CCT 355: E-Business Technologies

1. CCT 355: E-Business Technologies Class 4: Information/Knowledge Management Systems

2. Administration • Check your presentation date • Case study questions? • Should be a narrative – not an information/interview dump – what would your audience (e.g., me) think interesting about what you learned in your conversation? • Consider this similar to a biographical piece in business/popular press literature – a compelling story about their work challenges – more why and how than simple fact dumps • Due next week – hard copy in class please • Pam’s lecture on Sheridan IS context – now next week

3. An overview of KM • Remember data, information, knowledge, wisdom? • KM systems exist between info -> knowledge – repositories and channels to coordinate information to create knowledge

4. A multitude of information channels… • Example: you’re new at your job – how do you learn how to do it well?

5. 1stgeneration KM • 1st generation – technology centered – focused on data architecture, access, rights management, etc. • Basically, build a database and release it • Would also include explicit training systems – e.g., computer-based tutorials, etc. • Problems with this approach?

6. Information and Organizational Politics • Collective ownership of information complicated • Orlikowski’sLotus Notes case – consultants resisted sharing in knowledge database • Carrots v. sticks – can you compel people to share knowledge?

7. UX Issues • UX = User eXperience • Early KM systems roots in CS/digital libraries – made sense to information scientists, few others • Difficult UI/UX = frustrations in adoption and use and negative attitudes to use

8. Information Overload • KM = too much of a good thing? • Knowing everything is not possible or pragmatic - information shutdown usually the result of trying • Coping mechanisms?

9. Information Sharing/Access/Control • KM systems can and do limit access • Access limitations often make sense, sometimes don’t – examples? • Establishing proper levels of access and workflow a concern

10. Towards a 2nd Generation of KM • Constructivist approach – knowledge as embedded in social and cultural reality, grows from that. • Understanding benefits and consequences of knowledge sharing • Accounting for incentives for sharing – intrinsic and extrinsic • Promoting multiple channels of learning

11. Tacit and Explicit Knowledge Sources • Explicit knowledge – recorded information, can be transferred with relative ease • Tacit knowledge – “know how” or “know why” – built from experience, cannot be easily captured and transferred • Examples? • Databases fine for explicit information – but do you facilitate tacit knowledge sharing?

12. Nonakaand Takeuchi: SECI

13. SECI Process • Socialization – beginning of transfer of tacit knowledge • Externalization – conversion to explicit form • Combination – integration/synthesis of other explicit information pieces into new information reources • Internalization – re-embodiment of new knowledge as standard practice • Cyclical process moving up from individual to group knowledge • Social and constructivist foundations – all about interaction and sharing in context

14. Nonaka and Takeuchi: “ba”

15. Ba? • Somewhat of an art – context and its manipulation to create a positive ecology/environment for information sharing • Originating – where people share stories • Interacting – a more consciously designed structure of social interaction, transfer of tacit stories to explicit knowledge • Cyber/systemizing – role of IT in integrating explicit knowledge • Exercising – synthetic application and return to information sharing environment

16. Information and Time • Information sometimes decays over time • Old information can even frustrate current interpretation • But information about past can be valuable • Examples?

17. KM in fluid contexts • In high-turnover domains (examples?), information transfer especially complicated • Often a consistent need to share organizational experience and realities with new entrants, very difficult at times to capture or share information of departing members

18. Example: FSAE • Teams make small formula style racecar • 500 teams worldwide (including many in Japan, and a local competition!)

19. Local Challenges at Cornell • KM challenges – 2000 reports – how to access? • Database a failure – why? • Google solution – great but impossible at time (now, different story) • Decided to work on creating/maintaining bainstead – establishing a culture of learning • *very* high turnover raised challenges – maintaining success over five years difficult

20. A Conflict Between Serious Leisure and Organizational Structure? • Serious leisure (Stebbins, 2007) – voluntary activities pursued by intensely and intrinsically motivated individuals who have a strong connection and self-identity with the activity • How to bridge from serious leisure context to a knowing organization? • “We are in danger of becoming the best organized 35th place team in history.” – tensions between creative and intrinsic impulse and the need for organization • A delicate balance… you need both!

21. Activity Theory

22. Activity Theory • Historical foundations – human activity mediated by social and cultural factors in dialectical fashion • A complex model for information studies (e.g., Nardi, 1996) • AT triangle – (Engestrom, 1987) • Not stable, but fashioned by contradictions – multiple possible points of conflict and contradiction that need to be resolved to achieve activity

23. Conflict within components X

24. Conflict between components X

25. Conflict over time Year 1 X Year 2

26. Conflicts between competing activites X