Knowledge Sharing

Systems
Sharing that Organize and Distribute Knowledge
 What are Knowledge Sharing Systems?
 Knowledge sharing systems can be described as systems that enable members of an
organization to acquire tacit and explicit knowledge from each other. Knowledge sharing
systems may also be viewed as knowledge markets: just as markets require adequate liquidity
to guarantee a fair exchange of products, knowledge sharing systems must attract a critical
volume of knowledge seekers and knowledge owners in order to be effective (Dignum 2002).

 In a knowledge sharing system, knowledge owners will:

 want to share their knowledge with a controllable and trusted group,
 decide when to share and the conditions for sharing, and
 seek a fair exchange, or reward, for sharing their knowledge.

 By the same token, knowledge seekers may:

 not be aware of all the possibilities for sharing, thus the knowledge repository will typically
help them through searching and ranking, and
 want to decide on the conditions for knowledge acquisition.
 Knowledge sharing system is said to define a learning organization,
supporting the sharing and reuse of individual and organizational
knowledge. One tool frequently emphasized under the auspices of
knowledge sharing systems is document management.

 Document management system is a repository, an electronic storage

medium with a primary storage location that affords multiple access
points.
 > essentially stores information
 > aggregates relevant information through documentation across the
organization, which helps in the sharing of organizational knowledge.

 Portal technologies are used to build a common entry into multiple

distributed repositories, using the analogy of a “door” as a common entry
into the organization’s knowledge resources. Portals provide a common
user interface, which can often be customized to the user’s preferences
such as local news, weather, and so forth. Many of these systems
integrate workflow management systems as well.
 Workflow Management System (WfMS) is a set of tools that support defining,
creating, and managing the execution of workflow processes (Workflow
Management Coali- tion 1999); in other words, it provides a method of
capturing the steps that lead to the completion of a project within a fixed
time frame.
 > can be useful for projects by enacting its elemental tasks, as well as by
providing a mechanism for the analysis and optimization of the entire process
detailing the project.

