Intranets and Knowledge
Organization
Thomas P Kiehne
25 March 2004
Agenda
• Definitions
• Examples
• Review of Literature
Definitions
• Brown & Duguid: “Intranets help present
and circulate boundary objects”
• Choo, Detlor, & Turnbull: “Intranets…
support the creation, sharing, and use of
knowledge”
• Ginsburg & Kambil: “Intranet[s] facilitate
distributed document publishing”
Definitions
• Stenmark: “Intranets are organizational
restricted”
• Detlor: “Intranets… are private, internal
Web-based networks usually restricted to
organizational participants only”
• Abraham (1998): “a set of applications built
on an internet-enabled infrastructure meant
for internal use only by employees of a
single organization”
Working Definition
• Secure access via common Internet
protocols (HTTP)
– Local access via firewalls / local area networks
– Remote access via virtual private networks or
password restriction
• Restricted to an organization
• Used for content aggregation,
communications, and collaboration
Examples
• Intranets.com (via Keller-Williams Realty)
– Service provider
• Fosforus, Inc.
– Custom-built (and in-progress) solution
• UT Direct
• BlackBoard
Review of Literature
• Brown & Duguid (1998) Organizing Knowledge
• Choo, et al. (2000) Information Seeking and
Knowledge Work on the WWW, ch. 4
• Ginsburg & Kambil (1999) Annotate
• Stenmark (2000) The Creative Intranet
• Liongosari, et al. (1999) In Search of a New
Generation of KM Applications
• Detlor (2000) The Corporate Portal as
Information Infrastructure
Organizing Knowledge
• A response to the opinion that new technologies
will dissolve the traditional organization
– Economic view posits that transaction costs due to
communications friction hold a firm together
– Reference to Toffler: “The Third Wave”
• Knowledge also defines the firm
– Applies to all types of industries, not just information
– Marketers might add: what about “brand” or “image”
Organizing Knowledge
• Knowledge is generated by communities of
practice, which are social, often informal,
organizations
• Communities of practice organize around
knowledge (“know-how”) sharing
– Often cross-functional; “productive tension” or
“creative abrasion”
• The challenge lies in making tacit / existing
knowledge coherent and available
Organizing Knowledge
• Warns against technological determinism:
improved search and retrieval (i.e.: better
Intranets) will improve knowledge transfer
• Knowledge is not easily commodified, as in
the market model, so retrieval is only part of
the issue
Organizing Knowledge
• Organizations excel in hierarchy, which
helps move “indivisible” knowledge, but
discourages the synthesis of competencies
on different levels
– R&D doesn’t work with the factory workers or
management…
• Divisions between communities tend to
foster innovation as well as isolation
– University campus example
Organizing Knowledge
• Knowledge travels more easily between
(like) organizations than it does internally
– Presents an intellectual property challenge
(copyright, patents, trade secrets)
– Business practices become public domain by
their public use
Organizing Knowledge
• Social Strategies for Knowledge
Dissemination (Star & Griesemer)
– Translation (framing one community’s interests
into another’s perspective)
– Brokering (bridging internal communities)
– Boundary Objects (objects, technologies, or
techniques that are used differently but forge
links between communities)
• Intranets help present and circulate
boundary objects
Information Seeking and
Knowledge Work
• Three-tiered model for Intranet design
• Information ecology of an organization:
– Organizational mission and the role information
plays
– Intranet’s goals and how they help the mission
– Information management plans and policies
– Information culture in terms of sharing
information
Information Seeking and
Knowledge Work
• Information ecology (contd.)
– Information politics
– Physical setting and its effect on information
transfer
– Information staff and their relationships to other
staff and management
– Information handling (e.g.: records and
archives)
Information Seeking and
Knowledge Work
• Information behaviors: user’s needs and
problems
• Value-Added Processes
– Support the information needs of users
– Design services to fit the information ecology
– Provide a unified information space
Information Seeking and
Knowledge Work
• Value-Added Processes (contd.)
– Add value by facilitating the sharing,
conversion, and combined use of the
organization’s tacit and explicit knowledge
– Support sense-making and decision making
processes
• For example…
• Intranet design must be flexible and open to
accommodate changes in the organization
Information Seeking and
Knowledge Work
Information Seeking and
Knowledge Work
• Design principles:
– Analyze the organization’s information ecology
– Identify the typical problems and associated
problem dimensions experienced by major sets
of users
– Analyze the information behaviors of these sets
of users by concentrating on typical problem
resolutions
– Create value-added processes that enhance the
information ecology and help resolve problems
Annotate
• Web-based business practices expose process
knowledge to competitors, making “behind the
scenes” processes more valuable (see also
Brown & Duguid)
• Knowledge transformation processes (Nonaka)
–
–
–
–
Socialization: tacit to tacit
Internalization: explicit to tacit
Externalization: tacit to explicit
Combination: explicit to explicit
Annotate
• Knowledge Management Support Systems
(KMSS)
– Data warehouse / database(s)
– Search and discovery mechanisms
– Knowledge representation via ontologies (precoordination vs. post-coordination)
– Quality control (authorization, review, etc.)
