge rather than just explicit knowledge. At my library we have a reference wiki that is used for the random sources and websites we find that may help us answer future questions. Sites like fictiondb.com and city-data.com that some people know about and use frequently but others might not be aware of. The wiki is a good way to add information like this that others can check when they have time and possibly discover new ways to answer patrons’ questions.

High velocity/turbulent environments are those in which change is rapid and quick decisions need to be made. These are often life or death such as war and disaster response. These also offer an ongoing knowledge opportunity if that knowledge is able to be captured and shared. Traditional databases and even Web 2.0 applications are not very useful in the high velocity/turbulent environments. During a crisis knowledge needs to be accessible instantaneously in order to make sound decisions. Face-to-face interactions are best in these situations, though not always possible. The best solution seems to be to train people to react to situations before they arise. This allows the development of tacit knowledge which is essential for HV/TE.

According to Jones and Mahon, the three aspects of knowledge are how it is obtained, how it is stored and organized, and how that knowledge is accessed and shared. This paper discussed the BP oil spill in 2010 and compares it to the BP oil spill in Axerbaijan 18 months earlier. This is similar to the situations in a Tale of two hurricanes in which hurricane Katrina was handled poorly but hurricane Rita three weeks later was handled much better, thanks to lessons learned during Katrina. As for the oil spills, it did not appear that any new knowledge was obtained from the first incident, or at least not applied to the 2010 disaster.

In Knowledge transfer in response to organizational crises: an exploratory study Wang and Lu discuss organizational crises and how they can threaten an organization. These crises are low frequency, high-consequence events. Each is unique and must be dealt with in a timely manner, meaning information must be shared quickly and efficiently with those who need it. According to the authors the biggest barrier to organizational knowledge usage is insufficient channels between those providing the information and those seeking it. For successful knowledge transfer, multiple channels need to be available.

In order to study knowledge transfer during crises, the authors studied the organizational crisis that resulted from a massive recall by a Japanese motorcycle company. The recall was handled well and the company went out of its way to make the repairs to the recalled mopeds as easy on the customers as it could. During a crisis decision makers are often forced to make critical decisions, based on limited information and knowledge and with time pressure, in response to situations marked by a high level of ambiguity and uncertainty. How organizations deal with these crises can make or break an organization. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the Lexus recall when that company was new and how their handling of the crisis improved their image, there’s a blog post on it here if anyone is interested!

 

References:

Grace, T. (2009). Wikis as a knowledge management tool. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13(4), 64-74.

Jones, B. and Mahon, J. (2012). Nimble knowledge transfer in high velocity/turbulent environments. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(5), 774-788.

Wang, W. and Lu, Y. (2010). Knowledge transfer in response to organizational crises: An exploratory study. Expert Systems with Applications, 37, 3934-3942.

Disaster preparedness and Social Capital

I found a Tale of two hurricanes by Chua very interesting. In this paper, Chua compares the preparation and response times to hurricanes Katrina and Rita from A knowledge management perspective. Though KM is not usually applied to disaster management, the author would like to see that change. The effective creation, reuse, and transfer of knowledge is integral to the preparation-response-recovery cycle. When large disasters such as hurricanes occur, many different agencies are involved in this cycle, meaning many different agencies need to communicate and work together to transfer knowledge, which can be a challenge within a single organization, let alone multiple organizations with different knowledge sets and chains of command.

Large disasters such as these hurricanes underline the importance of disaster preparedness and response. The study compared how each disaster was predicted, how the disaster plans were implemented, and the management of relief and rescue operations. This study showed a specific example of how disaster management is influenced by each disaster. This means that it is an evolving concept, as it should be. Each occurrence provides learning opportunities and can help improve preparation and response processes. By comparing hurricanes that occurred just three weeks apart, Chua was able to demonstrate how the response to Katrina influenced the response to Rita. Multiple mistakes with Katrina, such as inadequate supplies, lack of early evacuation, and clear lines of control among responding organizations were corrected with Rita. Though the evacuation plan with Rita ran into a major problem, it can be hoped that the lesson was learned and will not occur with the next incident.

Overall, this article demonstrated how many separate groups can come together to coordinate efforts to meet a mutual goal. To do this effectively, different internal departments as well as outside agencies need to cooperate to share information efficiently. Differing priorities, inconsistent procedures, disrupted communication lines, and contradictory observations have led to conflicts. Lines of control need to be established prior to an event to make sure everyone works as a team.

In the Once and future information society, Rule and Besen discuss how the new social uses of information and application of scientific knowledge are transforming society. As the economy becomes more knowledge-based, information and the ability to use it is becoming a valuable asset. Experts are being given a higher status, and information personnel, those who create knowledge, communicate ideas, and process information, are becoming the bulk of the work force.

In an increasingly information-oriented society, pay gaps are widening between well-educated and non-educated individuals. There are increasingly demanding entry standards for many professions, and even entry-level fast food workers are expected to have at least basic computer skills. Some argue that since most of the skill is learned on the job, this should not be the case and that formal education is put on too high of a pedestal when many jobs could be done as well by someone with less impressive credentials. Some people, on the other hand, think that educational credentials simply help employers to screen potential employees for qualities of interest such as status or work habits.

Rule and Besen also mention Saint Simon, who assumed that access to more knowledge much lead to a reduction in waste and social conflict. As great as this idea sounds, it has been shown to be incorrect. An increase in knowledge and understanding of others’ positions has not led to a decline in conflict.

