Open Collections

Abstract

Organizations have come to realize the importance of knowledge and the need to manage this strategic resource. Knowledge brings value to the organization when it is used to create capabilities. The challenge is to provide access to those knowledge resources. The thesis suggests a Knowledge Sharing System that can help access both the tacit and the explicit knowledge resources in an organization, by providing the user with the relevant meta-knowledge. The thesis provides a summary of the current state of knowledge management: definitions, needs and challenges faced by organizations in managing their knowledge resources. The thesis includes the results of the case study analysis of more than 50 case studies on the knowledge management initiatives that have been undertaken by organizations. The thesis then focuses on a specific aspect of knowledge management - knowledge sharing. It presents a conceptual model for knowledge sharing in organizations and defines three dimensions for knowledge sharing - Culture, Accessibility and Codification of knowledge. These dimensions are further broken down into sub-dimensions and have been analyzed in detail. Finally, the thesis suggests the requirements and proposed architecture for a Knowledge Sharing System (KSS) that maintains meta-knowledge i.e. knowledge about knowledge resources. The KSS is based on the conceptual model for knowledge sharing. The thesis describes the requirements for the KSS and an architecture that can help meet those requirements.