– Visualization techniques
Annotate
• System traversal
– Front end: Query layer
– Array of hyperlinks: Retrieval layer
– Core documents: Document layer
• Most systems do not maintain state across
these layers for different users
– Path to discovery
– Reasons for search and selection
Annotate
• Annotate: a tool developed to provide
appraisal and recommendation of
documents
• KM policies to support annotation
– Incentives for annotations (cooperation
dynamics)
– Allow anonymity (identity and risk)
– Annotator controls (authentication, limited
population)
The Creative Intranet
• Organizational knowledge is created
through a continuous and dynamic
interpersonal interaction between tacit and
explicit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi)
– The “Knowledge Spiral”
• Creative acts are unplanned and cannot be
forced or predicted, but can be promoted
The Creative Intranet
• Paraphrasing and modifying principles by
Robinson and Stern:
• “No Preconceptions Principle”
– Alignment towards goals increases creativity,
but may also be limiting
• “Skunk Works”
– Unanticipated activity often begins as an
unofficial task
The Creative Intranet
• “Serendipity”
– An accident is only useful if someone realizes
its potential
– Encourage experimentation; create redundancy
across work functions
• “Diverse Stimuli”
– Expose employees to new input; “kaleidoscopic
thinking”
– Step back from the problem
The Creative Intranet
• “Communication”
– Horizontal and vertical information sharing
– Informal networks; encouragement to ask for
help
• “Trust and Reciprocity”
– If the future is sufficiently important relative to
the present, mutual cooperation can be
established (see also Rheingold)
The Creative Intranet
• “Intrinsic Motivation”
– Not bribery (Soviet example)
• “Rich Information Provision”
– Browsing and IR techniques
– Diversity of representations (for a multiplicity
of cognitive approaches)
• How about constraints?
– Adversity breeds creative solutions
New Generation of KM
Applications
• Information must be presented beyond a list
of documents
– But what isn’t, aside from alternate
visualization techniques, perhaps?
– To the point: summary and analysis
• Developed data mining techniques for Lotus
Notes systems at Andersen Consulting:
Knowledge eXchange (KX)
– Used to find documents and SMEs
New Generation of KM
Applications
• Problems encountered:
– Consistency and structural problems with
Notes; not relational
– Data representation: borrowed “cleansing”
techniques from Knowledge Discovery in
Databases (KDD, Fayyad, et al.)
New Generation of KM
Applications
• Data mining applications based on
relational data model:
• Biography Generator
– Summarizes author information based on
documents in system
• Rate of Absorption:
– Identifies users and authors of documents
within (defined?) subject areas
– Trends over time
New Generation of KM
Applications
• Old Boys Network
– Who knows who internally based on authorship
and discussions
– Does not evaluate email or voice data
• Communities of Practice
– Social network: defines groups by document
involvement in specific subject areas
New Generation of KM
Applications
• Related Subject Areas
– Relates subject areas to each other by reference
or association
– Analyzes shift in subject trends over time
– Assumes that document creation is indicative of
a work continuum
• Suggested Reading
– Based on use of documents and group
affiliations
The Corporate Portal as
Information Infrastructure
• Corporate portal
– Shared workspace, similar to Intranets
– Differ in that they are a directory of information
available elsewhere, not a stand-alone source
– Early example: MyYahoo!
– “All the rage” in the late ‘90s
The Corporate Portal as
Information Infrastructure
• Portal characteristics:
– Organizes information for users
– Platform independent Web interface
– Widely accessible (within the specific security
regime)
• Three components:
– Content space
– Communication space
– Coordination space
The Corporate Portal as
Information Infrastructure
• Value-added model for systems
development (Taylor)
– Attempts to understand the criteria by which
users will judge information to be valuable
• Information Use Environment (IUE)
–
–
–
–
Settings: physical environment, attitudes
Sets of people in these settings
Problems they face
Problem resolutions
The Corporate Portal as
Information Infrastructure
• Information Ecology (Davenport)
– Focus on uses as well as production and distribution
• Components:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Strategy
Politics
Behavior
Staff
Processes
Architecture
The Corporate Portal as
Information Infrastructure
• Behavioral / Ecological design framework
– Based on Taylor and Davenport
– See also Choo, et al.
• Information Ecology -- Value-Added
Processes -- Information Behaviors
The Corporate Portal as
Information Infrastructure
Summary
• “Build it and they will come” is not a
reasonable design strategy
• Users and their information needs are
central to design