Designing information and communication technologies (ICT) for knowledge work is a primary challenge in research and practice of knowledge management. Knowledge workers supposedly organize and manage their workplaces, at least partly themselves, which needs to be considered when designing ICT for supporting their daily knowledge-intense activities. It is considered useful for designers of knowledge management systems (KMS) to look into the results of behavioral science in information systems concerning the adoption, acceptance and assimilation of ICT. Thus, this paper proposes a model that contributes to bridging the gap between design science and behavioral science in the domain of knowledge management. In this regard, widely recognized behavioral models that aim at explaining organizational and human behavior in conjunction with ICT are analyzed in order to extract important factors influencing the successful application of KMS with respect to the adoption by an organization or organizational unit, acceptance by individual knowledge workers, and assimilation into knowledge processes and practices. By combining, categorizing, and structuring these factors, we developed a comprehensive model to be taken into account in software design and evaluation processes from various perspectives. Moreover, we discuss a case example in which this model is applied to the design of a KMS.
In industrial and educational practice, learning environments are designed and implemented by experts from many different fields, reaching from traditional software development and product management to pedagogy and didactics. Workplace and lifelong learning, however, implicate that learners are more self-motivated, capable, and self-confident in achieving their goals and, consequently, tempt to consider that certain development tasks can be shifted to end-users in order to facilitate a more flexible, open, and responsive learning environment. With respect to streams like end-user development and opportunistic design, this paper elaborates a methodology for user-driven environment design for action-based activities. Based on a former research approach named ‘Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments’ (MUPPLE) we demonstrate how workplace and lifelong learners can be empowered to develop their own environment for collaborating in learner networks and which prerequisites and support facilities are necessary for this methodology.
Motivational aspects in knowledge management have so far largely been considered from the perspective of designing and implementing incentives that influence the extrinsic motivation of employees to participate, contribute, share etc. This is increasingly considered problematic so that this contribution takes a more holistic viewpoint by analyzing and systematizing barriers that have an impact on the motivation to engage in knowledge maturing activities. Based on a collaborative ethnographically informed study and targeted semistructured interviews, a model is presented that decomposes the motivational aspects. Furthermore, it is presented how motivational aspect can be incorporated into the design of learning support systems.
Due to increasing professionalization and specialization in the development of computer and video games new challenges regarding the support of knowledgeintensive activities emerge. This paper aims at sensitizing and systematizing the needs and potentials for continuous integration of knowledge management into game development. It describes the interplay of development activities and involved parties with the knowledge creation process and provides insight into a tool-based approach that aims to support knowledge management in game development on three distinct levels.
Requirements Engineering is recognized as a crucial part of project and software development processes. This is due to the fact that the different stakeholders involved in a development project have to establish common terminologies as well as goals, scenarios and requirements expressed using these terminologies. Within the Semantic Web initiative various standards emerged for the creation and use of terminologies, expressed in the shape of semantic networks, taxonomies and ontologies. We develop an approach for semantic based Requirements Engineering. We present an ontology for capturing requirements relevant information. Furthermore, we report about a tool for semantic based Requirements Engineering and its application in a real-world development project scenario from the E-Government domain.
This paper describes an ontology supported software prototype that combines the advantages of existing Internet search engines with modern text analysis functionalities and an intelligent storage system for documents and knowledge items. The ontology assists the user in query definition and structures the storage of documents as well as knowledge items. The system is implemented and tested for the business case of SMEs that want to internationalise. It can easily be transferred to other domains just by changing the ontology.
We explored how the intended purpose of a knowledge model can influence the modelling process and in particular, how it impacts on the choice points of the underlying modelling methodology. We introduce a classification of knowledge models according to their intended scope, expressiveness and degree of acceptance. As a result, we aim to define critical success factors of methodologies for ontologies that are built by domain experts and that can be used as a basis for knowledge enabled (software) systems
Since the mid 1990s various concepts of intellectual capital reports have been elaborated and their descriptions can be found in both scientific and management literature. Their major task is the attempt to cover intangible assets within an organization or firm and to illustrate the immense resources, which may be used to attain competitive advantages. A major drawback of all presented intellectual capital reports is their non-comparability due to the diversity of conceptions. Thus it is not possible to compare and evaluate the results of different firms within an industry using diverse concepts of intellectual capital reports. This paper presents an approach, which allows the creation of comparable intellectual capital reports based on so called meta-indicators (or benchmarks). By using the meta-modelling approach the intellectual capital reporting (ICR) benchmark framework and a top-down procedure model (the intellectual capital reporting (ICR) step model) are outlined and discussed in detail.
Process oriented knowledge management focuses on knowledge intensive business processes. For modelling and analysis of these processes the modelling technique KMDL (Knowledge Modeling and Description Language) has been developed. KMDL is a method to describe knowledge flows and conversions along and between business processes. Thereby KMDL identifies existing and utilized information as well as knowledge of individual participants and of the entire company. This research-in-progress contribution introduces a practical example in the field of software engineering, in which KMDL models are evaluated to identify process improvements, e.g. by adding knowledge management activities. Therefore three individual views focussing on selected aspects of interest are introduced.
Innovation and the management of innovation in companies is seen as a very complex, collective and interactive process that often implies a change in the way of working in a company. Therefore, strategic management to properly handle the innovation and the whole process is essential. In that case appropriate software can provide support in the management of the complexities and the procedures that arise during the innovation process. However, an extensive investigation of software systems to support innovation processes shows that nearly no comprehensive software system exists, that can help with structuring and planning the process or that is able support all phases of the innovation process or similarly provide solutions to methodical questions. This paper gives an evaluation of present software systems and furthermore presents the project INNOWARE. The concept and development of the software system INNOWARE is pioneered as a tool to overcome barriers within the innovation process and to provide support particularly relevant for small and medium sized companies.
This paper concerns the need for methodological support in providing Knowledge Management (KM) IT solutions. Due to the distributed nature of knowledge, the support of KM often requires complex, distributed IT systems, which are inherently difficult to design. We propose an agent-oriented methodology based on Tropos for the analysis and design of KM systems that offers appropriate abstractions for modeling and designing the characteristics of the organizational setting of the system. The method is illustrated using a fictitious scenario where a newcomer in a knowledge organization decides to join an existing Community of Practice (CoP) in order to share knowledge and adjust to his new working environment.