Web 2.0 principles and knowledge management
Bc. Barbora Poláková - April 2009, Åbo Akademi
Motto:
The most important feature of Web 2.0 is not to make money from it, but that we can cooperate to create a new world of dynamic knowledge and collective intelligence.
(Umeda, 2006)
Knowledge management is no longer about connecting people to content, it is about connecting people to people.“
(Lamont, 2009)
Shift from information to knowledge
Nowadays society is commonly defined as postindustrial knowledge society. This definition arose from Porat´s (1977) theory about information society, where the society is economically dependent on information - distribution and usage. At the beginning of 21th century was the term information substituted by term knowledge and the society was established as knowledge society.
The main difference between information and knowledge is in context. While information in general is contextual independent unit, which is indexable and organizable according to norms and standards and is independent from its author, knowledge on the other hand is based on contextual engaging. It means that knowledge could be defined as „information in use“ which is involved by experiences of author and specific environment where is knowledge developed. Knowledge is not necessarily expressed and takes place in peoples minds, where in the form of „knowledge structure“ helps to understand and manage the interaction with reality. It seems to be, that the knowledge is in fact the pragmatical reflection of information presented by intellectual capital of individuals (Bukh, 2001). As such is appearent, that knowledge contains more economical potential than information itself. This potential is hidden in the complex understanding of situation.
Knowledge management
Regarding to the shift from information to knowledge was established knowledge management. That is supposed to manage knowledge in the way of distribution, usage and other connected processes.
The traditional approach to this problematic, is based on assumtion, that the knowledge is something what is possible to manage independently of the individuals who possessed it. Thus it is supposed to be just question of codification of the transportation process from authors heads to the knowledge systems in the form of normalized records (Tredinnick, 2006). This traditional – conventional – approach is focused on collecting of knowledges in a centralized repository and its accessibility is provided mostly by organization´s intranets (Lee, 2007).The knowledge scope happens on two levels - inter-organizational and intra-organizational (Lee, 2007) – and according to Case (2006) is concluded that more oppened organization will be more likely exposed to relevant information. That in practices lately meant building of huge storages of potentially needed knowledge, were significant part of them was rarely used – long tail effect (Tredinnick, 2006).
Nevertheless the problem appears at the moment when we export these knowledge out of their context, in that moment happens the transformation of knowledge into the information because it lost its additional value represented by the context.
The sollution of this problem was found in the conversational approach as the way how to manage knowledge contextual and user dependently as well as standardised by necessary codifications of knowledge management system. Such system is based on emphasising the integration and collaboration of knowledge creation amongst knowledge possessors (Lee, 2007) and the basic characteristics is interactivity.
Interactive Web / Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is a phenomena, that appeared in 2004 on Web 2.0 Conference, where was the framework of the Web 2.0 presented first time. The most popular and mostl often presented definition was established in 2005 by Tim O´Reilly, who promoted the whole idea already during the mentioned conference in 2004:
“the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.”
(O´Reilly, 2005 In Lee, 2007)
It follows from the definition, that advent of Web 2.0 doesn´t mean any significant technical changes in platforms, but mainly shift in understanding and usage of information and knowledge - as was presented recently – as well as significant shift to the user-centred approach. The role of users is seemed as active. That means that users interact directly with the web applications (Tredinnick, 2006). The direct participation of users as possessors of knowledge safeguards the contextual information and thus the potential of knowledge.
This interactive participation has different forms for example updating, publishing, evaluating, creating of own or shared space in web environment or communication with other users.
According to Lee (2007) there is a list of main characteristics for Web 2.0 that are benefical for extending and developing the knowledge management systems:
Contribution/Publishing/Organization
„Every Internet user has the opportunity to freely provide their knowledge content to the relevant subject domains.“ The simplification of the publishing process makes the content contribution accessable for almost everyone – basic information literacy needed – that has two effects:
- Speed – new content is appearing faster and thus is more actual and relevant.
- Volume – thanks the speed and accessability is the extension of content enormous, which could lead to complications in information retrieval.
- Experts/Peers – there is significant characteristic of anonymity, which erases the difference between experts and peers and equates them.
Organization of the context is mainly up to participants. It is practiced by folksonomy and tagging. It allowes participants use already prepared classification – partly by developers, mainly by other users - or create their own, which is later incorporated in the current classification system.
Sharing/Open source
„Knowledge contents are freely available to others. Secured mechanisms may be enforced to enable the knowledge sharing amongst legitimate members within specific communities.“ The kowledge sharing in public Web 2.0 environment is based on willingness to participate on creating collective intelligence as is seen on the example of Wikipedia.
Collaboration
„Knowledge contents are created and maintained collaboratively by knowledge providers. Internet users participating in the knowledge contents can have conversations as a kind of social interaction.“ Colaborative environment technologies include:
- Synchronous technologies – instant chat, video, conferences and shared Group Decision Support System (GDSS)
- Asynchronous technologies – Weblog, wiki, e-mail, moderated discussion forums
The long term goal of the Web 2.0 applications is to develope the same-place and same-time technology which would enable users to the two-way interaction – provider/recipient – in the realtime and one web space applying the principle of many-to-many model of communication (Tredinnick, 2006).
