Role of Knowledge Portals in Knowledge Management
Sunday, July 15, 2007
What is the role of knowledge portals in knowledge management? How to improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals as knowledge management strategies?
Lay Iwan Setiawan
Knowledge portals can be defined as “gateways that streamline access to information, thereby easing the task of transforming data into knowledge and helping in efficient knowledge management” (Kim, Chaudhury, & Rao, 2002, p. 57). The role of knowledge portals in the knowledge management framework is as the technological infrastructure that allows effective and efficient knowledge sharing. Knowledge portals are usually built on the organizations’ intranet.
Kim, Chaudhury, and Rao (2002) argue that portals have three functionalities: searching, transactional function, and communication. Knowledge portals operate in two areas of these functionalities, which are information/knowledge searching and communication. As one of technological infrastructures of knowledge management, knowledge portals provide one-stop access for knowledge workers to get information or knowledge from knowledge repositories. Through knowledge portals, knowledge workers could search for and access documentation, such as best practices, work procedures, etc. Not only they could search for information/knowledge, they could also share their knowledge and experience by posting articles onto the portals.
The other functionality of knowledge portals is communication. Knowledge portals provide a virtual place for knowledge workers to meet, communicate, and share knowledge thus supporting the creation of community of practice (Baalen, Bloemhof-Ruwaard, & Heck, 2005). Knowledge portals provide knowledge workers with discussion forum and other collaboration tools through which knowledge workers could ask questions and share knowledge with other knowledge workers. Even for multi-national companies, knowledge portals allow knowledge sharing to happen among their employees who are located in different geographic locations. Thus, knowledge portals help overcoming organization structural limitation when implementing knowledge management initiatives.
By providing access to knowledge repositories and allowing knowledge sharing, knowledge portals give opportunities to knowledge workers to re-create the knowledge and innovate. This will help building a learning organization (Teo, 2005) which always capable of increasing productivity and creating innovation to better face the highly dynamic business environment.
However, to implement an effective knowledge portal is not an easy task. A research by Desouza and Awazu (2005) shows that most employees and knowledge workers avoid using knowledge portals and only use it as a last resort to find information or knowledge. Desouza and Awazu argue that poor KM system maintenance is the main cause for this. In other word, good KM system maintenance is needed to improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals so that knowledge workers and other employees are willing to use knowledge portals optimally. In order to do this, they suggest keeping the knowledge up-to-date (preventing multiple versions of the same knowledge) and well-structured. This is true. If there are multiple versions of the same knowledge, employees will be confused in choosing which one to use. Whereas, if the knowledge repositories are not well-structured, employees will be very difficult to find the knowledge they need. No matter how useful the knowledge, if the employees cannot find it then it is of no use.
While Kim, Chaudhury, and Rao (2002) suggest that to improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals, organizations should focus more on people instead of technology. People should be encouraged to use the portals. This is true since people are the main drivers of all knowledge management initiatives, including knowledge portals. If no one is willing to share their knowledge through the portals, then when someone is trying to look for something there, he or she will find nothing and will consider the portals as useless. When this happens, no one will use the portals anymore. To encourage knowledge sharing through the portals, organizations could offer incentives schemes, recognition awards, or other awards. For example, the employee contribution in the portals could be taken into account for assessing employee performance and determining the amount of yearly bonus.
In summary, the role of knowledge portals in knowledge management is providing technological infrastructure for effective and efficient knowledge sharing to achieve organizational learning through knowledge re-creation and innovation. To improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals, organizations should well-maintain their KM systems and should focus more on people rather than technology.
References
Baalen, P. V., Bloemhof-Ruwaard, J., & Heck, E. V. (2005). Knowledge Sharing in an Emerging Network of Practice: The Role of a Knowledge Portal. European Management Journal, Vol. 23, Iss. 3, pp. 300-314.
Desouza, K. C., & Awazu, Y. (2005). Maintaining Knowledge Management Systems: A Strategic Imperative. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 56, Iss. 7, pp. 765-768.
Kim, Y. J., Chaudhury, A., & Rao, H. R. (2002). A Knowledge Management Perspective to Evaluation of Enterprise Information Portals. Knowledge and Process Management, Vol. 9, Iss. 2, pp. 57-71.
Teo, T. S. H. (2005). Meeting The Challenges of Knowledge Management at The Housing And Development Board. Decision Support Systems, Vol. 41, Iss. 1, pp. 147-159.
Posted by noah 8:17 PM
Labels: knowledge management
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