Implications of ICT-supported Organizational Knowledge Management

Our discussion of the use of ICTs for organizational knowledge manage-ment suggests several organizational
directions, issues, and concerns. For instance, one implication is that organizational boundaries are, or should be,
more permeable and fluid. Taking advantage of knowledge that lies beyond the organization’s border, for example,
requires sharing ideas and collaborating with others, about whom little is sometimes known. Indeed, a feature of the
contemporary media environment is the relative anonymity of information and individuals, suggesting problems of
source and information credibility, potential conflicts of interest, and the complex dynamics of securing and
maintaining competitive advantage. In extreme cases, information sharing and the co-production of knowledge can
even take place unwittingly or unknowingly, for instance when information and knowledge artifacts are stored and
subsequently accessed in publicly avail-able forums, such as discussion boards, web sites, blog entries, and other
repositories that endure long after their “contribution,” which can itself be unintended, since in many instances it has
become more effortful to secure information than to share it (see Bimber, Flanagin, & Stohl, 2005).
Indeed, the Internet’s open-access information environment fosters the notion of information as a “public good,”
readily available to all regard-less of organizational affiliation or individual contribution. The public nature of web
pages, tweets, blogs, discussion groups, and wikis, and the endurance of these information artifacts over time, raise
questions regard-ing the extent to which an organization should support the public posting of organizational work
and the costs and benefits of knowledge creation processes in an open, inter-organizational environment. In this
environ-ment, organizations must confront a new type of knowledge production that cannot always be supervised by
the organization.
An implication of this potential boundary permeability is that it is neces-sary in many instances to look beyond
“the organization” toward proc-esses of organizing as a more appropriate frame for organizational knowledge
management. The very notion of knowledge as communicative and relational, for example, emphasizes the
processes of knowledge crea-tion, sharing, and maintenance. These processes are often not linear, nor can they be
easily codified (e.g., as a business practice) or represented (e.g., on an organizational chart). Instead, these processes
more closely resemble patterns of organizing, which enact the organization through “the actions and conversations
that occur on behalf of the presumed organization and in the texts of the activities that are preserved in social
structures” (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005, p. 413). From this perspective, organizations should not be
concentrating their efforts on managing knowledge, but rather on managing knowledge processes. ICTs are critical
in this endeavor, and should be viewed not as static tools to capture, store, or process information (i.e., an
information processing view), but as dynamic tools capable of supporting the rich and situated practice of co--
creation required to generate knowledge and manage it within and across organiza-tions. Toward this end, we have
chosen to emphasize current web-based applications of ICTs that tend to highlight the capacity of technologies to
support organizational knowledge management processes.

However, social media tools likely require a different kind of manage-ment than past knowledge management
efforts. Organizations that lack a collaborative, knowledge-sharing spirit are unlikely to realize the full potential of
these tools. For instance, organizational practices such as knowledge hoarding can seriously detract from
organizational knowledge management efforts that reward individual achievements over collabora-tive activities
(Walsham, 2001). Therefore, an organization’s culture figures strongly in the success or failure of a knowledge
management initiative. Larger cultural issues, such as the communicative style of a particular group (e.g., high
context versus low context cultures), also play a part in the acceptance of ICTs as suitable tools for knowledge
creation, storage, and sharing actions. Hence, the tools introduced here must be considered in light of these and other
organizational constraints.

The notion of more fluid and flexible organizational boundaries also suggests a reconsideration of interrelated
features such as organizational definition, commitment, ownership, and identity. The relational perspec-tive on
organizational knowledge evokes a more fluid definition of the organization that can encompass processes, and
therefore assets and resources, outside of an organization’s traditional boundaries. Similar to the mutual
technological dependence that occurs among firms who search beyond their boundaries for sources of innovation
(see, for example, Jaffe, Fogarty, & Banks, 1998), many knowledge workers engage in boundary- spanning
activities to stay up to date in their field, complete their everyday tasks, and/or find new opportunities for innovation
that create a kind of knowledge dependence. The effects of this dependence on organizational commitment should
not be overlooked. When knowledge processes occur at a community or professional level instead of at the
organizational level, this may impact knowledge workers’ organizational commitment. In turn, concerns over
knowledge ownership could potentially lead an organization to attempt to control employee movement within an
industry for fear of losing competitive advantage through employee turnover. Yet, such manip-ulation of employees’
portability within an industry can also negatively affect an industry’s knowledge growth.

Our focus on organizing processes and the management of knowledge processes, instead of organizational
knowledge management, also brings to light theoretical and practical directions for future inquiry. Research will
need to consider literature on organizational forms and new forms of organizing to better understand the structural
impediments organizations must overcome as they shift to a relational view of knowledge manage-ment through
ICTs. For example, research should consider (1) how the decentralized nature of ICTs may affect workflows,
worker relations, and worker commitment, as organizational knowledge is produced; (2) the role of management in
shaping employee use of ICTs, and whether such use might simply reify existing structures or facilitate truly new
forms of organizing; and (3) the implications of and for privacy policies in organiza-tional implementations of ICTs
that facilitate knowledge processes and make many organizational conversations public.

In addition, evolving notions of organizational definition, commitment, and knowledge ownership implicate a
new understanding of organizational identity. The concept of identity is both relational and comparative (Tajfel
& Turner, 1985). Therefore, the provision of tools that increase relationally-driven knowledge processes is sure to
affect multiple levels of identity. Open issues include questions of what kinds of identity (e.g., indi-vidual, group,
organizational, industry level) are fostered through know-ledge and organizing processes that cross organizational
borders, and whether these new identities are empowering and beneficial to an organ-ization, or detract from an
organization’s cohesiveness and constrain its ability to bring incongruent identities together through an overarching
goal.

Finally, when the interactive features of knowledge creation are privi-leged, the informational component of
knowledge is not what distinguishes organizations. Rather, as they become more comfortable with a facilitative role
in the management and development of organizational knowledge, the successful use of ICTs for knowledge
management is what provides organi-zations with competitive advantages. In this case, a communicative under-
standing of organizing processes and knowledge will provide greater insight into the characteristics of competitive
advantage in a knowledge economy where trust, reputation, and credibility are assessed and assigned through a
complex mix of sources and media.

Conclusion
The use of ICTs has increased organizational efficiency and scope by exploiting the scalability that technology
affords. The focus, however, has traditionally been on the informational use of ICTs, rather than their capacity for
rich communication and the situated practice, problem- solving, and thinking they support. This focus has in turn
bled over into knowledge management efforts that have largely created static tools for organizational knowledge.
However, current, often web-based, applica-tions make the most of the communicative ends of ICTs by drawing
atten-tion to knowledge management processes. These communicative features give organizations the tools to
facilitate knowledge creation, sharing, and maintenance by supporting the relational nature of knowledge. As ICTs
continue to evolve, their ability to contextualize interactions has the poten-tial to enhance their appropriateness and
desirability for inclusion in efforts to manage organizational knowledge processes.