Preface for the Third Edition - Read

2 Goals
2. Goals 9
The leading research question of this book therefore is: To what extent can information
and communication tools and systems support holistic knowledge management
initiatives aimed at improving an organization’s way of handling knowledge?
On the one hand, the focus has to be broad enough to cover the interesting mixture
of perspectives, concepts approaches, theories and results fueling KM research
and practice that are due to the cross-disciplinary, multi-faceted nature of the field.
On the other hand, it is a clear goal to rigorously study the notion of KMS in theory
and practice in order to gain insights into the implementation and deployment of
ICT technologies to support an organization’s KM initiative. The result is a compromise
between rigor—a focussed study of KMS in theory and practice—and relevance—a
holistic perspective on the field of KM. Goal of this book is to investigate
the state of theory and practice of KMS supported KM initiatives using this
perspective. The complexity of this undertaking is reflected in the volume of the
book. There are a lot of unresolved research questions in this area. The following
ones will be addressed in this book:
Strategy: How can KM initiatives be linked to an organization’s strategy? What
knowledge management strategies can be distinguished? How can a KM strategy
be described and detailed? Which factors influence the selection of a strategy for
an organization? Which strategies are potentially successful? What are important
success factors, barriers and risks for the deployment of KMS?
Organization: What alternatives for the organizational design of KM initiatives
are there and which ones are actually implemented in organizations? What instruments
are there for systematic interventions into the way an organization handles
knowledge? What knowledge management tasks and processes can be distinguished?
Which knowledge management roles can be differentiated? How can KM
initiatives support the handling of knowledge in formal work groups and teams and
informal networks and communities? Who should be responsible for what kind of
KM tasks? What impact does the application of knowledge management systems
have on organizational culture and vice versa? What models can be used to aid the
design of KM initiatives as well as the design and implementation of KMS?
Systems: How can KMS be defined and classified? What are the differences to
other types of ICT systems? What are the technological roots of KMS? What architectures
for KMS can be distinguished? What kinds of KM technologies exist or
what kinds of technologies are proposed for the use in KM approaches? What services
do KMS provide? To what extent are KMS and particularly KMS services
implemented and actually used in organizations? How can these services be integrated?
What types of contents and media are used in KMS? How are these contents
related to each other? How can the quality or maturity of knowledge elements
be determined and what concepts are there to manage the process of maturing
knowledge?