Dissertation - Is Web 2.0 Aiding in Knowledge Management

IS WEB 2.
0 AIDING IN
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
An Indian Perspective
AKSHAY RANGANATH
Dissertation submitted to Oxford Brookes University for the partial
fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION.
April, 2010.
i
DECLARATION
This dissertation is a product of my work and is the result of
nothing done in collaboration.
I consent to University‘s free use of the whole or any part of
item of this Dissertation, to include online or electronic
reproduction and adaptation for teaching and education activities.
I agree that this dissertation may be available for reference and
photocopying at the discretion of the University.
AKSHAY RANGANATH
Word Length: 21,058 words.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I‘d like to thank my supervisor Dr. Hassall for the multiple
reviews and the invaluable comments that he provided. He was
always present to help me and in ensuring that I tried my best.
I‘d also like to thank all the participants in the research for
their time and thoughts.
Finally, I‘d like to thank my wife for being so
understanding and my family for providing me the encouragement
and support while working on the dissertation.
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ABSTRACT
Knowledge management as a discipline has met with
varying levels of success and failure. Web 2.0 is a disruptive
new concept. With its emphasis on sharing and collaboration and
foundation on 'user generated content', it promises to promote a
bottom-up culture of knowledge sharing.
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if Web 2.0
is aiding in the process of Knowledge Management, from the
perspective of India based organizations. India being a preferred
IT outsourcing destination provides an interesting case study on
the adoption of Knowledge Management. Being a recent entrant,
Web 2.0 could help in better designing the Knowledge
Management practices. The purpose of research is to address
the question of whether using Web 2.0 concepts, tools and
technologies is aiding in the Knowledge Management effort in the
India-based IT organizations.
This findings of the dissertation is based on the survey
conducted on 19 people across various organizational segments
of India based IT organizations coupled with the viewpoints and
experiences of two senior managers.
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Contents
chapter……………………….…………………………………………..page
Declaration…………………………………………...……………….…….. ii
Acknowledgements.…………………………………………...……………iii
Abstract…………………………………………...…………………….……iv
Contents………………………...……………………………….…….……..v
List of Tables……………………………………………………………….. ix
List of Figures….………………………………...………………...……..….x
1 Introduction .................................................................................. 15
1. Literature Review ........................................................................ 18
2.1 Knowledge and ‗knowledge creating company‘ ................. 18
2.2 The Learning Organization .................................................. 21
2.2.1 Individual and organizational learning .......................... 23
2.2.2 Types of organizational learning .................................. 24
2.2.3 From Organization Learning to Knowledge
Management ................................................................................ 27
2.3 Knowledge Management ...................................................... 27
2.3.1 Structure, Culture & Technology in KM ...................... 28

v
2.4 Challenges with Knowledge Management .......................... 38
2.5 Collaboration, participation and Web 2.0 ........................... 42
2.5.1 What is Web 2.0? ......................................................... 42
2.5.2 Principles and Characteristics of Web 2.0 .................. 43
2.5.3 Organizational Structure & Culture and Web 2.0 ...... 46
2.5.4 Technology and Web 2.0 ............................................. 49
2.5.5 Current Usage of Web 2.0........................................... 52
2.5.6 Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management ....................... 57
2.5.7 Challenges with Web 2.0.............................................. 60
2.5.8 Web 2.0: Suggestions & Best Practices for usage ... 64
2.6 India – National Culture ...................................................... 68
2.7 India – Knowledge Management & Web 2.0 .................... 71
3 Research ..................................................................................... 76
3.1 Research Objectives ............................................................. 77
3.2 Research Methodology ......................................................... 78
3.3 Research Design .................................................................. 80
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3.3.1 Questionnaire Survey – Design & Rationale ................... 81
3.3.2 Semi-structured interviews – Design & Rationale ........... 87
4 Research Findings ...................................................................... 90
4.1 Web 2.0 and KM – Employees perspective ........................... 90
4.1.1 Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture .. 92
4.1.2 Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Management ...... 96
4.1.3 Web 2.0 – Perception and Usage ............................ 102
4.1.4 Survey Summary .......................................................... 109
4.2 Web 2.0 and KM – Management Perspective................ 112
4.2.1 About KM – Current state and challenges ............... 112
4.2.2 Where does Web 2.0 fit in? ...................................... 116
4.2.3 Challenges in Web 2.0 adoption ............................... 118
4.2.4 Web 2.0 and unanticipated benefits .......................... 123
