Ever since man first shared the knowledge of how to make fire with his fellow human beings, the management of knowledge has been employed by masters training their apprentices and by parents teaching their children. Managing knowledge is hence no new phenomenon. In recent years, however, the importance of knowledge in business and industry has risen dramatically, and shifted from being one resource amongst many to becoming

An intranet is what you get when applying web technology inside an organisation and therefore – seen from a strictly technical perspective – intranets are almost identical to the public Web on the Internet. Reviewing available intranet research, it appears most academics seem to assume that intranets and Internet are identical also in other aspects. In this argumentative paper it is suggested that this assumption is erroneous and instead I argue that usage of and attitudes towards intranet differ significantly from that of Internet. Since these differences seem to have evaded academic interest, intranet research has been too single-dimensional, and in this article the organisational culture perspective is suggested as a theoretical lens for understanding intranets. The effects of organisational culture on web technology use and management are highlighted and discussed and the paper presents implications for both research and practice.

The web was intended to be a collaborative environment where users could exchange ideas but has turned into a read-only environment. The same is true for corporate intranets. In this paper we examine whether the removal of this read-only limitation can facilitate knowledge sharing. By installing a wiki in a corporate intranet, we intervened in an organisational setting and studied the results of this provocation. We found that the intranet transformed from being a semi-static bulletin board to a dynamic exchange forum for internal information. Our conclusion is that when editing becomes as easy as surfing people who want to share knowledge can indeed do so on a corporate intranet.

Abstract: Problem statement: In managing knowledge and competencies as a strategic advantage to an organization, there are difficulties in capturing, storing, sharing and reusing all this knowledge. Researchers have agreed that assessing tacit knowledge is difficult because knowhow of an employee are elusive and what more to assess them. It is compounded when employees leave the organization or become unavailable due to their mobility within the organization. As a result various approaches to collection and codification of knowledge have emerged. One of the most important approaches to emerge is knowledge management. Approach: In this study, we presented Knowledge Extract, Profiling and Sharing Network (KEPSNet), framework to facilitate the codification knowledge and competencies management adapting knowledge management processes in capturing, storing, sharing and reusing knowledge and competencies. Results: We enhanced these processes autonomously by capturing knowledge and competencies in tacit and explicit form from members of group project implementation in the form of concept maps and managed, according to knowledge management process. A case study in a software development group setting was evaluated and results of knowledge management processes output generated from KEPSNet prototype are compared with the result from the project manager in managing the project based. Two sets of questionnaires were given to the group members before and after implementing KEPSNet. Conclusion/Recommendations: The result of the evaluation validates the viability of the key concept presented. Codification of tacit knowledge has resulted in the codified knowledge and competencies recognized.

Most of today’s organisations implement intranets to support, amongst other things, their knowledge management processes. Although intranets appear to be ideal arenas for organisational members to meet and share knowledge quickly and efficiently, actual usage in organisational practice seems limited. Intranets are typically marginalised to one-way communication channels for corporate information. The ambition of this research has been to produce knowledge on how intranets can be designed to better support knowledge management in organisations. We argue a prerequisite for the intranet to function as a knowledge management platform is a critical mass of usage and a content relevant for everyday work. Building on the evaluation results of two implemented interest-based prototype systems, we posit that an intranet must be equipped with applications that actively afford user participation. In this paper we contribute knowledge on how such intranet applications for knowledge management can be designed to take advantage of users ’ everyday actions. Such design-specific knowledge is important for organisations trying to transform their intranets from static electronic bulletin boards to useful knowledge management platforms.