Lately, a debate regarding Knowledge Management decline has risen. Even though most of top executives recognize that knowledge is a strategic asset that leads to increase business performance, KM implementation remains problematic. The main barriers remain in its adoption by all types of users and contributors. Many companies reported examples of Knowledge Management initiatives that were not as successful as expected. Failures are often due to lack of employee’s enthusiasm to participate actively in the Knowledge sharing processes or to the opacity of social relationships linking people across the organizations. The persistent quest to achieve KM objectives and to foster collaboration has led strategists to consider emerging technologies, such as social software, to support new networked and informal business structures. The question lies on how these tools are contributing to the renaissance of Knowledge Management.
Despite the fact that many current implementations of KM initiatives are based on highly advanced information technologies, there are still challenges to cope with in order to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of such KM initiatives. Several studies and surveys having investigated the reasons leading to the KM initiative failure, highlighted that organizational culture and others psycho-social factors play an important role to the KM success.
Thus, with the growing recognition that KM technologies have not fully delivered their promises, academic and KM practitioners have shifted their focus on solving “non technological issues” related to practices, cultures, and organizational changes. Knowledge sharing is seen as a challenging task, difficult to nurture within an organization. It requires pro-social behaviour through social processes, for example by cultivating a sense of community.
The persistent quest to achieve KM objectives and to foster collaboration has led strategist’s people to adopt emerging technologies supporting new networked business structures. Web 2.0, Social software, could become one of the answers for improving the way people work together and to address some of the knowledge sharing challenges.
Close studies, looking at the use of Web 2.0 communities, show that knowledge sharing is the fundamental nature of such approaches. For example, strong user’s participations have created the recognized success of some Web sites such as
(full paper will be published at ECKM conference proceeding -http://www.academic-conferences.org/eckm/eckm2009/eckm09-abstracts.htm)--- Contact the autho r==> aurillaa@hihm.no)
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