4.2.5 Summary of Interviews .................................................. 123
4.3 Putting it all together – a case study ............................. 126
4.4 Discussion ........................................................................... 134
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4.4.1 Best Practices based on Research ........................... 134
4.4.2 Web 2.0 based KM system - Implementation
framework .................................................................................. 138
5 Conclusions ............................................................................... 142
6 Research Limitations ................................................................. 145
7 Further Research ....................................................................... 146
8 References ................................................................................ 148
9 Appendix.................................................................................... 160
9.1 Semi-structured Interview Questionnaire ........................... 160
9.2 Questionnaire with summarized responses ......................... 162
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LIST OF TABLES
Table ……...………………………………………………………….. page
1 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS...................................................... 38
2 ISSUES WITH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ............................................. 41
3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND SURVEY QUESTIONS................................. 84
4 METHODOLOGY FOR QUESTIONNAIRE RESEARCH ................................. 85
5 QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSE SUMMARY ................................................. 91
6 W EB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES IN USE........................................................ 118
7 W EB 2.0 / KM PRODUCTS IN USE ...................................................... 122
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure…..……………………………………………………………….page
1 SINGLE LOOP LEARNING .................................................................. 24
2 DOUBLE LOOP LEARNING .................................................................. 25
3 TRIPLE LOOP LEARNING.................................................................... 26
4 W EB 2.0 CHARACTERISTICS (SOURCE: O'RIELLY, 2007) ................. 44
5 NEW REALIZATION ON EMERGENCE .................................................. 46
6 TYPICAL TAG CLOUD ........................................................................ 51
7 W EB 2.0 TOOLS (SOURCE: CHUI, ET AL., 2009) ............................. 52
8 W EB 2.0 USAGE (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET AL., 2008) ........................ 53
9 INTERNAL USE FOR W EB 2.0 (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET AL., 2008) ...... 54
10 USAGE PATTERN OF W EB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET
AL., 2008) .................................................................................... 55
11 ADOPTION OF W EB 2.0 (SOURCE: LEVY, 2009) ............................ 56
12 W EB 2.0 DEPLOYMENT AND USAGE (SOURCE: CHUI, ET AL., 2009)
..................................................................................................... 57
13 W EB 2.0 AND KM (SOURCE: LEVY, 2008) .................................... 58
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14 GAPS BETWEEN W EB 2.0 AND KM (SOURCE: LEVY, 2008) .......... 59
15 GARTNER HYPE CYCLE, (SOURCE: GARTNER, 2009)..................... 63
16 W EB 2.0 BEST PRACTICES ............................................................ 67
17 HOFSTEDE'S CLASSIFICATION OF INDIAN NATIONAL CULTURE
(SOURCE: BUDHWAR, 2001) ......................................................... 69
18 W EB 2.0 IN INDIA AND NORTH AMERICA (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET AL.,
2009) ........................................................................................... 73
19 W HY QUESTIONNAIRE AND INTERVIEWS?............................................ 80
20 NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING METHODS.............................................. 88
21 RESPONDENT ORGANIZATION TYPE AND SIZE .................................. 91
22 LEADERSHIP TYPES IN INDIAN IT ORGANIZATIONS .......................... 93
23 TRUST IN ORGANIZATIONS .............................................................. 94
24 W HAT HOLDS ORGANIZATION TOGETHER?....................................... 95
25 EXISTENCE OF A BASIC KM .......................................................... 97
26 EFFECTIVENESS IN 'CAPTURING' KNOWLEDGE .................................. 99
27 ROLE OF GATEKEEPERS AND CENTRALIZED KM TEAM ................. 100
28 MOTIVATION TO SHARE KNOWLEDGE ............................................ 101

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29 SURVEY RESPONSE: W HAT IS W EB 2.0? .................................... 103
30 W EB 2.0 – W HICH TOOLS DO YOU USE? .................................... 104
31 W HY DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION USE W EB 2.0? ......................... 105
32 HOW IS W EB 2.0 INTRODUCED? .................................................. 107
33 HOW HAS W EB 2.0 IMPACTED YOU? ........................................... 108
34 BARRIERS TO W EB 2.0................................................................ 109
35 IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY: W EB 2.0 AIDED KM ........................ 140
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xiii
1 INTRODUCTION
While beginning his seminal work, Nonaka (1991) had written,
that ‗in an economy where the only certainty is uncertainty, the
one sure source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge‘.
