Sharing Expertise: Beyond Knowledge Management

Citation

Keary, M.Y. (2004), "Sharing Expertise: Beyond Knowledge Management", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 188-188. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470410533461

Knowledge management (KM) is composed of two views, and that of managing explicit knowledge through software and standard computational techniques is widely accepted and well documented. The other view of KM, called expertise sharing or tacit knowledge, requires a different approach, and the authors use their shared experiences to illustrate its importance.

This book is aimed at both researchers and practitioners in KM. For the former it is a state‐of‐the‐art book on expertise sharing that surveys the literature and current research, the latter will find critical issues and important perspectives needed to implement viable systems. In this treatise a range of possibilities are examined – from traditional management structures, to how expertise might be self‐organized by knowledge workers.

Part I leads with a discussion on the literature and practice of knowledge sharing in large organizations. There are arguments on the deep‐rooted cognitive and motivational limitations that interfere with people's ability to share their expertise; as well as the academic viewpoint that KM practices are affected by ambiguity, with a limited focus on knowledge‐sharing practices and a lack of long‐term practical experience. Others report that by integrating KM and workplace learning it can bring an understanding of how people learn into their KM strategies.

Part II examines the actual practice of expertise sharing in different types of organizational settings, using field studies to illustrate how it is currently practiced. These include the uses of context and contact information in a state government; designing issues for an expertise locator system within an organization; looking at the initial stages of a knowledge‐mapping approximation project to create an instrument for assessing group members' knowledge; and describing EADS Airbus's approach to support expertise sharing within communities of practice.

In part III, the focus is on how IT can support the sharing of expertise from a variety of viewpoints. Results show how traditions as different as those of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer‐supported co‐operative work (CSCW), join forces to find innovative solutions for different situations of expertise sharing. From design tools for KM, through to technical mechanisms and architectures designed specifically for expertise management, the focus is on interesting prototype applications.

To sum up this book views expertise management from alternative and critical stances, viewing current theories and efforts through observations based on field studies of real organizations. It highlights the possibilities without losing the complexity and difficulty of the enterprise.