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On The Convergence of Knowledge Management and Groupware: Squreshi@mail - Unomaha.edu
On The Convergence of Knowledge Management and Groupware: Squreshi@mail - Unomaha.edu
and Groupware
1 Introduction
Organisations increasingly see their intellectual assets as strategic resources that must
be harnessed and managed effectively to achieve competitive advantage and to sur-
vive. An organisation’s intellectual assets consist of the knowledge held in the minds
of its members, embodied in its procedures and processes, and stored in its (non)-
digital media that could be useful for achieving its strategic ends [26]. It is or the sum
of everything everybody in a company knows that gives it a competitive edge [22].
With its strategic intellectual resources, an organisation can minimise its costs, create
innovative products, improve production procedures, improve quality, respond to
dynamic market conditions, and improved customer service.
The effective performance and growth of knowledge intensive organisations re-
quires integrating and sharing knowledge that is otherwise highly distributed [26].
Distributed knowledge is often personalised, residing in isolated pockets and commu-
nities within and outside of the organisation. It has been suggested that problems
which stem from traditional business environments that hoard knowledge is an obsta-
cle which is preventing knowledge management efforts from being a complete suc-
G.-J. de Vreede et al. (Eds.): CRIWG 2004, LNCS 3198, pp. 25–33, 2004.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004
26 Sajda Qureshi, Vlatka Hlupic, and Robert O. Briggs
cess [11]. In addition, Vance [24] suggests that the reason information and knowledge
may not be easily transferred from the holder to the person needing it may be because
much of it is tacit, ingrained in the holder’s mind, but difficult to articulate.
Nunamaker et al., [16] and Qureshi et al., [18] suggest that an organisation’s po-
tential to create value through the use of its intellectual capital is a function of the
extent to which people can understand data, information, knowledge, and wisdom,
and can collaborate. Technologies for knowledge management may enable improved
capture and conveyance of understanding that might otherwise be inaccessible in
isolated pockets; technologies collaboration may enable communication and reason-
ing among people who use knowledge to create value. It may therefore be that a con-
vergence of knowledge management and collaboration technologies could increase an
organizations ability to create value with knowledge.
Developments in collaborative technology are increasingly focusing on technology
for geographically distributed teams. This means that instead of bringing groups to-
gether in a meeting room equipped with computers, people can accomplish some
kinds of tasks online in virtual workspaces. This type of electronic collaboration has
become a powerful means of capturing, exchanging, exploiting, and managing knowl-
edge. In this way, electronic collaboration becomes instrumental in capitalising on an
organisation’s intellectual capital.
This paper is to bring together key concepts in groupware and knowledge man-
agement to develop a framework that demonstrates the interdependence of knowledge
management and collaboration. The framework may also provide guidance to re-
searchers and practitioners seeking to tap into diverse, yet disparate knowledge re-
sources. This framework may be a useful basis for developing or choosing groupware
tools specifically designed for knowledge management activities.
2 Methodology
To develop the framework, we examined groupware literature: 1) that had well-
grounded theoretical foundations; 2) that had rigorous empirical findings, and 3) that
explored pragmatic, practical organizational applications. We analyzed the knowledge
management literature to identify the basic activities to which knowledge manage-
ment technology was applied. We then mapped modes of collaboration to the knowl-
edge management activities, and mapped collaboration onto the intersections of col-
laboration and KM to illustrate how these technologies might improve KM
performance. We focused on practical application of groupware and knowledge man-
agement activities; philosophical and theoretical notions of knowledge were beyond
the scope of this paper.
KM activities have emerged. For example, according to Angus and Patel [1], knowl-
edge gathering refers to:
• bringing in of information and data
• organising related concepts to ensuring that the knowledge is easily accessible by
giving it context through linking items to subjects
• adding value to knowledge by identifying new relationships, abstracting, synthesis-
ing and sharing.
Yet Kramer [13] limits the concept knowledge gathering to the process of collec-
ting knowledge, and posits knowledge organizing as a separate concept that involves
classifying knowledge to give it meaning so that it can be easily located by those
searching for it. Kramer [13] defines knowledge distribution as yet another separate
KM activity. Nonetheless, there is significant overlap in the concepts identified by
these and other authors. Table 1 synthesizes generic KM activities from exemplars in
the literature on KM practices. These are defined as follows:
• Create. Develop new understandings and procedures from patterns, relationships,
and meanings in data, information, and prior knowledge.
• Collect. Acquire and record knowledge in a medium from which it can later be
retrieved.
• Organize. Establish relationships among knowledge items through synthesis,
analysis, generalization, classification, or affiliation. Create context so that col-
lected knowledge can be easily accessed and understood by those who need it.
• Deliver. Grant access to people who should have access to knowledge, while
blocking access to those who should not. Search for and share knowledge. Present
knowledge in a medium and format that minimises cognitive load while maximis-
ing understanding of those who need it.
• Use. Bring knowledge to bear on a task that creates value for an organization.