Toffler (1980) identified knowledge as the most powerful
component in his power triad along with wealth and force as the
other components. The knowledge based economy, also referred
as a ‗third wave economy‘ is built on information and knowledge,
a resource that is infinite and doesn‘t get exhausted through
usage (Toffler and Toffler, 2006).
When knowledge tends to become the source of competitive
advantage, organizations need to manage it as a competitive
resource. Authors like Senge (1992), Garvin (1993), Nonaka
(1991) and others introduced the concepts of ‗knowledge
management‘ and the ‗learning organization‘. Garvin argued that
scholars at times explained these concepts as grandiose concepts
with no clarity on how organizations should actually manage an
intangible resource like knowledge. Knowledge management as a
field evolved under the scholarly research based on works of
authors like Davenport et al., (1998), O‘Dell and Grayson (1999),
Bhat (2001) and met various degrees of success. Various
knowledge management tools were introduced but, many
15
organizations did not achieve a great level of success (Levy,
2009). Some of the tools like Microsoft Sharepoint server,
Content Management systems (CMS) have been used in
organizations successfully. Some authors have proposed more
advanced concepts like expert systems and artificial intelligence
systems to model the complex artefact of knowledge (Liebowitz,
1998). However, these systems have proved to be moderately
successful.
O‘Rielly (2005) introduced a term called ‗Web 2.0‘ to describe
a new form of participative culture on the internet. Web 2.0 tools
were designed to leverage the collaborative nature of the users
(Tapscott and Williams, 2006). Inherently, these tools were
supposed to tap into the collective intelligence of the users or as
Surowiecki (2004) termed it, the‗wisdom of the crowds‘. Websites
that depend on user generated content like Wikipedia, the blogs
and photo sharing sites like Flickr or social networking websites
like Facebook and MySpace have proved that given an
opportunity, users would like to contribute content and share their
knowledge (Tapscott and Williams, 2006). Levy (2009) connected
the field of Knowledge Management and the philosophy of Web
2.0 to question if there was a potential to use the Web 2.0 tools
for knowledge management in organizations. She found a lot of
similarities as well as a few gaps. Research by Economist
16
Intelligence Unit (EIU, 2007) and McKinsey Consulting (Bughin, et
al., 2008 and Chui, et al., 2009) found that Web 2.0 tools were
being used for knowledge management purpose but, there were
still misconceptions and a lack of understanding in many
organizations. (Chui, et al., 2009)
India has largely been unexplored with respect to the
Knowledge Management efforts as well as the Web 2.0
initiatives. India has a substantial IT sector involved in IT
solutions and services. (Ghosh and Ghosh, 2008) This sector
would be facing similar issues in knowledge management as the
western counter-parts involved in knowledge sector. However,
many organizations that are embarking on the KM initiatives
already have Web 2.0 and this could impact the design of the
KM system.
The purpose of this research is to identify the usage and
issues in Knowledge Management and the perception of Web 2.0
and to explore if the concepts and tools of Web 2.0 can aid in
Knowledge Management. The Indian national culture is quite
different from the US culture. As an employee associated with
the IT and IT organizations in India, the author was curious to
understand how Knowledge Management operates and how the
new technology of Web 2.0 is being adopted. Being an insider
provided some insight but, gaining a much bigger picture was the
17
primary motive for the choice of the research topic. In some
organizations, the author had observed that internal blogs were
becoming very prominent, and Wiki was being integrated into
existing processes. These aspects resulted in an exploration to
see if Web 2.0 was replacing the KM practises of it was just
helping it.
