Technological change and high competitiveness are essential for organisations in today’s fast-paced society. Information and knowledge assets thus need to be current and easily accessible. With implementing core knowledge processes such as identification and accumulation, msg systems ag – a medium-sized IT and consulting company – introduced a knowledge management system with the aim to externalise implicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge is intuitive knowledge that is generally gained through personal experience [Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995]. In this regard Probst et al.’s (2006) knowledge process concept helped identify and adapt these processes. The core knowledge processes were then implemented by the Codebeamer system, an OpenSource collaboration platform based on wiki technology. The system’s development was continuously adopted and improved by using a prototype-specific approach since its productive start two years ago. This paper describes this implementation project for a knowledge management system (KMS) in an IT consulting and system integration company.
Evaluating success of knowledge management (KM) is a difficult undertaking, yet without a decent approach to show evidence about its value, KM initiatives might not be sustainable as already evident in many abandoned projects. Although there have been a number of theoretical approaches on evaluating success of KM, so far organizations find it difficult to design an evaluation effort and as a consequence many often only employ the most straightforward approaches such as adding some questions to a general user survey without much reflection as to e.g., who, what, how, why and when they measure and what consequences should be taken upon the results. This paper aids evaluation by providing an interrogative framework for designing evaluation initiatives. Its applicability is shown with the help of a real-world case study evaluating the KM system @sk!.
In many respects Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management (KM) are strongly related to each other. From a KM perspective the Web 2.0 evolution can serve as a pool of ideas for new ways of knowledge sharing, knowledge organisation and for the development of new architectures of measurable knowledge management systems. KM projects are usually developed in a process-oriented, goal-driven environment, embedded in complex organisational structures, whereas typical Web 2.0 applications like del.icio.us, flickr or friendster are building “their own context”. This paper will examine Tim O´Reilly’s eight generic Web 2.0 design patterns in terms of their applicability for a measurable KM System in an Enterprise 2.0. Two use cases will be presented and it will be discussed which of the design patterns could be enriched by technologies from the semantic web which will be summarized as a concept named “Enterprise n+1”.
This paper describes an ontology-based organizational knowledge representation framework focused on the specification of a two kinds of ontologies: the top level ontology containing concepts characterizing the typical organizational background and COKE ontologies representing so called core organizational knowledge entities. The framework constitutes an abstract representation of organizational knowledge providing a semantic support for designing knowledge management infrastructure able to interoperate with systems already existing in an organization. Moreover, the annotation of COKE w.r.t. the top level ontology allowed by the framework facilitates their semi-automatic handling, retrieval and evolution monitoring.
The development of a knowledge management system (KMS) is becoming increasingly important for the metal industry in Taiwan. The ontology design and knowledge search are two major activities of knowledge management. In this paper, we introduce a threestage life cycle for the ontology design and propose a Java/XML-based scheme for automatically generating knowledge search components to reduce the overhead in developing a KMS. The resulting ontology is classified as information ontology and domain ontology so that the objective of semantic match for knowledge search can be realized. The system is built on the top of the component-based KAON development suite which makes it more flexible and robust. We conduct a case study by applying the system to Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC), Taiwan to confirm its effectiveness and efficiency in dealing with KM activities. In addition, the proposed reusable scheme endorses the encouraging feasibility of wide applications to different domains.
- A Pilot Project in the Putzmeister, Inc./ Germany
The knowledge and the competence of the firm members are substantial success factors in the world-wide competition. For a “Hidden Champion” like the middle-sized manufacturer of Top-Class Concrete Pumps and Plastering Machines, Putzmeister, Inc./Germany, a systematic and anticipating Competence Development System is essential. The article describes a pilot project started in spring 2002 to gain more specific knowledge about the implementation of a strategic computer aided, employee orientated Skill Management System in the Company. The main success factors found are first, an acceptance strategy, which includes the participation of motivated groups of pilots, the integration of the workers council, the support of the management as well as much information and transparency about the objectives and the purpose of the system. Especially a good co-operation with the workers council is from great importance. Finally enough personnel and organizational resources must be given to the project.