Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Figure 2: Keywords tag cloud
Pavel Bogolyubov
Given <strong>the</strong> overall <strong>the</strong>me <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> conference, it would be interesting to look at what is being discussed in
papers residing within <strong>the</strong> “twilight zone” between KM and Web 2.0 – i.e., papers with KM listed as a
keyword and containing a reference to W2.0.
Sixty-odd relevant articles can be grouped into 20 streams sometimes represented by an isolated
one, such as business benefits (Andriole 2010) or syn<strong>the</strong>tic worlds (Burley, Savion et al. 2010); o<strong>the</strong>r
topics discussed are various s<strong>of</strong>tware and platforms (e.g., Grossman 2008 – iBridge and Donnelly
2010 - GIS in libraries), tagging and folksonomy (Grinham 2007; Parise, Guinan et al. 2009; Lee and
Ge 2010; Mat<strong>the</strong>ws, Jones et al. 2010 and Wu, Gordon et al. 2010), Wikis (Grace 2009; Yates,
Wagner et al. 2010) and so on, however – not surprisingly given <strong>the</strong> collaborative nature <strong>of</strong> Web 2.0
and a high number <strong>of</strong> users implied – <strong>the</strong> matters <strong>of</strong> collaboration and knowledge sharing stand out as
receiving <strong>the</strong> most attention.
I shall start from two papers that provide a general overview <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> role W2.0 plays in knowledge
sharing as well as considerations related to it. Patrick and Dotsika (2007) are discussing such issues
as difficulties with knowledge modelling in W2.0 context, <strong>the</strong> matter <strong>of</strong> standardization, security
concerns and <strong>the</strong> question <strong>of</strong> maintenance, but perhaps more importantly, <strong>the</strong>ir key idea is that W2.0
provides an opportunity for knowledge sharing systems to be developed “from within”, i.e., through <strong>the</strong>
empowerment <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> end-user via a bottom-up process, effectively meaning a shift from an approach
focussed on IT systems to <strong>the</strong> one “building on <strong>the</strong> information and knowledge stored within <strong>the</strong>
organisation” (p. 398), which is an interesting point since in <strong>the</strong> early day <strong>of</strong> KM its understanding was
leaning heavily towards <strong>the</strong> ICT to <strong>the</strong> degree <strong>of</strong> 70% <strong>of</strong> all publications being dedicated to technical
aspects ra<strong>the</strong>r than <strong>the</strong> “s<strong>of</strong>ter” side <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> matter (Easterby-Smith, Crossan et al. 2000).
Ano<strong>the</strong>r paper, written by Paroutis and Saleh (2009), and looking at <strong>the</strong> success factors for W2.0 in
knowledge sharing from a somewhat more managerial perspective, identifies five key “determinants”:
history (previous ways <strong>of</strong> doing things), outcomes (perceived benefits and rewards),
organizational/management support , and trust. Linked to <strong>the</strong> latter point, also referred to briefly in <strong>the</strong>
papers by McNamee, Schoch et al. (2010) and Schneckenberg (2009), found that <strong>the</strong> degree <strong>of</strong> using
W2.0 for organizational learning and knowledge sharing depends on such factors as <strong>the</strong> degree <strong>of</strong>
freedom, openness and employee empowerment, pointing out that <strong>the</strong> social setting differs in those
respects from <strong>the</strong> corporate environment. These findings are supported by <strong>the</strong> conclusions <strong>of</strong>
Prasarnphanich and Wagner (2009), who found that altruism is a prevalent motivating factor for Wiki
collaborators, and thus it can be argued that a closed, tightly controlled and disempowered culture will
be less conductive to collaboration using such W2.0 platforms as Wikis.
Overall, this group <strong>of</strong> papers clearly opens up a discussion about <strong>the</strong> role <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> end user in sharing
knowledge through W2.0, shifting from <strong>the</strong> IT-centric view towards such consideration as trust,
empowerment and culture in general, a topic that is being continuously discussed in KM literature but
not widely researched in relation to W2.0 in KM context in particular.
Ano<strong>the</strong>r group <strong>of</strong> papers can be broadly placed within Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model (e.g., Nonaka
and Takeuchi 1995) – e.g., Martin-Niemi and Greatbanks (2010), have identified ten enabling
conditions making blogs a successful ba (environment) for knowledge conversion according to
Nonaka’s SECI model, including – yet again – mutual trust, and being in general purely behavioural
ra<strong>the</strong>r than ICT-related. Two o<strong>the</strong>r papers in <strong>the</strong> same group are dedicated to <strong>the</strong> matter <strong>of</strong> Personal
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