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

Frank Habermann, Jörg Fehlinger and Karen Schmidt
Already ten years ago an analysis <strong>of</strong> corporate knowledge management projects has indicated severe
practical problems <strong>of</strong> implementing <strong>the</strong>se <strong>the</strong>oretical concepts (Lai/Chu 2000, Storey/Barnett 2000).
Today, most researchers as well as practitioners would agree that this highly centralized and mainly
technology-driven approach was almost doomed to fail (see e.g. Riege 2005, Nevo/Chan 2007, Chua
2007). But <strong>the</strong> issue is not a lack <strong>of</strong> appropriate technologies. Quite in contrast, numerous studies
have demonstrated that powerful s<strong>of</strong>tware for storing, searching and sense-making <strong>of</strong> knowledge
exist (see e.g. Jacobson/ Prusak 2006). Thus, <strong>the</strong> major cause for knowledge management failure is
not availability or applicability <strong>of</strong> technology, it ra<strong>the</strong>r is organizational misconception. The actual
reason is that each unification project runs against individual, organizational and cultural barriers and
thus takes an enormous effort to implement and leads to relatively inflexible architectures (Handy
1992).
Having learned this lesson, many people nowadays stress <strong>the</strong> advantages <strong>of</strong> social media and
“Enterprise 2.0” (McAfee 2009). And indeed, with its decentralized concept, user-generated content,
and emergent structures, it seems to provide <strong>the</strong> right instruments to address employees’ needs. But
does <strong>the</strong> new set <strong>of</strong> technologies automatically lead to better knowledge-sharing practice? Empirical
studies state that this has not yet been, for most companies, <strong>the</strong> case (see e.g. Osimo et al. 2010,
BITKOM 2008).
The entire discussion illustrates a major dilemma <strong>of</strong> knowledge management and organizational
change. It can be brought back to <strong>the</strong> question <strong>of</strong> “control” and <strong>the</strong> organizational role a person
possesses (Habermann 2011). If one asks anyone whe<strong>the</strong>r (s)he enjoys being controlled, <strong>the</strong> most
probable answer one will get is a clear “no!”. However, if <strong>the</strong> person were a manager, and one asked
whe<strong>the</strong>r (s)he wanted to abandon control, you might also receive a negative reply. Therefore, in <strong>the</strong>
first case, in “Knowledge Management 1.0”, knowledge sharing is prevented because <strong>the</strong> majority <strong>of</strong>
<strong>the</strong> knowledge owners, <strong>the</strong> employees within an organization, fear loss <strong>of</strong> power and being controlled.
In <strong>the</strong> second case, in “Enterprise 2.0”, <strong>the</strong> employees appreciate <strong>the</strong> underlying concept but in many
corporate cultures <strong>the</strong> authorities fear loss <strong>of</strong> transparency and managerial influence.
Consequently, this article concludes that corporate knowledge networks require a well-defined mixture
<strong>of</strong> structure and emergence as well as a clear balance <strong>of</strong> interests! In <strong>the</strong> following, <strong>the</strong> corresponding
challenges and management approaches are discussed.
2. The key challenges
In this chapter, we shall briefly analyze (a) complex living systems (organization view), (b) individual
learning relationships (people view), and (c) online social communities (technology view), as <strong>the</strong> three
systemic pillars <strong>of</strong> corporate knowledge networks (see <strong>the</strong> following figure). The main objective <strong>of</strong> this
approach is to clarify key assumptions, agree on core patterns and collect <strong>the</strong> resulting challenges
from each systemic dimension as an accepted set <strong>of</strong> managerial requirements.
Living
Systems
Online
Social Communities
Corporate
Knowledge
Networks
Figure 1: Systemic Pillars <strong>of</strong> Corporate Knowledge Networks
2.1 Complex living systems
Individual
Relationships
As online knowledge networks involve a technical factor as well as a people factor, we consider <strong>the</strong>m
as “socio-technical systems”. In academia, socio-technical systems design has gained a longstanding
reputation as an integrated approach to organizational development (Eijnatten 2001). In
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