KM Technology Profile

One of the key ways knowledge is managed in organizations—especially medium and large organizations—is through the use of dedicated KM technologies. For this 3-5 page (double-spaced) paper, your task is to find an example of a KM technology (a few examples are below, but those as popular as Slack or an organizational wiki can certainly work—and if you work with a particular KM technology in your job, that would be appropriate for this assignment as well.One of the key ways knowledge is managed in organizations—especially medium and large organizations—is through the use of dedicated KM technologies. For this 3-5 page (double-spaced) paper, your task is to find an example of a KM technology (a few examples are below, but those as popular as Slack or an organizational wiki can certainly work—and if you work with a particular KM technology in your job, that would be appropriate for this assignment as well.

Part A: asks for a brief overview of what the technology offers—what are its capabilities, objectively?
Part B: is the main conceptual part of the paper. It asks you to unpack the assumptions about knowledge, communication, organization, and power that are, in effect, designed into the features and functions of the KM technology you chose. I’ve included a few guiding questions (among many other possible ones) to inform your thinking about where some of these connections to course content might be. These are not the only questions possible, so let your thinking take you where it might:
knowledge:
Is the KM tech designed with the idea that knowledge is the same as data or information? Is the tech designed in such a way as to accommodate knowledge an entity/thing, or as a process of knowing? Does the tech appear to address challenges with tacit knowledge or explicit knowledge?
communication:
What view of communication does the tech adopt–is communication a process of connecting people so they can transmit messages (thing-like pieces of information in their final form) to each other? Or, do the tech features enable people to construct (or build or eventually arrive at) some meaning/plan/idea at the end of their interaction that nobody would have guessed at the beginning of their interaction?
organization:
Does the tech assume the organization is a real thing, a given, a physical or legal structure out there in the world somewhere? Or is what we consider an “organization” something that we are constantly creating and recreating through our interactions, through invoking official organizational documents, through using (or changing or ignoring) structures that make organizational work happen?
power:
How does the tech consider power? Does its features assume power is egalitarian when everyone in the organization knows that could never be the case? Does the tech allow access to features for some people in the organization, but not others? Is the tech designed with the idea the certain roles of people “have” power, or does it consider how power unfolds in ongoing interactions?
Part C: asks you to speculate on some unintended consequences of the regular organizational use of this particular technology.Part A: asks for a brief overview of what the technology offers—what are its capabilities, objectively?
Part B: is the main conceptual part of the paper. It asks you to unpack the assumptions about knowledge, communication, organization, and power that are, in effect, designed into the features and functions of the KM technology you chose. I’ve included a few guiding questions (among many other possible ones) to inform your thinking about where some of these connections to course content might be. These are not the only questions possible, so let your thinking take you where it might:
knowledge:
Is the KM tech designed with the idea that knowledge is the same as data or information? Is the tech designed in such a way as to accommodate knowledge an entity/thing, or as a process of knowing? Does the tech appear to address challenges with tacit knowledge or explicit knowledge?
communication:
What view of communication does the tech adopt–is communication a process of connecting people so they can transmit messages (thing-like pieces of information in their final form) to each other? Or, do the tech features enable people to construct (or build or eventually arrive at) some meaning/plan/idea at the end of their interaction that nobody would have guessed at the beginning of their interaction?
organization:
Does the tech assume the organization is a real thing, a given, a physical or legal structure out there in the world somewhere? Or is what we consider an “organization” something that we are constantly creating and recreating through our interactions, through invoking official organizational documents, through using (or changing or ignoring) structures that make organizational work happen?
power:
How does the tech consider power? Does its features assume power is egalitarian when everyone in the organization knows that could never be the case? Does the tech allow access to features for some people in the organization, but not others? Is the tech designed with the idea the certain roles of people “have” power, or does it consider how power unfolds in ongoing interactions?
Part C: asks you to speculate on some unintended consequences of the regular organizational use of this particular technology.

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