Vantaggio

Monday Briefing Series

Web 2.0 and all that: can Web 2.0 save knowledge management?

A discussion paper by Lesley Mackenzie-Robb

Introduction
Large claims are being made for Web 2.0, or Enterprise 2.0 as it is known in the organisational domain. For instance, according to a recent KPMG paper, Web 2.0 could be the engine for achieving a reform agenda in government (KPMG, 2010). Parson and Randle (2010) claim that public service organisations around the world are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, using social media and applications to engage their citizens, although with mixed rates of success (Osimo, 2008). Others point argue that Web 2.0 tools are the solution to the “distress” of knowledge management (Levy, 2009). Taken on face value then, it looks like this phenomenon holds the solution to achieving reform and in leveraging knowledge within organisations, including the public sector. Osimo makes the link between reform and knowledge when he argues that knowledge management is “key to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government” (p 28). This short paper digs behind the hype to explore whether Web 2.0 tools really can re-energise knowledge management in organisations, or are they better confined to the domain of social networking, personal and collaborative information sharing, and entertainment.

What it Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 was launched in 2003 or 2004, depending on which source you rely on. Since then, the debate over what it actually is has continued. According to Parson and Randle (2010) Web 2.0 has three components: web services, rich internet applications and social media. Osimo (2008) describes it as a set of technologies, applications and values. It is the values which actually define it: the user as producer, content as king and – absolutely fundamental to the notion of social networking – trust. Web 2.0 is people-centric and its tools enable people to create content, distribute it, share it, add to it, review and recommend – or criticise - anything. The applications which enable all of this are in continuous development based on use and feedback – the so-called “perpetual beta” (Levy, 2009). Another defining feature of Web 2.0 is its phenomenal success: Levy, for instance, notes that in 2006 there were 76 milllion blogs on the internet. So, what we are actually seeing is that, without the involvement of any management consultants and largely through the use of freely available tools, millions of people are engaging in the business of sharing content and so forth – because they choose to do so.

What does Web 2.0 do?
Specifically, Web 2.0 tools and practices include Wikis (Wikipedia being regarded as the ultimate in layperson knowledge collaboration), blogs, RSS for custom alerts, mashups used to aggregate content from different sources, tagging and folksonomies, and social or professional networking services such as LinkedIn. Collectively, these represent a fascinating and fertile playground for investigating social behaviour. Hearst and Rosner (2007) studied the use of cloud tags, with the starting point that while cloud tags are increasingly popular, their purpose is somewhat unclear. One could probably make that statement about quite a lot of Web 2.0 tools! They were interested in finding out if cloud tags represented a data analysis device, reflecting users’ behaviours and actions, or are they simply a “badge of Web 2.0”. Interestingly, they did find evidence that many manifestations of cloud tags are quite simply the product of the design office and no more reflect the searching / tagging behaviour of users than sample surveys reflect the actual opinion of a total population.

Web 2.0 tools and knowledge management
Of more relevance to the question at hand, Garcia-Perez and Ayres (2010) studied researchers’ use of a wiki, especially designed for them, to share knowledge, work collaboratively and display individual profiles. The upshot was that the wiki was barely used and, as a knowledge sharing device, branded a failure (“wikifailure”!). Garcia-Perez et al. investigated the reasons for the non-use. The caveat here is that this is a small study, and their failure reasons are generated from a comparatively tiny number of qualitative interviews. Consequently, it would be imprudent to draw any generalisations from their results. They conclude that failure to use the wiki was down to three factors: lack of time, a perception that the wiki did not have much to offer, and a lack of easy access to the wiki itself. Sound familiar? Put another way, people did not use the wiki because their work load would not allow the introduction of a new process, they did not trust the content to be of any value even though the group themselves were the contributors, and it was not user-friendly. These are commonly cited reasons for the failure of knowledge management initiatives and systems.

On the other hand, Lee and Lan (2007) and Levy (2009) argue the case that Web 2.0 tools are the perfect solution for making knowledge management effective. Levy even coins a new term “KM 2.0”. In simple terms, Web 2.0’s success relies on networks of people all collaborating. So does knowledge management. Many subscribe to the notion that it is tacit knowledge which is the real value asset in any organisation: that is, the knowledge that cannot be easily expressed or transferred and can be so innate as to be described as “second nature knowledge”. Within the knowledge management community, the idea of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge so that it may be communicated has long been the subject of hot debate. Some even question the existence of tacit knowledge (Puusa and Eerikainen). Assuming that it does, what can Web 2.0 achieve here? We note that some are a little too quick to ascribe winning features to Web 2.0 tools in supporting the sharing of tacit knowledge. As Garcia-Perez et al. (2010) found, it was a hard task to get people to contribute to a communal wiki, never mind part with their tacit knowledge!

Conclusion – the jury is out
For now, there is no answer to this question. More research is needed to investigate empirically the evidence for Web 2.00 success in knowledge enablement. But, here is another question: if millions of people are happy to contribute their content onto the internet where it can be seen and shared by millions of unknown others, why won’t employees contribute content to their organisational systems? Perhaps the real truth lies in the fact that knowledge management, both as a practice and as a strategy, is not well defined and that the traditional approach to knowledge management espoused by advocates such as Von Krough, Ichijo and Nonaka (2000) it is simply not consistent with western workplace culture. Consequently, it is difficult to see how a set of web tools could transform a practice which no-one quite “gets”. Transform it into what?

References
Garcia-Perez, A. and Ayres, R. (2010). Wikifailure: the limitations of technology for knowledge sharing. Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 8, (1), pp 43 - 52
Hearst, M. and Rosner, D. (no date). Tag clouds: data analysis tool or social signaller? University of California, Berkeley.
KMPG (2010). Dynamic Technologies for Smarter Government: unlocking knowledge in the Web 2.0 age.
Lee, M. and Lan, Y. (2007). From Web 2.0 to conversational knowledge management: towards collaborative intelligence. Journal of Entrepreneurship Research, 2, (2), pp 47 – 62
Levy, M. (2009). Web 2.0 implications on knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13, (1), pp 120 – 134
Osimo, D. (2008). Web 2.0 in government: why and how? JRC Scientific and Technical Reports. European Commission EUR 23358 EN
Parson, G. and Randle, G. (2010). Web 2.0 in public services. Accenture.
Puusa, A. and Eerikainen (no date). Is tacit knowledge really tacit? Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 8, (3), pp 307 – 318
Von Krogh, G., Ichijo, K. and Nonaka, I. (2000). Enabling knowledge creation: how to unlock the mystery of tacit knowledge and release the power of innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.