On Challenges and Opportunities of Designing Integrated IT Platforms for Supporting Knowledge Works in Organizations

Abstract

Designing and implementing comprehensive IT-based support environments for KM in organizations is fraught with many problems. Solving them requires intimate knowledge about the information usage in knowledge works and the scopes of technology intervention. In this paper, the Task-oriented Organizational Knowledge Management or TOKM, a design theory for building integrated IT platforms for supporting organizational KM, is proposed. TOKM brings together two apparently mutually exclusive practices of building KM systems, the task-based approach and the generic or universalistic approach. In developing the design, the information requirements of knowledge workers in light of an information usage model of knowledge works is studied. Then the model is extended to study possibilities of more advanced IT support and formulate them in form of a set of meta-requirements. Following the IS design theory paradigm, a set of artifacts are hypothesized to meet the requirements. Finally, a design method, as a possible approach of building an IT-based integrated platform, the Knowledge Work Support Platform (KWSP) to realize the artifacts in order to meet the requirements, is outlined. The KWSP is a powerful platform for building and maintaining a number of task-type specific Knowledge Work Support Systems (KWSS) on a common sharable platform. Each KWSS, for the task-type supported by it, can be easily designed to provide extensive and sophisticated support to individual as well as group of knowledge workers in performing their respective knowledge work instances. PRELIMINARIESThe theory, TOKM, deals at its core with the issues related to information usage in knowledge works, i.e., how does human knowledge workers use information and how the related processes can be supported effectively by technology interventions. The concepts I shall build upon, though might have originated in myriads of disciplines, I shall mostly draw upon them as available through the literature of the three fields of studies related in different ways to information, namely the information systems, the information science and the information technology. Readers interested in deeper exploration of the concepts/issues can use the "references" sections of the referred articles to further their quest. Handling InformationAll the three fields, information system, information science and information technology have "information" as their central themes. Nevertheless, despite significant overlaps, each of these fields has its own distinct perspective, goal and even lexicon, which render subtle but significantly different semantic to same or similar terms. In the following we shall discuss various aspects of each of them relevant to our discourse.

Strategic Capabilities for Public Sector-led Innovation: Managing Knowledge Worker Deployment at and Quality Performance of Public R&D Laboratories in India

“…We measure the functional knowledge capabilities of the laboratories against their performance in terms of patent outputs and publications records. We use knowledge management and organisational learning theoretical constructs in the context of R&D activities to understand the expertise and experience of Indian knowledge workers (Laha, 2011) for ideas generation, analysis judgement, synthesis and design (Horibe, 1999) in formulating appropriate solutions and value creation through technological innovation in problem environments, especially the public sector (Firestone & McElroy, 2005).…”