Benefits of Workflow System

> provides the user with an audit of necessary skills and resources prior to
project initiation.
> provide a platform for the replication and reuse of stored processes.
> can also serve as a training tool since they provide a broad overview with
detailed operations of tasks as well as an identification of possible “weak links”
in a process.
The Computer as a Medium for Sharing
Knowledge
 Prior to the information age, two-way communication relied on the
telephone’s synchronous capability which enabled parties to exchange
information much like they did via face-to-face communications.
 Prior to the telephone, knowledge sharing re- quired asynchronous
communication via telegraph and written artifacts. Asynchronous
communications allowed communicants to exchange ideas without the need
for both parties to be present at the same time, which is one of the
limitations offered by the telephone.
 In addition, the telephone did not facilitate communication of nonverbal
multimedia information such as documents, photos, drawings, videos, and
others. But the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW)
has completely revolutionized the concept of communications in the last
decade or so.
 The Internet is the underpinning infrastructure that allows the information
exchange between computers in remote and heterogeneous networks. It
enables the secure transport of information packets.
 The WWW provides the required format so that a large-scale storage of
documents may be accessed by a specialized software package called the
browser. WWW servers are computers whose main objectives are to serve as
repositories of multimedia information.
 The Client refers to that computer that requests information from the WWW
server, while servers share their contents to their clients through Web pages.
 Web pages are hypermedia documents that express, in an organized and often
highly artistic and dynamic fashion, the contents of the server. Web pages are
files expressed in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
 HTML is a standard representation that enables the browser to interpret both
text and graphics stored on the Web page. Client browsers process the
request for information via the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a server to
be accessed.
 The URL is of the form where computer name refers to the address of the
computer acting as the server, and protocol is the format used by the Web
page (typically http, which stands for hyper- text transfer protocol).
Designing the Knowledge Sharing System
The main function of a knowledge sharing system is “to enhance the organization’s
competitiveness by improving the way it manages its knowledge” (Abecker et al. 1998).
The creation of a knowledge sharing system is based on the organization of digital media,
including documents, hyperlinks, and the like, which represent the explicit organizational
knowledge.
Khun and Abecker (1997) identify the crucial requirements for the success of a knowledge
sharing system in industrial practice:
1. Collection and systematic organization of information from various sources. Most
organizational business processes require information and data including CAD drawings, e-
mails, electronic documents such as specifications, and even paper docu- ments. This
requisite information may be dispersed through the organization. This first step requires
the organization and collection of this information throughout the organization.
2. Minimization of up-front knowledge engineering. Knowledge sharing systems must
take advantage of explicit organizational information and data such that these systems
can be built quickly, generate returns on investment, and adapt to new require- ments.
This information and data are mostly found in databases and documents.
3. Exploiting user feedback for maintenance and evolution. Knowledge sharing
systems should concentrate on capturing the knowledge of the organization’s
members. This includes options for maintenance and user feedback so the
knowledge can be kept fresh and relevant. Furthermore, knowledge sharing
systems should be designed to support user’s needs and their business process
workflows.
4. Integration into existing environment. Knowledge sharing systems must be
integrated into an organization’s information flow by integrating with the IT tools
currently used to perform the business tasks. Humans, by nature, will tend to
avoid efforts to formalize knowledge (ever met a computer programmer who
enjoys adding comments to her code?). In fact, as a rule-of-thumb, if the effort
required in formalizing knowledge is too high, it should be left informal to be
described by humans and not attempt to be made explicit.
5. Active presentation of relevant information. Finally, the goal of an active
knowledge sharing system is to present its users with the required information
when and wherever it’s needed. These systems are envisioned as intelligent
assistants, automati- cally eliciting and providing knowledge that may be useful in
solving the current task whenever and wherever it’s needed.
Barriers to the Use of Knowledge Sharing
Systems

Many organizations, specifically science- and engineering-oriented

firms, are characterized by a culture known as the not-invented-
here (NIH) syndrome. In other words, solutions that are not
invented at the organizational subunit are considered worthless.
Organizations suffering from this syndrome tend to essentially
reward employees for “inventing” new solutions, rather than
reusing solutions developed within and outside the organization.

One of the impediments to nurturing the human component of KM

is the lack of institutionalized reward systems for knowledge
sharing in most organizations. Typically, rewards exist at the
individual level.
 Research has also pointed out some of the other reasons why knowledge
sharing systems may fail (Weber 2007). They may fail:
 1. If they don’t integrate humans, processes, and technology
 2. If they attempt to target a monolithic organizational memory
 3. If they don’t measure and state their benefits
 4. If they store knowledge in textual representations only
 5. If they are outside the process context
 6. If they do not support collaboration
 7. If users are afraid of the consequences of their contributions
 8. If users perceive a lack of leadership support, lack an understanding of
the generalities that would make their knowledge useful, or just don’t feel
it’s worth their time to make a contribution (Disterer 2002).
Specific types of Knowledge Sharing
Systems
Knowledge sharing systems are classified according to their attributes. These
specific types of knowledge sharing systems include:

 1. Incident report databases

 2. Alert systems
 3. Best practices databases
 4. Lessons learned systems
 5. Expertise locator systems
 Incident Report Databases
 Incident report databases are used to disseminate information related to incidents or malfunctions,
for example, of field equipment (like sensing equipment outages) or software (like bug reports).
 > typically describe the incident together with explanations of the incident, although they may not
suggest any recommendations.
 > typically used in the context of safety and accident investigations.
 Incident report databases are being widely adopted by complex and risky industries such as in the
aviation industry, the military, nuclear power centers, the IT industry, and hospital medical
departments.
 Examples:
 > The U.S. Chemical Safety Board dis- seminates both current as well as completed investigations
about chemical accidents in order to protect workers, the public, and the environment through their
Web page (U.S. CSB 2014).
 > The New Zealand Mountain Safety Council initiated the design of a database for collecting and
analyzing incidents related to outdoor sports for the safety of people or organizations participating
in outdoor activities such as kayaking, ramping, jet skiing, and so forth (Cessford 2013).
Alert Systems

