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http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/sgasson
Dr Susan GassonAssociate Professorthe iSchool at Drexel
Situated Knowledge Management In Collaboration
Across Organizational Boundaries
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Dr. Susan Gasson, 2006
• Stakeholders from multiple business areas with little shared knowledge or expertise, manage emergent knowledge processes (Markus et al, 2000), that:– Involve an unpredictable set of organizational actors– Have dynamic boundaries and
emergent outcomes– Lack clear criteria for success.
• This results in partial individual knowledge of organizational processes, shared imperfectly.
Knowledge Management As The Assembly of Partial Perspectives
Engineering & Design Manager
Financial Manager
IS ManagerSupplies
Manager
Marketing Manager
Operations Manager
Sharedknowledge
Reference: Markus, M.L., Majchrzak, A., and Gasser, L. (2002) "A Design Theory For Systems That Support Emergent Knowledge Processes," MIS Quarterly (26:3), 179-212.
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Dr. Susan Gasson, 2006
Two Dimensions of Knowledge Management in The Joint Construction of Group Knowledge
Knowledge Emergence: shared understanding of knowledge
required for decision or action
Knowledge Situatedness:
extent to which decision or action is based on local
knowledge
CONTEXT-SPECIFIC
PREDICTABLE (Articulable)
GENERALIZABLE
EMERGENT(Inarticulable)
Adapted from: Gasson & Shelfer (forthcoming), ‘IT-Based Knowledge Management To Support Organizational Learning’, Information Technology & People
Transferable knowledge
Requires human apprenticeship
Hidden knowledge
Requires learning
from mistakes
Codifiable knowledge
Routine and
programmable decision-making
Discoverable knowledge
Requires
inferences, derived from historical data
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Dr. Susan Gasson, 2006
A Shift In KM Perspectives
Managing Knowledge-As-Thing
• Knowledge is individual, explicit, and articulable
• Created through reduction and reification of explicit, articulable “best practice” – proceduralization
• Results in automation – the codification of work to replace human decisionmakers
• IT controls knowledge “transfer” between work-contexts and people.
Managing Knowledge-As-Process
• Knowledge is embedded in group practice & culture (tacit)
• Created through shared work practices, common language, demonstrations of expertise – process coordination
• Results in automaticity – the skillful practice of collective work, coordinated through information resources
• IT supports information coordination in collaborative, emergent knowledge processes.
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Dr. Susan Gasson, 2006
Implications
• Need to manage dynamic processes not static procedures
• Support emergent knowledge processes with adaptive information resources
• Design IT systems differently:– Focus on information resources, not rules– Design for continual adaptation– Place control of system configuration in hands
of knowledge workers and business managers, not IT analysts.