A multidimensional model for building knowledge assets: Applying socio-technical systems to online action research.

摘要

This research contributes to the understanding of how organizational members cocreate and apply knowledge in their communities of practice utilizing an online action research model for building knowledge assets. This study builds on the literature of knowledge management and knowledge assets whose origins may be traced to ARPNET and the original “open system,” peer-to-peer process first conceived in the late 1960s through a partnership between UCLA, SRI, UCSB and the University of Utah. This study uses the narrative as its research protocol. The data that are the basis of this study are observations of “anonymous” online message board communications and subjective analysis of how organizational members practice knowledge management, that is, how managers plan, enact, interpret, and evaluate their own actions as organizational learners using an online action-oriented research process. Although the data addressing these praxis-oriented epistemological accomplishments are revealed through the narrative research process, the framework for observing and codifying this knowledge creation work is derived from what the researcher calls, transform-action research. Transform-action is an integral and multidimensional action-oriented research methodology combining action science and action learning with online surveys and message board conferences. The message board forums revealed various critical issues and operational discourse but, for the most part, yielded no new knowledge, few new ideas for innovation, or anything significant other than the kind of conversational patterns that commonly take place in informal organizational environments. (For the purposes of this study, new knowledge is defined as that which occurs when learning becomes situated in a moment of action requiring a novel response, where work groups think together, organizing innovative work patterns, and cocreating opportunities for change). The message boards did provide a useful communications platform for reflective learning and operational discourse, though not strategic discourse. Although the online transform-action research templates helped to establish the context for organizational change, i.e., strategic discourse and collaborative learning, the knowledge workers did not fully utilize the data resources for decision-making. This would suggest that the challenge for knowledge researchers is to avoid the temptation of placing the locus of control on the technology and to place it on those individuals who are the focus of the change intervention. This would develop effective leadership and management skills sufficient to guide knowledge workers toward becoming knowledge researchers.