 Alert systems were originally intended to disseminate information about a

negative experience that has occurred or is expected to occur. However,
applications also include increasing exposure to positive experiences.
 > could be used to report problems experienced with a technology, such as an
alert system that issues recalls for consumer products.
 > used to share more posi- tive experiences, such as Grants.gov, which offers
registered users alerts to funding opportunities that match a set of user-
specified keywords, and Google Alerts (google. Com/alerts), which sends
registered customers the latest information on user-specified requested
topics.
 > applicable to a single organization or to a set of related organizations that
share the same technology and suppliers.
Best Practices Databases

 Most organizational leaders are aware that a large percentage of an

organization’s corporate knowledge is largely tacit. For this reason managers
emphasize the need to create Best Practices in the organization (Yoo and
Ginzberg 2003).
 Best practices databases describe successful efforts, typically from the re-
engineering of business processes (O’Leary 1999) that could be applicable to
organizational processes.
 > differ from lessons learned in that they capture only successful events,
which may not be derived from experience
 > expected to represent busi- ness practices that are applicable to multiple
organizations in the same sector and are sometimes used to benchmark
organizational processes
For example, the National Governors Association Center for
Best Practices (2013) develops innovative solu- tions to today’s
most pressing public policy challenges and is the only research
and development firm that directly serves the nation’s
governors. Microsoft Corporation offers a Web page that
describes best practices for developers using their products
(Microsoft Developer Network 2014), which provides helpful
tips including how-to and reference documentation, sample
code, and technical articles, for instance, on how to prevent
database corruption.