The additional characteristic which arose from collaboration is the social networking, which enable users to create relationships between each other and thus boost the emergence of social capital – individual as well as collective - as the promoter of the collective knowledge intelligence (Baker, 2000).
Dynamic/Actuality
Thanks the direct users interaction are „knowledge contents updated constantly to reflect the changing environment, situation“ and users needs. Thus is the knowledge content focused on the actuall problematics and offers faster and relevant answer. And regarding to this characteristic it also solves the problematic of long tail effect (Tredinnick, 2006), because at the moment unusable information are not acquired and stored.
Reliance
„Knowledge contribution should be based on trust between knowledge providers and domain experts.“ The trust degree in such system has to be quite hight, because of the anonymity and ease of publishing. The responsibility for publishing as well as safeguardance of the content is let on the participators themselves. This factor could be the weakness as well as the strenght of such systems, however it is one of the basic principles of Interactivite Web.
Web 2.0 applications
Upper mentioned characteristics depict the framework of Web 2.0 in general context. They are reflected in Web 2.0 aplications, that are mostly presented by blogs, wikis, RSS, virtual communities or indexing applications - tagging.
Blog
Blog is simplified version of web page, which enables users via super simple interface to create their own web space without any knowledge about HTML or CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. It is simple tool for publishing, that offers some additional functions as comments – collaboration -, and via managing of profile options also social networking. This application started as kind of electronic diary and developed in the kind of public notepad exploited for presentation of research and scientific work – www.blogspot.com .
Wiki
Wiki is based on the same principle as blog – ease content publishing. The difference is in number of participations. This kind of application supports the group work, where more than one participants create one web space in the form of wiki. System nowadays allows trace the entries and connect them with the possessor which enable collaboration in the group, but from outside it could seem as one compact web space. It also allows using of comments and support the social networking – www.pbwiki.com .
RSS – Really Simple Syndication
Is a system which keeps tracking the updates possted across the web. It has also aggregational function which support creating so called mash-ups. Mash-up is a web page which concentrate content from different web pages in one place on web and create thus kind of gateway. In combination with RSS it concentrate actual, updated content, that reflect user´s interests – www.igoogle.com.
Virtual communities
As was already mentioned virtual communities arose around the Web 2.0 applications as additional effect, nevertheless virtual communities arise also in specialized applications for social networking – www.ning.com .
Indexing
Indexing in Web 2.0 exploited the folksonomy and tagging as basic principle of web pages organizing. It is based on users participation and thus it helps manage more successfully the information retrieval – www.blinklist.com -.
Realization Web 2.0 principles in knowledge management systems
Practical implementation of Web 2.0 principles in close knowledge management system is not only possible, but primarily elligible if the knowledge is acceptable as the virtue engine of success and development.
By implementation Web 2.0 principles and exploitation the Web 2.0 applications in knowledge management system of organization is possible to manage satisfactory the knowledge content in the company and connected resources.
The one of the most progresive approaches is already mentioned Group Decision Support System (GDSS). These systems gather more different Web 2.0 applications, principles and work as agregators. They mostly content wikis and blogs as publishing systems, discussions and instant messangers as communication system, supporte folksonomy and quality evaluation of content as indexing system. One of such system is TeamPage developed by Traction Software or Velocity 6.0 as well as Meet Stan application developed by Vivisimo.
According to Lamont (2009) is necessary to be aware of some important characteristics for such complex knowledge management system, that have to be accomplished:
- Scale to large groups to be able to handle with the whole company environment.
- Authentication capability to integrate seamlessly with other applications across the enterprise.
- Functions has to be presented as blend of traditional and Web 2.0 approaches
- Has to reflect user experience design which is based on organizational goals as well as users satisfying.
- Schema–flexibility reflects the possibility of data analyzing, retrieving, managing regardless of source or structure
These characteristics are important to acknowledge before implementation of such system in organizational knowledge structure and thus enable its fluent engagging and exploitation of benefits emergent from the well organized and accessible knowledge content.
References
BAKER, W. (2000) What is social capital and why should you care about it? In Achieving success through social capital. University of Michigan Business School.
BUKH, P.N., Larsen, H.T., Mouritsen, J. (2001)Constructing intellectual capital statements. Scandinavian Journal of Management vol. 17, pp. 87 – 108.
CASE, D. O. (2006). Information behaviour. In: Cronin Blaise. (ed.) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST), vol. 40 (2006). pp. 293-327
LAMONT, J. (2008). KM past and future: Web 2.0 kicks it up a notch. KMWorld. no1.
LEE, M. R. & Lan, Y. (2007) From web 2.0 to conversational Knowledge Management: towards collaborative intelligence. [online] Journal of Entrepreneurship Research, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 47-62. Available on:
http://www.cme.org.tw/journal/search/JournalFile/v02n02/V02N2-3.pdf
TREDINNICK, L. (2006) Web 2.0 and business: a pointer to the intranets of the future?. [online] Business Information Review, 23(4), pp. 228-234. Availanble on: http://bir.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/23/4/228.pdf
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