مدیریت دانش در عصر پردازش ابری و وب 2.0: تجربه قدرت نوآوری های برانداز

Organizations, of all types, live in an increasingly dynamic world. Much of this dynamism is generated by developments or innovations in technology, especially information and communication technology (ICT). Some organizations take advantage of this dynamism and create new products and business models and thrive. Others ignore it or take a long time trying to adapt to it and struggle, often with negative consequences. Some of these innovations, to use the terminology of Christensen, are of a “disruptive” nature such as the telephone, the Web and recently cloud computing. This paper explores the innovation phenomenon of cloud computing and Web 2.0 and specifically examines their impact on organizational knowledge.

Making the most from their knowledge has always been organizations’ Holy Grail. Some of these organizations design their methods to achieve this objective and others resort to experts who possess the tools (often technological) in order to take advantage of technological advances in Information Technology (IT). The latter option often commands a great deal of commitment and tends to be employed by large organizations that have the economic means to cope with its resource implications. Hence, many of the current enterprise KM systems (KMS) were often developed for large organizations that can afford to buy them and cope with their maintenance and operations. The amount of effort required for performing activities core to KMS, such as designing taxonomies, classifying information, and monitoring functionality, according to Nunes, Annansingh, Eaglestone, and Wakefield (2006) is often disproportionate to the resource capacity of most small to medium enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, typical KMS place emphasis on predetermined workflows and rigid “information-push” approaches (Malhotra, 2005) that reflect the philosophy behind working practices in large enterprises. In contrast, SMEs rely mostly on informal person-to-person communications and people-centric operations for KM (Desouza & Awazu, 2006) that often take place in largely ad-hoc and non-standardised ways (Nunes et al., 2006). This view is further echoed by Reichental (2011) who also adds a behavioural dimension to the challenges of enterprise KMS. He argues that it is remarkably difficult to organize information in the right manner, make it searchable, and then present it so that the most relevant responses are placed at the top of the search results (as is the case with public search engines). Internal systems, according to this author, have no such equivalent and organizational information is hardly the example of pristine structure. While unstructured content is the king of the public Web, it is often the bane of the enterprise. Such systems can also be inflexible to meet the fluctuating needs of corporate end users and executives (Kaplan, 2010). The situation is also compounded when employees are disillusioned by the effectiveness and effort required to use KMS and may resort to old habits such as asking colleagues or improvising in the absence of guidance (thus repeating mistakes or missing best practices). In such situations, the system often fails to be adopted – or at best is used by a small proportion of the organization – and no amount of resuscitation will then be enough to bring it back to life (Reichental, 2011). This view is further shared by Kaplan (2010) who also adds that many organizations were realizing that their employees were either not prepared to share information in order to protect their jobs or too busy to funnel information into such systems.

KM is entering an era where ordinary people and employees are expected to make significant contribution to knowledge creation and management, helped by a new KM thinking and a breed of new tools and KMS based on two disruptive innovations: Web 2.0 and/or cloud computing. Past KM technologies and approaches often proved to be expensive to implement and difficult to use. The new approach is expected to herald a new age of knowledge-rich and knowledge-savvy world. Most interestingly, this new KM world order is unlikely to be the reserve of resourceful organizations, as was the case in the past. Organizations with limited means, such as SMEs and CoPs, will also play an important role in the new KM era, thanks to the aforementioned innovations and a cultural change in KM's landscape.