Organizational Interventions of Knowledge Management Systems & Design Science Perspective
I have a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. The paper is titled, "Contextualizing Organizational Interventions of Knowledge Management Systems: A Design Science Perspective," and is co-authored with Peter Baloh (BISOL and IEDC Bled School of Management) and Raymond A. Hackney (Brunel University). This paper is based on Peter Baloh's dissertation. I served as chair of Peter's dissertation committee.
The research in this paper addresses how individuals’ (workers) knowledge needs influence the design of knowledge management systems (KMS) enabling knowledge creation and utilization. It is evident that KMS technologies and activities are indiscriminately deployed in most organizations with little regard to the actual context of their adoption. Moreover, it is apparent that the extant literature pertaining to knowledge management projects is frequently deficient in identifying the variety of factors indicative for successful KMS. This presents an obvious business practice and research gap which requires a critical analysis of the necessary intervention that will actually improve how workers can leverage and form organization-wide knowledge. Our research involved an extensive review of the literature, and rigorous data collection and synthesis through an empirical case analyses (Parsons Brinckerhoff and Samsung). The contribution of the research is the formulation of a model for designing KMS based upon the design-science paradigm. The essential proposition of our research is that KMS design and implementation must be contextualized towards knowledge needs and that these will differ for various organizational settings. Our findings therefore present valuable insights and further understanding of the way in which KMS design efforts should be focused.
Baloh, P., Desouza, K.C., and Hackney, R.A. “Contextualizing Organizational Interventions of Knowledge Management Systems: A Design Science Perspective,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Forthcoming.