Personal weblogs are an established media of communication in the internet. For some years, they push into firewalled intranets of organizations like other forms of social software. Potential benefits are supposed to be in the field of organizational knowledge management. The interdisciplinary thesis of Ehms tries to uncover, in how far these expectations are justified, if a offer to employees to blog will be accepted, what kind of forms of use emerge and what benefit for the organization as a whole is possible.
Therefore it is the goal of this piece of work, to analyze the #business benefits of employee weblogs for organizational knowledge management theoretically and empirically. This is to close a gap in the status quo of respective research, which is not satisfying, empirically as well as theoretically. Empirically a multi-method approach is chosen, based on case studies. This comprises literature research and discourse, ethnographic elements as well as qualitative data analysis of weblog content and guided interviews. The origination of the weblog platform inside Siemens AG is covered in terms of its technical and socio-cultural framework conditions as well as communication efforts of the initiative and the role of the author himself. Blog initiatives of Microsoft and IBM as well as other IT companies are compared to the Siemens approach.
Organizational knowledge management is sketched with regard to its goals, historical development, models and its most prominent concepts. Forms and processes of knowledge are worked out and condensed into a minimal model. Organizational knowledge work in more and more individualized, computerized and economized contexts work serves as a discursive link to the concept of personal knowledge management. Within personal knowledge management, three strands of development are identified: (a) the technologically oriented "hypertext school", (b) the "activity school", oriented towards processes of information management as well as (c) the "pedagogical/psychological school" focusing primarily on questions concerned with individual goals and strategies. From these pieces a (activity) model is developed that serves a basis for reflecting and reviewing technical and functional characteristics of weblogs.
From results regarding the phenomenon of blogging on the internet different forms and intensities of usage are identified and sorted out. Locating weblogs in relation to web 2.0, enterprise 2.0 and social software movements creates a setting for discussing technology adoption by organizations and corporations. This discussions advises the design of the empirical study therefore focusing on individual practices of blogging. How intensively and to what end employees are using their weblogs is analyzed in detail by ten individual case studies. This includes especially personal motives, expected benefits, barriers experienced up to motives for abandoning one's weblog. With regard to practices, text length, number of pictures, hyperlinks and comments as well as inter-connectedness are covered.
Patterns are uncovered by comparing different cases and identifying knowledge blogs as an important form of blogging. Activity profiles of these blogs are analyzed again and linked to personal knowledge management which enables a operational definition of knowledge blogs. Summarizing the emergence of social networks and the variety of intended use are central results. Finally the patterns discovered are compared to characteristics and indicators of the framing initiative.
With regard to this empirical underpinning economic benefits of a modern knowledge management in general and of personal employee weblogs in particular are mapped to four general goals of organizations (resilience, efficiency, flexibility and innovation capability). After discussing specifics of the study related to rollout and introduction of social software in organizations, implications of network coordination are sketched. Aspects like complexity, self-organization and selective attention in a world of abundance play a important role.
You may comment on this posting!