Nunamaker et al. [16] suggest that “we are moving towards an age of any time any
place collaboration”. Fuelled by the exponential growth of the Internet, the World
Wide Web, and local area networks, there are various communication technologies
that enable this flexible form of collaboration. These include combinations of elec-
tronic mail, real time conferencing, and multicast audio and video used to support, for
example, internet-based concerts and presentations [8, 21].
Any time any place collaboration can also be achieved through information sharing
technologies such as digital whiteboards, computer bulletin boards and threaded dis-
cussion groups, document management systems that provide for the creation and
reuse of documents as well as the control of access, concurrency, and versioning
[5,25]. Such suites of collaborative technologies are now in use in organizations and
universities around the world. Such advanced collaboration environments can be used
for multiple tasks that cross temporal, spatial and social distance.
information. This is the essence of the Gather and Organize, and Deliver KM activi-
ties. Given that KM technology is mean to communicate knowledge and information
in support reasoning
Nunamaker et al. [16] suggest that there are three modes of collaboration that may
be made more effective through the use of various collaborative technologies: 1) col-
lective effort, people work on their own and group productivity is simply the sum of
individual efforts; 2) coordinated effort, people make individual efforts, but produc-
tivity depends on the level of individual effort and on the coordination among those
efforts; 3) concerted effort all members must make their effort in synchrony with
other members and the performance of any member directly affects the performance
of the other members. The generic KM activities can be conducted in all of these
modes. Further, people working in all these modes require knowledge to support their
deliberations that they could derive from KM technology. Support for co-ordination
among individuals carrying out a collaborative work process requires a different com-
bination of technologies than do concerted collaboration efforts. Collaborative (or
group) task is defined as the behaviour requirements needed to accomplish stated
goals (i.e. create value), via an explicit process, using given information [27].
Regardless of which KM activities a team performs, the activity will require that
the team engage in one or more of the five patterns of collaboration. Table 3 illus-
trates the interdependence of KM and Collaboration by mapping collaboration tech-
nology to KM activity by the pattern of collaboration the technology can foster.
Regardless of which KM activity a team performs, they must divide their limited
attention resources among the three cognitive processes required for collaboration:
communication, deliberation, and information access. Table 4 illustrates the interde-
pendence of KM and collaboration by mapping collaborative technologies to KM
activities organized by cognitive process.
6 Discussion
The multidimensional framework presented in the tables above demonstrates the in-
terdependence of knowledge management activities and collaboration concepts. The
correspondence between collaboration and KM is not surprising when you consider
that a) the purpose of an organization is to create value for its stakeholders that the
stakeholders cannot create for themselves as individuals; b) the purpose of collabora-
tion is to achieve a goal through joint effort, thus, creating value; and c) the purpose
of Knowledge Management is to make relevant knowledge available to people who
seek to create value for organizations. Organizations consist of people working to-
gether toward value-creation goals; both KM and collaboration technology exist to
make them more effective and efficient.
On the Convergence of Knowledge Management and Groupware 31
There are several implications of this framework for researchers. First, KM and colla-
boration are currently separate research streams with few points of overlap. The
framework we offered argues the interdependence of collaboration and KM, which
suggests that KM and collaboration are two views of a larger underlying concept. The
framework offered here does not illuminate the nature of the underlying concept, nor
does it articulate a rigorous theoretical foundation for integrating these two lines of
research. More research is required to reveal the nature of the underlying concept, and
to explain how and why KM and collaboration technologies could or should be inte-
grated. This research must identify and articulate the phenomena and outcomes of
interest that the newly integrated research stream could or should address.
The framework offered here was developed to illustrate the interdependence of col-
laboration and KM. It is also useful for organizational practitioners. First, it provides
as a useful way to understand the variety contributions a given collaboration or KM
technology could make to team and organizational productivity. A practitioner could,
for example, consider whether the technology were better suited to collective, coordi-
nated, or concerted work, and whether it offered support for communication, delibera-
tion, or information access. The practitioner could consider the variety of collabora-
tion patterns that one could evoke with a given technology.
In like manner, the framework might be useful for comparing two or more
KM/collaboration technologies to one another, and for positioning collaboration tech-
nologies in the market space. Current technology comparisons are usually based on
feature checklists. However, feature comparisons are perhaps less informative than
comparisons of mode, pattern, and cognition support.
Finally, practitioners may find the framework for choosing which mix of technolo-
gies might be must useful for addressing a particular collaboration/KM need. The
need could be characterized in terms of the dimensions of the framework (what work
modes are required, what patterns are required, what cognitive processes are required,
what KM activities are necessary?). That characterization could then become a basis
for selecting the mix of technologies to address the need.
7 Conclusions
The framework offered in this paper illustrates the interdependence of KM and col-
laboration. These domains are clearly closely related to each other and to organiza-
tional value creation, but the nature of those relationships is not ye plain. The theo-
retical arguments that link them have yet to be articulated. The framework has
implications beyond the purpose for which it was originally developed, serving useful
purposes for researchers, technologists, and practitioners. However, it cannot substi-
tute for a rigorous theoretical foundation. The development of that theoretical founda-
tion is the next logical step in an effort to improve value creation in organizations by
integrating KM and collaboration initiatives.
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