Knowledge Management on the Web

INtrODUctION The importance of knowledge management has been recognized both in academia and in practice. In recent years, corporations have started talking about knowledge management, organizational learning, organizational memory, and computerized support. A few years ago, Microsoft®'s awareness of knowledge management and corporate memory was demonstrated by Bill Gates through his keynote speeches in the second and third Microsoft's CEO summits that attracted quite a few CEOs and other corporate executives from Fortune 1000 companies. Gates (1998) outlined his vision through a term he coined " digital nervous system, " which is an integrated electronic network that can give people the information they need to solve business and customer problems. An effective digital nervous system should include access to the Internet, reliable e-mail, a powerful database, and excellent line-of-business applications , and should transform three major elements of any business: the relationships to customers and business partners—the e-commerce element; the information flow and relationships among workers within a company—the knowledge management element; and the internal business processes—the business operations element. The recent release of Windows® Tablet PC® edition is an example of a Microsoft tool that supports the concept of digital nervous system. Even though knowledge management as a conscious practice is still young (Hansen et al., 1999), using information technology to support knowledge management is being explored and is well under way in many organizations. The Web technologies are not only changing the landscape of competition and the ways of doing business but also the ways of organizing, distributing, and retrieving information. Web-based technology is making effective knowledge management a reality, and Web-based knowledge management systems have been developed and deployed. Currently, Web-based technology is enabling the management of knowledge at the document management level, in contrast to the traditional record-level data management. The record-level data management is basically the focus of tra-Knowledge Management on the Web ditional database management systems. The document level is higher than the record level. For example, we generally handle daily problems through communicating with each other by using documents and exchanging ideas or perspectives about an issue, rather than dealing with database fields or records. Document-level information management is generally viewed as a lower level of knowledge management. In this chapter, Web-based knowledge management is explored. Four representative types of Web-based knowledge management models are identified and studied. The study of these models would shed light on the effective management of organizational knowledge, …