Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) are computerized systems intended to support the
management and application of organizational knowledge. Despite the many potential benefits
from KMS> industry reports show that companies are having difficulties in realizing these
benefits. This dissertation sets out to identify the reasons for those difficulties - from a
requirements analysis point of view - and to propose a way to improve the design of KMS in
order to enhance their benefits to companies. We develop a theory-based approach to the
evaluation of Knowledge Management Systems and identify the main shortfalls of existing
systems. The findings show two inter-related problems. First, the lack of a conceptual model
such as an organizational ontology or of additional knowledge about the knowledge might inhibit
KMS ability to support specific organizational KM processes. Second - the lack of an integrated
KM product reduces organization's ability to attain an overall solution for the management of
organizational knowledge. In addition, the analysis pinpoints the inability of current technology
to support effective management of tacit knowledge - an important aspect of KMS design.
In the second part of the dissertation we focus on one of the problems identified - namely, the
lack of a unified meta-knowledge set - and identify the specific meta-knowledge that should be
incorporated into the design of KMS. The expected benefits from the inclusion of meta-knowledge
are better management of organizational memory and enhanced adoption of
knowledge by KMS users. We conduct an empirical investigation - using conjoint analysis - to
identify specific attributes of knowledge and of knowledge sources that individuals take into
account when making their knowledge use decision, and propose that these attributes should
be included as meta-knowledge in the KMS design. The results indicate that the 'accuracy' and
'relevance' of the knowledge are the top two important attributes in the knowledge selection
decision and 'extent of knowledge' and 'trustworthiness' are the top two important attributes in
the selection of a knowledge source. In addition the results show that knowledge plays a slightly
more important role than knowledge source in the overall decision. Finally, several demographic
and contextual variables - such as the knowledge search task and organization size - are
shown to affect the importance of different attributes in the overall evaluation of knowledge and
of knowledge source by individuals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/14943 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Nevo, Dorit |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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