Preface for the Third Edition - Read

VI Preface for the Third Edition
to late 90s have turned into Intranet infrastructures in many knowledge-intensive
organizations. Other, more recent developments are right on their way to make a
profound impact on the way businesses and organizations handle knowledge. This
is especially true for easy-to-use content management, collaboration and networking
tools that have come to be called social software. Corresponding technologies
are thought to profoundly change behavior, i.e. the distribution of producers and
consumers on the Internet. Both, technologies and attitudes are often called Web
2.0. Many organizations currently attempt to profit from this trend which has
helped to move KM back on management agendas.
This all seemed to point into the direction that a new edition could find a welcoming
audience. The book has been extended substantially to reflect some of
these developments. Again, updates primarily affect part B, concepts and theories,
whereas part C, the empirical study, was left untouched. Additions include a section
on the management of knowledge risks, a section on KM instruments and a
more profound account of knowledge elements, knowledge stances and KM services
which are considered core concepts for understanding the functioning of
KMS. The edition also contains more concrete ideas for KM initiatives, e.g., the
concept of knowledge maturity, the levers type, process and service for designing
KMS and a more in-depth treatment of semantic integration which is considered a
core challenge in many KMS implementation efforts.
What still stays the same is my hope that the book will help you, the readers, to
navigate the jungle of KMS and to understand the complex matter. The book is
intended to provide concrete hints, models and metaphors on how to go about
designing, implementing and deploying KMS. I also hope that you will enjoy the
ideas presented here and that you will be motivated to develop them further. Any
comments are most welcome to ronald.maier@uibk.ac.at!
Many people have influenced my thoughts on knowledge management (systems)
during the last couple of years, both in academia and in industry, for which I
want to thank them all. Research and teaching at Martin-Luther-University of
Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, and, since February 2007, University of Innsbruck,
Austria, workshops and projects with companies as diverse as BMW, Leipzig, the
IT company GISA, Halle (Saale) or the small and medium enterprises participating
in the EU funded KnowCom project helped me to test the fitness of some of the
concepts for practice. My special thanks go to Ulrich Remus, University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand and Johannes Sametinger, University of Linz,
Austria, for fruitful discussions and to Florian Bayer, Thomas Hädrich, René Peinl,
Stefan Thalmann and Mathias Trögl, all Ph.D. students and current or former
research assistants at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, for their help
with the sections on management of knowledge risks, the example for a centralized
KMS, Open Text Livelink, the conceptualization of knowledge stances, the writeup
of lessons learned on the FlexibleOffice project, knowledge cooperations and
active documents as well as parts of semantic management which are also reflected
in a number of joint publications.
Innsbruck, April 2007