Sense making and artifacts: an exploration into the role of tools in knowledge management

Abstract

The advancement of human knowledge is the result of evolution of human capabilities for absorbing, developing and processing human intelligence, and perhaps just as equally, on the human capability to develop symbols and artifacts for assisting in the creation, diffusion and sharing of knowledge. These artifacts not only have evolved in their sophistication and ability to help human knowledge enterprise, but also they have become embedded in the knowledge networks and the global knowledge enterprises. The universal knowledge architecture today can be best represented as a set of interconnected networks linking the neural networks of our brain with our organizational, institutional, professional and societal networks, and the networks of knowledge artifacts. Within this context the knowledge enterprise is viewed as a sustaining quest for sense making through the human to human process for scaffolding of knowledge where the knowledge artifacts play quintessential and inseparable roles. The effectiveness of our efforts in developing and implementing the knowledge artifacts or management tools depends to a large extent on our ability to refocus the design context of these tools as artifacts, from an information centric paradigm to one of knowledge within the context of a sense‐making paradigm.

CKO wanted — evangelical skills necessary: a review of the Chief Knowledge Officer position

“…A CKO's job is to capture that same imagination from all employees while providing a charismatic spark that creates new ideas and innovation. The creation of knowledge -through personal selfreflection, interaction with other humans, or interaction with artifacts -is essentially a human process (Shariq, 1998). Knowledge management tools, processes, and software programs are considered artifacts that embody human knowledge.…”

The role of collaborative knowledge building in the co-creation of artifacts: influencing factors and propositions

“…Therefore, the authors propose the following: Structural factors included organizational rules (Shariq, 1998;Schwabe and Salim, 2002;Kim et al, 2002) and workplace setting (Aarastad et al, 2015;Padova and Scarso, 2012;Jiang et al, 2010;Lamproulis, 2007). Organizational rules were discussed with regards to the organizational system as a whole where the tools (i.e., artifacts), the rules of the community, and the division of labor all affected the practice and corresponding final outcomes (Shariq, 1998).…”

“…Managerial agency (Padova and Scarso, 2012;Mueller, 2012;Kajamaa, 2011;Schwabe and Salim, 2002), characteristics of artifacts (Eppler and Pfister, 2014;Martin et al, 2012;Bosua and Venkitachalam, 2015;Jeyes and Dolphin, 2005;Brichni et al, 2014;Jiang et al, 2010;Eppler and Burkhard, 2007;Shariq, 1998), as well as knowledge brokers and boundary spanners (Hustad, 2007;Bosua and Venkitachalam, 2015;Maaninet-Olsson et al, 2008) Figure 2), the authors decided to leave these relationships out of the discussion and made the deliberate choice of not developing potential related propositions. This decision was made due to the overall aim and focus of contribution, clarity of exposition, and the relatively Postprint version of: Stefania Mariano, Yukika Awazu, (2017) "The role of collaborative knowledge building in the co-creation of artifacts: influencing factors and propositions", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol.…”

Social Capital as a Determinant Factor of Software Development Productivity

“…Shariq suggested that the knowledge should be considered as an outcome of human activities, which essentially produces knowledge artifacts, and knowledge networks are intervened by these artifacts (Shariq, 1998). Cluts conducted a case study to develop a framework based on the connections between people and their activities where artifacts are described to contain a backlog of the past events and connections among them (Cluts, 2003).…”