Internet review

Citation

Crowston, K. (2003), "Internet review", Information Technology & People, Vol. 16 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2003.16116cag.001

Internet review

This special issue of Information, Technology & People is based on knowledge management (KM), which, not surprisingly, is richly represented on the Web. In this column, I will first review some general Web resources before turning my attention to the topics raised by the individual papers.

As might be expected, there are a large number of Web sites concerning knowledge management. Here are a few starting points for your research on this topic:

• •

  BRINT’s Knowledge Management Network™ (http://www.brint.com/km/) claims to be the best resource on the subject, and offers an extensive set of papers and links.

• •

  The Knowledge Management Forum (http://www.km-forum.org/) describes itself as “a virtual community of practice focused on furthering the fundamental theories, methods, and practices collectively called Knowledge Management”. The site includes papers, links and a discussion board.

• •

  The Knowledge Management Resource Centre (http://www.kmresource.com/) provides a collection of KM resources in 17 departments, such as case studies, products and services and organizations (click on “explore” to find the list).

• •

  The Knowledge Management Toolbox (http://knowledgemanagement.ittoolbox.com/default2.asp) includes pointers to and abstracts of peer, company and academic articles as well as links to other sites. (click on “General KM”, http://knowledgemanagement.ittoolbox.com/nav/t.asp?t=303&p=303&h1=303, to see such a list.) The site is provided by the ITtoolbox, which offer similar directories on a range of IT topics.

• •

  The Knowledge Board (http://www.knowledgeboard.com/) calls itself the European KM Community. The site includes articles, discussion boards and event listings.

• •

  CIO Magazine’s Knowledge Management Resource Centre (http://www.cio.com/research/knowledge/) includes pointers to articles regarding KM.

• •

  Finally, Business.com and Google offer directories of links at http://www.business.com/directory/management/knowledge_management/ and http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Knowledge_Management/ respectively.

I will next present a few Web resources related to the specific papers.

Burstein and Linger propose a “task-based approach to KM” based in part on Nardi’s Activity Theory. Those unfamiliar with the topic may find useful Kaptelinin and Nardi’s notes from their tutorial at the CHI ’97 Conference entitled “Activity theory: basic concepts and applications” (http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi97/proceedings/tutorial/bn.htm). For further reading, consult the hotlist on activity theory (http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/activity.html) provided by Martin Ryder of the University of Colorado at Denver School of Education.

Gosain discusses personal knowledge exchanges, which he defines as “Web-based institutions that facilitate the matching of individual sources and recipients of knowledge, structure their interaction, set ground rules for price discovery and support the transfer of knowledge”. He mentions four in particular.

• •

  HotDispatch, “a buyer-driven marketplace for expertise and problem resolution” (http://www.hotdispatch.com/), is still in existence.

• •

  In December 2001, ExpertCity transferred its ExpertLive marketplace to a company called Tech24 (http://www.expertcity.com/expertcity/pr/pressRelease.tmpl?FileID=121701). Tech24 (http://www.tech24.com/) is still in existence, but does not appear to be run as a knowledge exchange.

• •

  SoapBox is “no longer in operation” (http://www.fool.com/soapbox/).

• •

  InfoRocket has merged with Keen (http://www.keen.com/documents/liveadvice/default.asp), which seems to be in operation.

Gallivan et al., use systems dynamics in their analysis. The original home for systems dynamics is the MIT System Dynamics Group (http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/). Their site provides pointers to research and sells the group’s “management flight simulators”. The System Dynamics Society’s home page can be found at http://www.albany.edu/cpr/sds/. It includes links to Society publications and conferences, among other information on the group. Craig W. Kirkwood of Arizona State University hosts the System Dynamics Resource Page (http://www.public.asu.edu/~kirkwood/sysdyn/SDRes.htm).

Finally, Okunoye and Karsten discuss KM in sub-Saharan Africa. Their paper includes the URLs for the organizations they studied. Other sources of information in the region include the Knowledge Management Society of Southern Africa (KMSSA, http://www.kmssa.org.za/html/) and a page from a workshop entitled “Knowledge management (KM) and international sevelopment: KM champions in Africa“, held in Maputo, Mozambique, 29-31 May 2002 (http://www.maacs.org.mz/km/). For more information on this topic, you can consult Adekunle Okunoye’s 2001 University of Jyväskylä Master Thesis, “Information technology infrastructure and knowledge management in sub-Saharan Africa: an empirical investigation” (http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~adeokun/gitm/Thesis2001.pdf).

As usual, you can avoid having to retype the URLs in this article by starting from the online version at http://crowston.syr.edu/itp/

Kevin Crowston