KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND LEARNING CULTURE IN DISTRIBUTED ENGINEERING

Abstract

The first wave of Knowledge Management was mainly technology driven. The current second wave focuses on behaviour and culture with concepts such as Communities of Practice. This paper proposes an integrated socio-technical framework for knowledge sharing and learning. It argues that learning is a capability of both, the social and the technical subsystem within a given system. Each subsystem has to convey its learning to the other subsystem to improve overall system performance. The other subsystem in turn has to allow for, and reflect the learning of the first subsystem. Thus, implementing successful Knowledge Management requires joint development of the social and the technical aspects. This framework is applied to two case studies representing the two paradigms of Knowledge Management. The paper explains the shortcomings in both cases relative to the socio-technical framework. It concludes that while both approaches have specific benefits, an integrated approach to a knowledge-rich business environment will eventually produce a better understanding of the ways knowledge is exchanged and organisational learning can be promoted.

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