The Federal Transit Administration publishes a Best Practices

Procurement Manual on the Web (U.S. DOT 2014). This manual
describes procedures and practices for organizations wishing
to pursue procurement opportunities with this agency.
Lesson Learned Systems
 The goal of lessons learned systems is “to capture and provide lessons that can
benefit employees who encounter situations that closely resemble a previous
experience in a similar situation” (Weber et al. 2001). LLS could be pure
repositories of lessons or be sometimes intermixed with other sources of
information. LLS are typically not focused on a single task, for example, pure
knowledge representations.
 The differences among these types of knowledge sharing systems are based upon:
 > Content Origin—Does the content originate from experience like in lessons
learned systems or from industry standards and technical documentation as in best
practice databases?
 > Application—Do they describe a complete process or perhaps a task or a
decision?
 > Results—Do they describe failures, as in incident report databases or alert
systems, or successes, as in best practices databases?
 > Orientation—Do they support an organization or a whole industry?
 Lessons learned systems2 have become commonplace in organizations and on the Web.
The most complete definition of what constitutes a lesson learned is expressed by the
American, European, and Japanese space agencies (Weber et al. 2001):
 A lesson learned is knowledge or understanding gained by experience. The experience
may be positive, as in a successful test or mission, or negative, as in a mishap or
failure. Successes are also considered sources of lessons learned. A lesson must be
significant in that it has a real or assumed impact on operations; valid in that is
factually and technically correct; and applicable in that it identifies a specific design,
process, or decision that reduces or eliminates the potential for failures and mishaps,
or reinforces a positive result. (Secchi et al. 1999)
 A second definition for LLS and what constitutes a lesson learned follows (Weber and
Aha 2003, p. 34):
 Lessons learned systems (LLS) are knowledge management (KM) initiatives structured
over a repository of lessons learned (LL). Lessons learned are knowledge artifacts that
convey experiential knowledge that is applicable to a task, decision, or process such
that, when reused, this knowledge positively impacts an organization’s results. For this
reason, LLS are ubiquitous in governmental organizations that need to leverage
knowledge, such as the Department of Defense (DOD), where military operations may
risk human lives, the Department of Energy (DOE), where accident prevention is a
major concern, and space agencies (e.g., American space agency [NASA], European
Space Agency [ESA], Japanese Space Agencies [NASDA] due to their potential for
incurring costly mission failures.
1. COLLECT THE LESSONS
 This task involves collecting the lessons (or content) that will be incorporated into
the LLS. There are six possible lesson content collection methods:
 a. Passive—the most common form of collection. Contributors submit lessons
through a paper or Web-based form.
 b. Reactive—where contributors are interviewed by a third party for lessons. The
third party will submit the lesson on behalf of the contributors
 c. After-action collection—where lessons are collected during a mission debrief-
ing, as for example, in military organizations.
 d. Proactive collection—where lessons are automatically collected by an expert
system, which may suggest that a lesson exists based on analysis of a spe- cific
content. For example, an expert system could monitor an individual’s e-mail and
prompt him/her when it understands that a lesson is described.
 e. Active collection—where a computer-based system may scan documents to
identify lessons in the presence of specific keywords or phrases.
 f. Interactive collection—where a computer-based system collaborates with the
lesson’s author to generate clear and relevant lessons.
2. VERIFY THE LESSONS
 Typically a team of domain experts performs the task required by this
component, which requires the verification of lessons for correctness,
redundancy, consistency, and relevance. The verification task is
critically important, but sometimes introduces a significant
bottleneck in the inclusion of lessons into the LLS, since it’s a time-
consuming process. Some systems, for example Xerox’s Eureka LLS,
provide a two-stage process. The Eureka LLS, described in Box 8.4,
was designed to support field engineers in solving hard-to-fix repair
problems with the company’s printers. Contributors entered fixes into
the Eureka LLS. At that point, a team charged with the verification
task received an alert prompting their test of the solution to ensure
that it worked. If everything checked out, the fix was made available
to the rest of the field engineers.
Store the Lesson

 This task relates to the representation of the lessons in a computer-based

system. Typical steps in this task include the indexing of lessons, formatting,
and incorporating into the repository. In terms of the technology required to
support this task, LLS could be based on structured relational or object-
oriented databases as well as case libraries (case-based reasoning) or semi-
structured document management systems. LLS can also incorporate relevant
multimedia such as audio and video, which may help illustrate important
lessons.
Disseminate the Lesson

 This task relates to how the information is shared to promote its reuse. Six different
dissemination methods have been identified:
 a. Passive dissemination—where users look for lessons using a search engine.
 b. Active casting—where lessons are transmitted to users that have specified relevant
profiles to that particular lesson.
 c. Broadcasting—where lessons are disseminated throughout an organization.
 d. Active dissemination—where users are alerted to relevant lessons in the con- text of
their work (for example by a software help-wizard that alerts a user of related
automated assistance).
 e. Proactive dissemination—where a system anticipates events used to predict when the
user will require the assistance provided by the lesson.
 f. Reactive dissemination—when a user launches the LLS in response to a specific
knowledge need, for example when he launches a Help system in the context of
specific software.
Apply the Lesson

