An Intelligent Agent-Based Framework for Knowledge Management on The Web:An Exploratory Study of A Virtual Team in Designing A Multimedia System

摘要

The recent proliferation of personal computers and communication networks has enabled organizations to acquire and retain their distributed organizational structures (Halal et al., 1996; Tapscott, 1995). Using a computer network, geographically distributed people with common goals can communicate, coordinate, and collaborate their work efforts across time and space barriers. These groups of people have been called "virtual teams" (Davidow & Malone, 1993; Geber, 1995). Jessup et al. (19%) define virtual teams as "turbo task forces, with teams forming and disbanding as needed, with team size fluctuating as necessary, and with team members coming and going as they are needed." Because the virtual teams can bring together the right mix of people who have the appropriate set of knowledge, skills, information, and authority to solve difficult problems quickly and easily, they are receiving considerable attention from knowledge workers involved in non-routine, unstructured, and uncertain problems (Jessup et al., 1996; McGuire, 1996). Today such teams can be quite large and they can be distributed around the globe. The quality of their results depends on how well individual knowledge can be communicated among members of a virtual team. The challenge that modern organizations face is to turn the scattered, diverse knowledge of their knowledge workers who are working in a virtual team into a well-structured knowledge repository (Spek & Spijkervet, 1996; Wiig, 1993). Knowledge Management (KM) is suggested as a methodology for creating, maintaining and exploiting a knowledge repository (Stewart, 1995, Wiig, 1993). KM is defined as the collection of processes that support the creation, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge between appropriate individuals, groups within an organization, and independent organizations (Liebowitz & Wilcox, 1997). The recent popularity of the World Wide Web (Web) has provided a tremendous opportunity to expedite the dispersement of various knowledge creation/diffusion infrastructures (Chen & Gains, 1997; Ives & Jarvenpaa, 1996). Because the Web enables organizations to create a knowledge repository and to extend the scope of collaboration in an easy and cost-effective manner, it creates the possibility of developing global collaborative KM platforms (Barua et al., 1995; Davenport, 1996). However, the unstructured nature of the Web creates an information overload problem. While the Web allows various kinds of knowledge to be created and disseminated across time and space barriers, it does not support the processes of using and updating the knowledge in a timely manner. Rasmus (1996) and O'Leary (1996) suggest the use of intelligent agents as a promising solution for assisting and facilitating these processes. This research will focus on developing a conceptual model for KM and a framework for the roles of intelligent agents in the conceptual KM model. Furthermore, it will implement and evaluate the intelligent agent-based framework on the Web under a collaborative environment for designing a multimedia system.