The next section is a review of the existing work by various
scholars, followed by the objectives of this research, the
methodology and results from the research and a suggestion on
future research.
1. LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter examines the concepts of knowledge
management, learning organization and the implementation issues
associated with knowledge management. It is followed by an
analysis of Web 2.0. Existing literature on these topics is critically
evaluated to identify potential frameworks and models that would
be useful for the research.
2.1 Knowledge and ‘knowledge creating company’
Adams (2008, p190-191) describing the current times says
that it an intersection between the industrial and knowledge
economies. Whereas the former was a tangible economy
18
involving raw materials and products, the latter is an economy
composed of intangibles like knowledge, ideas and services that
can‘t be touched or seen. Explaining further, she says that
knowledge is like oil – it can have stand-alone value (in the
form of books, training, consulting, etc) or secondary value where
knowledge is embedded in a product (savings achieved through
an improved business process).
In his research at Japanese companies, Nonaka (1991) had
opined that successful companies would be those that
‗consistently create new knowledge, disseminate it widely
throughout the organization and quickly embody it in new
technologies and products.‘ (p96) Stressing the importance of
knowledge, Peter Drucker had said that, ‗the collective knowledge
residing in the minds of its employees, customers, suppliers etc.,
is the most vital resource of an organization growth, even more
than the traditional factors of production (like land, labour and
capital)‘. (Martin, 2006, cited in Jha and Joshi, 2007, p134) The
Resource Based View (RBV) of organizations and the
competencies perspectives too highlight this changing trend in the
business strategy arena (Nelson and Winter, 1982 cited in Bhatt,
2001, p68). Many authors also contend that an organization‘s
ability to learn faster than competitors is a significant source of
competitive advantage (Stata, 1989; Senge, 1990; Ulrich et al.,
19
1993; McGill and Slocum, 1993; Slocum et al. 1994; Nevis et al.
1995, cited in Lopez, et al. 2004)
A new term ―knowledge-creating company‖ was coined by
Nonaka (1991) to explain such companies whose sole purpose
was continuous innovation. He segmented the knowledge as
being ‗tacit‘ and ‗explicit‘. Explicit knowledge is that which can
easily be communicated and shared. This is the knowledge that
is known to the Western management which looks for ‗hard‘ and
quantifiable data due to a formal and systematic way of working.
(p98)
On the other hand, Japanese companies were seen to view
knowledge as more than just ‗processing of objective information.‘
(p97) Creating knowledge was seen as tapping the ‗tacit‘
knowledge which is composed of highly subjective insights,
intuitions and hunches of individual employees and exposing
these insights to the company for further testing and usage. Tacit
knowledge being highly subjective is difficult to formalize and
hard to communicate. (p98)
Regardless of knowledge being explicit or tacit, new
knowledge always begins with an individual. The job and the
biggest challenge for a ‗knowledge-creating company‘ is to ensure
20
that this personal knowledge, both tacit and explicit, is available
to the company. (Nonaka, 1991 p98; Suroweicki, 2004)
2.2 The Learning Organization
It has been noted that although organizations recognize the
importance of the explicit and tacit knowledge transfer, very few
organizations are able to handle the knowledge effectively.
(Singh, 2008; Foos, et al., 2006) Singh (2008) argues that
‗learning organizations‘ are better suited to handle the knowledge
transfer.
Garvin (1993) had defined a learning organization as ‗an
organization skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring
knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new
knowledge and insights. (p80)‘. Elaborating this concept, he
further clarified that such learning organizations are good at
following 5 things:
systematic problem solving
experimentation with new approaches
learning from their own experience
learning from the experience and best practices of others
transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the
organization
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Garvin‘s main contribution was the idea that companies can
actively manage the learning process so that it occurs by ‗design
rather than by chance‘ (1991) and specific policies and practices
can shape the up the learning process. Three factors form the
building block of such a learning organization (Garvin, et al.,
2008, p110; Jha & Joshi, 2007, p136):
a. supportive learning environment – an open environment
where differences are valued, mistakes are not ridiculed,
innovativeness is encouraged and time is set aside for
reflection to review existing processes
b. concrete learning processes and practices that covers the
entire gamut of generation, collection, interpretation and
dissemination of information.
c. leadership behaviour that reinforces learning – leaders who
actively question and listen to employees, prompting a
debate and dialogue and encouraging employees to learn.