In Social capital, intellectual capital, and the organizational advantage by Nahapiet and Ghoshal talk about the importance of social capital as it highlights the personal relationships that develop over time between individuals. These relationships produce trust, cooperation, and collective action, and can lead to a creation of intellectual capital. This occurs because the combination and exchange of this intellectual capital is what is required to create new knowledge. The authors think that it is the social relationships between members of an organization that facilitated the creation and exchange of knowledge. Lisa writes more about the relationship between social capital and intellectual capital here.

Network ties can be created outside of the individual’s organization, and can provide access to resources. If, for example, members of separate organizations working on the disaster preparedness in a Tale of two hurricanes had previous ties, it might have improved the sharing of knowledge and made the Katrina response go much more smoothly. This seems to encourage groups to work together frequently in order to build relationships and trust. As is stated in the article, “trust lubricates cooperation, and cooperation itself breeds trust”. Social relationships also need to be strengthened through frequent interaction, as social capital can diminish over time if not used.

KM in Academic Libraries

Librarians face many obstacles to providing effective service to patrons. As a constantly-changing place, libraries need to be able to provide a level of service that ensures people keep coming back. It is for this reason that libraries should seek to improve internal processes to help manage information. This has the potential to free up staff time so that librarians can get back to focusing on helping patrons rather than spending time on clerical tasks. According to Townley in Knowledge management in academic libraries: special tools and processes to support information professionals, ideal knowledge management in a library involves staff organizing their personal finding aids, notes, and tacit knowledge so that others can benefit. Of course, this is much easier said than done. While this sounds great, there are issues of staff not taking the time to do a thorough job of it, as who would ever know if they hadn’t recorded all of their tacit knowledge? Implementing a new system requires people to contribute, and not everyone will want to. A question of how to store this knowledge is also a problem. A knowledge management system needs more than just content but also effective organization. One example the authors give of an effective KM system is the one developed by Rutgers University. Rutgers created the CKDB (Common Knowledge Database) which included websites, guides, email, local databases, and a universal rolodex. Of course, not all institutions have the resources that Rutgers does.

In The use of different information and communication technologies, Yuan and Zhao suggest that social media tools can be used to facilitate knowledge sharing, as knowledge management is already deeply social in nature. This might help holdouts to participate in sharing their tacit knowledge with coworkers. In large libraries, it’s hard to keep up with the personal knowledge available from others. One coworker may be proficient in ebook troubleshooting, but others may not be aware and so never benefit from that knowledge. Though there are online sources as well as email that can be used to solicit answers, Yuan and Zhao found that tacit knowledge is better learned face-to-face, as it allows a person to learn from observation. As most people prefer to seek help from a person rather than a computer, face-to-face communication should be encouraged whenever possible.

As Jantz mentions in Knowledge management and academic libraries, as baby boomers retire they will leave knowledge deficits. We need to find new and creative ways to gather this valuable information before it is lost. At my library we lost our director last year, we will lose our reference supervisor Friday, and both branch supervisors as well as many other employees in the next couple of years to retirement. With this level of turnover there will inevitably be information losses, but we need to minimize these losses in as effective a way as possible. If you want to read more about KM in academic libraries Joe Gabbard also wrote about Jantz and Townley’s articles here back in February.

Social Media and Web 2.0

This week I read more about social media and Web 2.0. The term Web 2.0 is used to describe the websites that allow users to collaborate and contribute content. These sites include social media sites such as Facebook and Youtube, as well as wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.

Users can be divided into three categories: passive users, minimal active users, and active users. It is not required for each user to add content to Web 2.0 applications, however in Web 2.0 implications on knowledge management it is suggested that “web 2.0 gets better the more people use it”.

Social media means that even the average person wields power. Even if something doesn’t “go viral”, just a few people sharing can mean the item is seen by thousands. This is because social media facilitates mass communication, allowing people to maintain a large network of weak ties. There is a definite downside to the speed at which knowledge can be disseminated. Once an item starts to be shared by other users, the original poster can lose power over the information. As others add their opinions, knowledge can be added to or lost from the original content as others’ opinions can influence how the information is received by new viewers.

With social media, firms open two-way communication. This is generally thought to be a good thing; however it can quickly get out of control in the event of a disgruntled customer. Hemsley and Mason note the incident with United where a guitar was broken by the company and cause a PR nightmare for the company when the video made by the guitar’s owner went viral. Though bad for United, incidents like these give consumers a way to fight back against injustices when the use of social media puts pressure on companies to correct mistakes. Now, because of smartphones and tablets, people can be continuously connected to their social network. This contributes to the speed at which things can go viral and a company behaving poorly can get around the country within hours of the original post.

In Why should I share? the posts to a professional association’s forum are examined to try to determine why people voluntarily contribute to an online forum. In this article it is suggested that knowledge is the most valuable resource to an organization because it represents the assets of the company. For some professionals a community of practice (see this post more on communities of practice) is not available or for whatever reason a network of practice may be preferred. Electronic communication networks such as forums are useful for connecting individuals in order to share information and ideas with people they might not have ever met but who share a common interest or occupation.

The study found that the main reason people contributed to the professional forum is to enhance their own professional reputation. To a lesser extent, people also contributed just because it feels good to help others.