Preface for the Third Edition - Read

14. Systems 559
advanced tele-learning applications like live broadcasting of videos or video
server. This might change in the near future, though, as investment in network
infrastructure is considerable, though not at the same pace throughout the world.
This means that especially large multinational organizations will encounter bandwidth
problems in certain parts of the world even in the longer run. This is especially
true for their operations in countries with infrastructure that is still challenged
by the large gap between supply and demand if they try to install KM programs
that should discriminate some of their subsidiaries, e.g., in the third world.
Only a small portion of the list of KMS functions could be compared to the more
superficial analysis of KMS functions performed in previous studies. The share of
organizations that used functions that actually could be compared, did not rise with
respect to previous studies. Hypothesis 6: ’Compared to earlier studies significantly
more organizations use ICT in general and knowledge management systems
in particular to support their KM activities’ was not supported for KMS functions.
However, according to the interviews it seems that organizations have implemented
a number of advanced KMS functions only recently so that the use of these
functions might well be on the rise.
Table C-49 gives an overview of the results for the different KMS architectures.
The aggregation of means for ordinary scaled variables cannot be interpreted seriously.
The numbers are meant to give a general indication of which categories of
functions were used by what share of organizations and in what frequency 123 .
TABLE C-49. Aggregated comparison of KMS functions according to KMS
architectures
KMS architecture number
of functions
average number
of KMS functions
per organization
average share of
organizations with
KMS functions
mean frequency
of usage of
KMS functions
integrative 28 10.03 (35.82%) 53.04% 3.12
interactive 20 7.21 (36.05%) 50.24% 2.74
bridging integrative
and interactive
14 4.01 (28.64%) 42.59% 3.00
total 62 21.25 (34.27%) 49.77% 2.97
The average number of functions per organization was calculated as the mean
of the number of integrative, interactive and bridging KMS functions implemented
per organization. The average share of organizations with functions was computed
using the following formula:
123. The mean over means and the mean over medians differ only marginally, though, and
the general picture has been confirmed in the interviews, so that the results all point in
the same direction.