New ICTs for Knowledge Management in Organizations

Pedro Soto-Acosta is Professor at the Department of Management and Finance, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain. Juan-Gabriel CegarraNavarro is based at the Department of Business Management, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Cartagena, Spain. Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this special issue is to point out the possibilities of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for knowledge management (KM) in organizations, offering different perspectives on and approaches for the role of new ICTs for KM, as well as measuring the impact and diffusion of new ICTs for KM within organizations. Design/methodology/approach – The selection of the papers included in this special issue is largely based on the work of the conference “7th European Conference on Intellectual Capital ECIC” (April 2015, Cartagena, Spain), where the special issue editors organized a track on “New ICTs for Knowledge Management in Organizations”.Theconferencegathered leadingscholars in thefieldsof intellectualcapitalandKM,dealingwith the acquisition, creation and sharing of collective intelligence and how to utilize increased academic knowledge and networking in promoting economic and organizational innovations and changes. Findings – The collection of papers covered in this special issue identifies challenging problems on the role of new ICTs for KM and their role in the design and implementation of innovative products, services or processes in organizations. Research limitations/implications – The special issue tries to offer some new relevant advances for the academic and practice communities in the growing body of research analyzing new ICTs for KM. However, the theoretical and empirical advances showed represent only a partial view, which corresponds to the impact of new ICTs for KM at the organizational level of analysis. Practical implications – The nature of new ICTs, such as social networking tools, wikis, internal blogging and the way they are used, suggest that nowadays they may differ from traditional organizational systems in two critical ways: the voluntary (typically not mandatory) use and their lack of activity or process orientation. Originality/value – The special issue explores the phenomena by integrating different perspectives and approaches, including qualitative and quantitative empirical. This integration overcomes some limitations about the understanding of the issues under investigation.