 This is the most impactful step in the LLS. This task relates to whether the
user has the ability to decide how to reuse the lesson. There are three
categories of reuse:
 a. Browsable—where the system displays a list of lessons that match the
search criteria.
 b. Executable—where users might have the option to execute the lesson’s rec-
ommendation (as when the word processor suggests a specific spelling for a
word).
 c. Outcome reuse—when the system prompts users to enter the outcome of
reusing a lesson in order to assess if the lesson can be replicated.
Expertise Locator Knowledge Sharing
Systems
 Several different business organizations have identified the need to develop
expertise locator systems (ELS) to help locate intellectual capital (Becerra-
Fernandez 2006). The main motives for seeking an expert are as a source of
information and as someone who can perform a given organizational or social
function (Yiman-Seid and Kobsa 2003).
 The intent when developing these systems is to catalog knowledge
competencies, including information not typically captured by human
resources systems, in a way that could later be queried across the
organization. Box 8.5 on page 173 illustrates a sample ELS developed across
different industries (Becerra-Fernandez 2006).
 Although ELS across organizations serve a similar purpose, a number of
characteristics differentiate these systems:
 1. Purpose of the system: An ELS may serve a different purpose across organiza-
tions. For example the purpose could be to identify experts to help solve
technical problems or staff project teams, to match employee competencies
with positions within the company, or to perform gap analyses that point to
intellectual capital inadequa- cies within the organization. For instance, if a
specific expertise domain is a critical knowledge area for an organization and
the ELS points to only three experts, it may serve to identify the need to hire
or internally train additional experts in that area.
 2. Access method: Most company ELS are accessed via a company’s Intranet.
However interorganizational systems such as SAGE (Searchable Answer
Generating Environment, described later) are accessed via the Web. Systems
accessed via the Web provide experts with an increased level of visibility, but
organizations may fear that such increased visibility may be luring their experts
to outside job opportunities.
 3. Self-assessment: Most of the expertise locator KMS in place today rely on
each employee completing a self-assessment of competencies, which is later
used when searching for specific knowledge areas. Clearly there’re some
advantages to this ap- proach, mainly that it allows building a repository of
organization-wide competencies quickly.
 Using self-assessment as the way to identify expertise presents an inherent
shortcoming, in that the results are based on each person’s self- perception
and thus could be hard to normalize. Furthermore, employees’ speculation
about the possible use of this information could skew the results. Employees
have been known to either exaggerate their competencies for fear of losing
their position or downplay their duties so as not to have increasing
responsibilities.
 For example, one particular organization conducted a skills self-assessment
study during a period of downsizing.
 On the other hand, another organization made it clear the self-assessment
would be used to contact people with specific competencies to answer
related questions. This resulted in employees downplaying their abilities in
order to avoid serving as consultants for the organization.
 4. Participation: Defines whether the system represents expertise
across the organization like at the National Security Agency (NSA),
a department at Microsoft, or merely volunteer experts willing to
share their knowledge with others.
 5. Taxonomy: Refers to the specific taxonomy used to index
knowledge compe- tencies within the organization. Some
organizations like Microsoft developed their own knowledge
taxonomy—NSA’s was based on O*NET, a standard published by the
U.S. Department of Labor, and Hewlett Packard based their
taxonomy of an ex- isting standard published by the U.S. Library
of Congress augmented by their own knowledge competencies.
 6. Levels of competencies: Refers to expressing expertise as capability levels. Levels
of competencies could be defined according to Wiig’s (1993) levels of proficiency
classifications:
 Ignorant—Totally unaware
 Beginner—Vaguely aware, no experience
 Advanced beginner—Aware, relatively unskilled
 Competent—Narrowly skilled
 Proficient—Knowledgeable in selected areas
 Expert—Highly proficient in a particular area, generally knowledgeable
 Master—Highly expert in many areas, broadly knowledgeable
 Grand Master—World-class expert in all areas of domain

 Other differentiating characteristics for ELS may include technological differences,

