Designing a Knowledge Management System: A Sensemaking Perspective
Open Access
- Author:
- Ray, Judith Mebane
- Graduate Program:
- Business Administration
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- December 17, 2002
- Committee Members:
- James B Thomas, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Dennis Arnold Gioia, Committee Member
Arvind Rangaswamy, Committee Member
David E Day, Committee Member - Keywords:
- knowledge management
sensemaking
knowledge actors
dynamic tensions
sensecrafting environment
knowledge management pyramid
case study
theory-building - Abstract:
- Knowledge management (KM) aims to provide a foundation to support an organization’s sustained competitive advantage by building and sustaining the value and uniqueness of organizational knowledge resources and processes. From an inductive theory-building case study of an organization struggling with the design of its knowledge management system (KMS), a conceptualization of KM as a sensemaking system emerged. This takes place in a sensecrafting environment whose principal components are contexts, triggers, knowledge actors, and dynamic tensions. A key finding is the central role played by knowledge actors in crafting sense and driving change in KMS initiatives. They were active players in designing their own shape and trajectory. Multiple organizational contexts were found to be of particular importance to sensemaking around knowledge management. Change in the KMS was found to be driven from two different sides. First, triggers for KMS change originate in organization’s strategic actions and reactions to events in external environment. Additionally, this study uncovered the action of proximate triggers—close-at-hand triggers into which effects of more distant triggers are funneled and that initiate change processes within the KMS. Second, dynamic tensions—naturally-occurring organizational paradoxes never fully and finally resolvable, yet which must be addressed in designing any system—interface between organization and KMS and serve as levers for an ongoing process of sensemaking around organizational knowledge. Movement and interplay among these components leads organizational participants to greater understanding of the role knowledge and information resources play in contributing to the organization’s sustained competitive advantage. The sensecrafting environment comprises the core of an organization’s KMS—the knowledge management pyramid. This pyramid has three layers; KM as a sensemaking system—the focus of this study—occupies the middle layer. It is the workings of the core—the sensecrafting environment—that allows an organization to move from utilizing KM to enhance operational effectiveness and efficiency at the foundational information processing layer through utilizing KM to make sense of knowledge’s value to the organization to utilizing KM to transform the organization itself. Implications for further theory development are addressed. Key concepts in the model suggest design parameters for organizations building KM systems.