Knowledge Management Systems, Social Media, & Organizational Learning

So I have finally come to the last blog post regarding our reading list! I have to admit at the beginning of the semester I was worried that I wouldn’t be disciplined enough to keep up with the class, but I made it! As for this blog, I still have to post about the folksonomy so I will probably do that next week. Also, I still plan on using this blog for posting about school and other library related tasks, so feel free to check back from time to time after we complete this class. 

So for my final readings I read Alavi and Leidner’s article, Knowledge management and knowledge management systems: conceptual foundations and research issues. Then I read Knowledge and knowledge management in the social media age by Hemsley and Mason. Finally, I read the Huber article about Organizational learning. 

The first article by Alavi and Leidner discusses how many of the knowledge management processes (classification, etc.) have been around for most of history and how only in recent years have researchers really begun considering knowledge as an important tool for organizations. Alavi and Leidner go on to discuss how knowledge management systems are developed and implemented by examining important research issues in the field. This was relatively straightforward stuff, but it was pretty interesting overall given what I have already read this semester. 

The next article I read was one that many of you have already covered in your blogs, the Hemsley and Mason article. This article reminded me of the Nahapiet and Ghoshal article that I read last week. Mainly because Hemsley and Mason seemed to agree that social media facilitates knowledge creation, which is not a far cry from what Nahapiet & Ghoshal said, which was that social capital helps create intellectual capital. One of the neat things about this article is that the authors put forth the idea of a “knowledge ecosystem,” which the authors propose is the result of the collaboration and innovation that come from social media tools like blogs, wikis, and microblogging. Another interesting part of this article is how they begin, which is by dissecting how something “goes viral” and the outcome of such an event. As a fan of Twitter and YouTube, I really enjoyed this article and it would probably rank high on my list of favorite KM readings this semester. 

The final article I read was by Huber and it discusses organizational learning through a review of related literature. From this, Huber finds that organizational learning, like Blackler found about knowledge, is too broad to be assessed normally. Therefore, Huber broke organizational learning down into four categories: knowledge acquisition, information interpretation, organizational memory (which Anne discusses on her blog here, and information distribution. Interestingly enough, one of the things that Huber found in this article was that among scholars who research organizational learning, there is very little “cumulative work.” Huber hypothesizes that this is because researchers have difficulty finding one another and that even when they do, few agree with one another. Of course, this article was written in 1991, so it is much easier for researchers to find one another today, thanks to technology!  

 Sources

Alavi, M., & Leidner, D. E. (2001). Review: Knowledge management and knowledge management systems: Conceptual foundations and research issues. MIS quarterly, 107-136.

Hemsley, J., & Mason, R. M. (2013). Knowledge and knowledge management in the social media age. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 23(1-2), 138-167.

Huber, G. P. (1991). Organizational learning: The contributing processes and the literatures. Organization science, 2(1), 88-115.

Risks in Knowledge Sharing vs. Bounded Awareness

Rejoice classmates, the midterms are almost done, and the wondrous holiday of Spring Break is nearly upon us! Anyway, the first article I read for this week was Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation by Brown and Duguid. This was a pretty nifty article because it talked about how companies view work versus how it actually gets done, which is something I think most students can relate to, amirite? Educators sometimes have an idea about how students should go about learning, and students nod, say yes, and then do their school work in whatever manner best suits them. As Joe pointed out in his post about this article, sticking to a manual, rarely benefits employees or meshes with the workflow. For instance, when I worked at a call center, we would have various trainings on different issues. However, inevitably these different methods we would be instructed to use would affect the company’s call metrics (handling time, adherence, queue volume, etc.) and they would tell us to disregard the changes so that we could clear out the backed up calls. The problem in this case was that the trainers and people making changes were not familiar enough with the job to really know how the changes would affect the bottom line. This disconnect between workers and companies is at the heart of what Brown and Duguid discuss in this article.

The next article I read was Bounded awareness and tacit knowledge: revisiting Challenger disaster by Kumar and Chakrabarti. I wasn’t yet born when the Challenger exploded, but I do remember growing up and hearing about how horrible it was from family members and teachers. Despite the tragic situation it deals with, I really liked this article. Mainly because the idea of bounded awareness seems like it could apply to a whole host of political science stuff. Anyhow, the authors argue that while there are benefits to individual tacit knowledge, it “also plays a role in creating limits on their knowing and inducing bounds on their awareness (p. 946).” Which sounds to me as if, don’t miss the forest because you’re busy looking at the tree.

The last article I read for this week was Knowledge risks in organizational networks: an exploratory framework by Trkman and Desouza. What’s something that KM articles love to discuss? Frameworks! They are like Oprah, in their own tacity knowledge sort of way.

You get a framework!

Everybody gets a framework!

Ahem, sorry it’s late, I digress. So this article is concerned with the risks related to “knowledge sharing in networks (p. 19).” The authors outline how these risks affect the km process, and offer a framework to provide some “structure” to the process in order to reduce any concerns and to better aid companies. Anne’s post here has an excellent write up on this article. I think that this article in particular is interesting because it wants structure, but then if you think back on the article by Brown & Duguid, you see that the structure sometimes adds risk by creating bounded awareness. At least that's how I interpret that, what are y'alls thoughts?

References

Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. Organization science, 2(1), 40-57.

Kumar, A., & Chakrabarti, A. (2012). Bounded awareness and tacit knowledge: revisiting Challenger disaster. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(6), 934-949.

Trkman, P., & Desouza, K. C. (2012). Knowledge risks in organizational networks: an exploratory framework. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 21(1), 1-17.