for example, the type of underlying database, the programming language used to
develop the system, or the specifics about how the data are maintained current.
THE ROLE OF ONTOLOGIES AND KNOWLEDGE
TAXONOMIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERTISE
LOCATOR SYSTEMS
 A significant challenge in the development of expertise locator KMS is the
accurate development of a knowledge taxonomy or ontology.
 Taxonomy is the study of the general principles of scientific classification.
Taxonomies, also called classification or categorization schemes, are
considered to be knowledge organization systems that serve to group objects
together based on a particular characteristic.
 Ontology is an explicit formal specifica- tion of how to represent the objects,
concepts, and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of
interest and the relationships that hold among them.
 One of the biggest challenges for knowledge management systems is
to make this knowledge meaningful across the organization (Becerra-
Fernandez and Sabherwal 2008).
 For example, lessons learned systems were one of the first types of
KMS that gained acceptance in organizations and many consulting
agencies quickly adopted the implementation of such systems, which
later they proposed to their clients. As the volume of information
represented in these knowledge bases increased, information and
knowledge overload coupled with a lack of awareness about the
lessons’ context became a significant problem (Davenport and Hansen
1998).
SHORTCOMINGS OF KNOWLEDGE
SHARING SYSTEMS
 The lack of contextual components for most of the lessons learned systems
severely limited the recipient’s ability to realize the environment in which
the knowledge was generated and furthermore restricted its reuse. In order
to overcome this limitation, at the time of collection, lessons learned could
be augmented with those attributes describing the identity, sensory,
informational, and positioning components that could be detected in the
background aided by the sensor network.
 These attributes could then be combined with the user’s cognitive model,
which could be used to stamp the lesson learned. This stamp could effectively
describe where the lesson originated and under what physical and logical
conditions. Subsequently, when lessons are being retrieved in order to
ascertain their relevance to the current context, the system could match the
stamp of the retrieved lessons to the user’s current contextual components.
 In order to improve the success of their knowledge sharing activities, organizations
are encouraged to:
 1. Develop one-stop access to content that emulates Google’s one-stop search
functionality. This requires companies to integrate their repositories, including
effective back-end design. In addition, search functionality should be designed
with content metadata or tags for each document including keywords, abstracts,
author name, and document date.
 2. Design dynamic classification systems and consistent formats that emulate
eBay’s classification system, which was developed based on what its customers
want to buy and sell. Improving the browsing experience also requires consistency
of formats of the information presented to the user, which allows people to spend
less time analyzing the results.
 3. Entice employees to find what they need much like Amazon helps people
identify needed products based on their relevance to the user. Furthermore,
Amazon’s ability to support shoppers in assessing the quality of their products via
customer-supplied reviews significantly improves the buyer’s experience. More
information on how Web 2.0 technologies support user-generated re- views is
presented in Chapter 10. Additional attributes for the relevance and quality of
knowledge could include an excerpt of the abstract, a snapshot of the content
including who to contact for additional information, and a link to the author
profiles.
Knowledge Management Systems that
Share Tacit Knowledge
 A community of practice, also known as a knowledge network, is an
organic and self-organized group of individuals who are dispersed
geographically or organizationally but communicate regularly to
discuss issues of mutual interest.
 Many studies have demonstrated that any technological support for
knowledge exchange requires users to feel they know and can trust
each other.
 Thematic group is a knowledge sharing culture through the
development of communities of practice.
 Communities are groups of people who come together to share and
learn from one another and who are held together by a common
interest in a body of knowledge.
 Communities come together either face-to-face or virtually and are
driven by a desire and need to share problems, experiences, insights,
templates, tools, and best practices (McDermott 2000). This section
concentrates on systems used to share tacit knowledge, specifically to
support communities of practice (CoPs).
 According to McDermott, people come together in communities of
practice because they’re passionately interested in the topic and will
receive direct value from participating in the community, or because
they’re emotionally connected to the community, or to learn new
tools and techniques.
 Communities grow out of its members’ natural networks, and follow
five stages of development: planning, start-up, growth, sustenance,
and closure. Although communities of practice are not new
phenomena, the Internet has enabled the proliferation of virtual
communities facilitated through the same collaborative technologies.
 While knowledge repositories support primarily codified and explicitly
captured knowledge, virtual communities of practice are supported
through technology that enables interaction and conversations
amongst its members. Interaction technology can support structured
(and perhaps more explicated) communication such as in discussion
groups and Web-based forums to unstructured (and perhaps more
tacit) communication such as in video conferencing.
Thank you for listening
God Blessed us all.