Identifying Knowledge Values and Knowledge Sharing Through Linguistic Methods

How can three linguistical methods be used to identify the Web displays of an organization’s knowledge values and knowledge-sharing requirements? This chapter approaches this question by using three linguistical methods to analyse a company’s Web sites; (a) elements from the community of practice theory (CoP), (b) concepts from communication theory, such as modality and transitivity, and (c) elements from discourse analysis. The investigation demonstrates how a company’s use of the Web can promote a work attitude that actually can be considered as an endorsement of a particular organizational behaviour. The Web pages display a particular organizational identity that will be a magnet for some parties and deject others. In this way, a company’s Web pages represent a window to the world that need to be handled with care, since this can be interpreted as a projection of the company’s identity.

Sharing and Protecting Knowledge

As knowledge management (KM) practice increasingly moves onto the Internet, the field is changing. The Internet offers new opportunities to use knowledge assets, defines new types of knowledge assets, and readily spreads knowledge beyond the borders of the organization to collaborators and others. This potential is tempered, however, by new threats to the security of proprietary knowledge. The Internet also makes knowledge assets more vulnerable to competitive intelligence efforts. Further, both the potential and the vulnerability of knowledge on the Internet will vary according to the nature of knowledge assets (tacitness, complexity, appropriability). Those looking to practice KM must, more than ever, understand their knowledge assets and how to best employ them.

Leading Firms as Knowledge Gatekeepers in a Networked Environment

This chapter introduces the role of the knowledge gatekeeper as a mechanism by which knowledge is created and transferred in a networked environment. Knowledge creation and transfer are essential for building a knowledge-based economy. The chapter considers obstacles that inhibit this process and argues that leading firms create a shared sociocultural context that enables the condivision of tacit meanings and codification of knowledge. Leading firms act as gatekeepers of knowledge through the creation of shared virtual platforms. There will be a leading firm that connects several networks of clients and suppliers who may not interact directly with one another, but are, indeed, connected indirectly though the leading firm that acts as a gatekeeper. The chapter argues that a large firm connecting several clients and suppliers at the multinational level represents a gatekeeper, but even individuals and focal firms in industrial districts can be gatekeepers. The author hopes that, through this discussion, academics, researchers, and doctoral students will have a comprehensive theoretical and practical basis on which to study the role of leading firms in building innovations and virtual teams of knowledge sharing in a highly networked and competitive environment.

Knowledge Management in Virtual Enterprises

The new globalized and demanding business environment of the 21st century has created a shift from traditional organizations to more loose and flexible business schemes shaped in the form of Virtual Enterprises. This transformation would never have been successful without the support of Information Technologies and particularly the Web. Internet, in the last decade, has become the universal medium of interactions between distributed entities. In this chapter, the issue of Knowledge Management support for Virtual Enterprises is discussed. Building upon the current state of the art, this chapter aims to identify the major knowledge requirements of VEs, in an effort to provide a roadmap towards a holistic Knowledge Management framework that will satisfy the excessive knowledge needs of Virtual Enterprises at the interorganizational level. In that context, the role of supporting Web and Semantic Web technologies for the enactment of KM in VEs is described in detail.

Computer-Mediated Knowledge Sharing

Computer-mediated communication has become the foremost means of sharing knowledge in today’s knowledge-based economy. However, not all Internet-based knowledge-sharing channels are created equal: they differ in their effectiveness when used for exchanging knowledge. A number of factors influence the efficacies of knowledge exchange, including: (1) characteristics of the knowledge being exchanged and, (2) characteristics of the channels used. It is therefore necessary to define key knowledge and channel attributes in order to understand how knowledge can be effectively shared using computers. This chapter examines the computer-mediated knowledge sharing mechanisms and proposes a typology based on media richness and social presence characteristics that can serve as a preliminary conceptual basis to select the most appropriate channel. The chapter concludes with a discussion of key issues and future research directions. While much of the research has been done in organizational settings, the chapter is applicable to all forms of computer-mediated communication.

The Role of Knowledge Mediators in Virtual Environments

This chapter discusses the role of online knowledge mediator, an entity that occupies an intermediate position in a knowledge transfer/exchange between a source and a receiver, and whose task is to assist and facilitate the knowledge transfer process, when performed through the use of Internet-based technologies to a significant degree. In the present rapidly evolving world of Internet, many types of virtual knowledge mediators continue to come out with different features and functions. Despite their growing diffusion, little effort has been devoted to examine their practices thoroughly. In light of this, the chapter aims to develop an analytical framework that could be of use to a deeper and more systematic investigation of these new economic agents. It is a two-dimensional framework, since it is based on two complementary, conceptual views of the knowledge transfer process, that is, the cognitive and the economic one.

Managing Knowledge-Based Complexities Through Combined Uses of Internet Technologies

This chapter introduces a theoretical framework to study how Internet technologies provide organizations with additional capabilities to handle various forms of communication and decision-making complexities. In particular, we investigate how specific use-based combinations of Internet technologies emerge within operational contexts. Principal illustrations are drawn from the U.S. military uses of Tactical Internet during recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Military contexts offer relevant illustrations of organizations using Internet within complex decision environments for which short-term responsiveness and tactical adaptability are critical. Within this framework, we discuss the conditions for which combined uses generate additional value for organizations, and we underline the active role played by final users in exploiting the benefits of tactical Internet. Finally, we examine their additional value in the formulation of an effective technological strategy.

Knowledge Sharing Through Interactive Social Technologies

How do the Internet and new interactive Web-based tools, for example, wikis and discussion boards, affect people and their behavior in organizations? This chapter will show the emergence of social structures in Internet-based systems over time. Based on results of an empirical investigation of an Internet-based knowledge-sharing system, the author demonstrates the change of roles, expectations, and activities in online communities. Finally, the author sketches some essential process criteria for introducing online communities, which are extended parts of organizations (e.g., companies and institutions), characterized by a large size and supplemented the formal company.

Towards an Implicit and Collaborative Evolution of Terminological Ontologies

This chapter is concerned with the evolution of terminological ontologies used for representing personal knowledge. It first argues that each member of the knowledge society will need a personal knowledge model representing his/her knowledge. Subsequently, it presents a method for implicitly and collaboratively evolving such personal knowledge models, improving by these means the knowledge transfer in the knowledge society over the Internet. The authors hope that an understanding of the importance of personal terminological ontologies, and especially of a low-bias approach to their implicit and collaborative evolution, will contribute to the transformation from the information to the knowledge society.

Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge is one of the most important competitive resources a business can have. However, the failure of knowledge management initiatives in the last decade, especially the failure of knowledge management (sharing) systems, directly points out the inadequacy of current approaches to knowledge sharing.This chapter, expanding on the current view of knowledge and knowledge management, offers an alternative approach to knowledge sharing. It is argued that to understand employee knowledge-sharing behavior, we have to understand the interactions between organizational context and individuals’ sense-making processes before achieving success. Studies in knowledge sharing are reviewed before the missing organizational factors are pointed out. Established theories in sociology, management science, and organizational behavior are introduced where the influences of both formal and informal organizational factors on employee knowledge sharing are elaborated. Theoretical and practical implications of current study on knowledge-sharing research are discussed in the end.