Preface for the Third Edition - Read

7. Systems 361
project staffing or competence development programs. Infotop plays the role of an
enabler and catalyst to spark usage of corporate KMS solutions and start a positive,
reinforcing cycle of more and more active, motivated participants handling knowledge
in organizations.
7.6 Classification
There are a great number of information and communication technologies that are
discussed as supporting knowledge management. Apart from more traditional tools
and systems as discussed in this book as the technological roots of KMS (section
7.1) there are a great number of functions providing knowledge-related services.
These services have been combined into a centralized KMS architecture (sections
7.3.3, 7.4). As a contrast, section 7.5 has shown an alternative way of organizing
KMS, a decentralized, peer-to-peer architecture.
However, both architectures can be seen as ideal in the sense that almost all
actual tools and systems offered on the market or implemented in organizations
only offer a certain portion of these services. The following section aims at organizing
the abundant number of tools and systems that are discussed as being helpful
for KM. Firstly, a number of classifications of tools and systems in support of
KM as found in the literature are presented (section 7.6.1). The tools are then
ordered into a classification scheme (section 7.6.2).
7.6.1 Knowledge Tools
There are a great number of tools, platforms and application systems on the market
which claim support for organizational memory or knowledge management respectively
564 . The field is still immature, though, in the sense that there are no classes
of systems that the literature has agreed on. So far, there are several proposals for
classifications of systems which mostly lack completeness and also exclusiveness
in the sense that one system fits into one and only one category. Table B-19 shows
a comprehensive overview of classifications of technologies, tools and systems
supporting KM 565 . Classifications in the literature fall into two categories:
Market view. These classifications try to cover either technologies, tools and systems
that potentially support KM (wide view) or they cover the functionality of
KMS (narrow view).
Theoretical view. These classifications are based on existing models describing
types of knowledge (abstract view) or KM, OL or OM processes or tasks respectively
(concrete view) that could potentially be supported by ICT in general or
KMS in particular.
564. For a list of KMS see the support Web site for this book http://iwi.uibk.ac.at/maier/kms/
.
565. See also Maier/Klosa 1999c, 8ff, Klosa 2001, 63ff for a detailed discussion of some of
the classifications listed here.