They espouse, drive and role-model on the importance of
continuous learning.
Senge (1992) had offered a different viewpoint from the point
of an individual. He had defined a learning organization as ‗a
group of people continuously enhancing their capacity to create
what they want to create‘. A learning organization, is
characterized by ‗systems thinking‘ or ‗the fifth discipline‘. This

22
discipline is acquired through the mastery of ‗shared values‘,
‗personal mastery‘, ‗mental models‘ and ‗team learning‘. This
system talks about profound knowledge that is universal to all
businesses, which once understood would be applied by an
individual in her daily relationships and thus enable better
decisions for organizational transformation (Jha & Joshi, 2007,
p136). Murthy (2009) described a similar concept called
‗learnability‘ which is the ‗ability to extract generic inferences from
specific instances and to use them in new, unstructured
situations.‘ (p233)
2.2.1 Individual and organizational learning
New knowledge, it has been observed, always begins with an
individual (Nonaka, 1991). However, this knowledge is different
from the knowledge held by a group of individuals. (Jha & Joshi,
2007). According to Mark (2000), individual learning leads to
individual knowledge while organizational learning leads to
collective knowledge. Conflict between the two is bound to occur
and it acts as a stimulant for innovation and creativity. Bhatt
(2000a) had observed that ‗organizational knowledge is not a
simple sum of the individual knowledge‘ but, it is formed through
unique patterns of interactions between technologies, techniques,
and people. Organizational knowledge cannot be easily imitated
23
by other organizations, as the unique interactions are shaped by
the every organization's unique history and culture.
Organization learning can occur at multiple levels, as
explained below.
2.2.2 Types of organizational learning
Three different types of organizational learning have been
identified by various researchers– the single loop, double loop
and deutro-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1974; Flood and
Romm, 1996; Snell and ManKuen Chak, 1998 cited in Georges
& Witteloostuijn, 1999).
Single loop learning occurs when simple corrective actions
are taken to solve a problem. In this mode of learning,
organization‘s knowledge base is enhanced but results in no
change to existing processes and policies.
Figure 1 Single Loop Learning
Double loop learning occurs when an ‗error is detected
and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an
24
organization's underlying norms, policies and objectives‘. (Argyris
and Schön, 1978, p. 3) Double loop learning is a transformation
process. In this, the knowledge base and competency base
changes are accompanied by a change in problem definition,
policies, objectives and mental maps (Snell and Man-Kuen Chak,
1998). Argyris and Schön (1996) argue that double loop learning
is necessary if decisions are to be made in rapidly changing and
uncertain environment.
Figure 2 Double loop learning
However, most organizations find it difficult to learn in a
double loop manner. (Argyris, 1996). Hence, a deuteron-learning
(Bateson, 1973) or a triple loop learning (Flood and Romm,
1996; Snell and Man-Kuen Chak, 1998) was proposed that
focuses on structures and strategies. In this mode of learning,
local learning units are linked together in one overall learning
infrastructure as well as ensuring development of competencies to
use this infrastructure. This mode manifests itself in the
―collective mindfulness‖, where members discover how they and
their predecessors have facilitated or inhibited learning and
25
produce new structures and strategies for learning. (Georges &
Witteloostuijn, 1999)
Figure 3 Triple loop learning
A learning organization has to operate at double-loop or
deuteron-loop learning mode. Without the step of ‗thinking‘ or
‗reflecting‘, learning from past mistakes or learning from others‘
mistake cannot occur. This is exemplified by a quote Murthy
(2009), the founder of Infosys Technologies. Speaking about
building a successful organization, he writes:
As long as you constantly ask the questions, ‗Can we do
things faster today than yesterday, last month, last quarter
and last year?‘, ‗Can we bring better ideas to the table today
than yesterday, last month, last quarter and last year?‘, ‗Can
we execute those ideas with a better level of excellence and
quality today than yesterday, last month, last quarter and last
year?‘, I believe you will create a learning organization and
will succeed on a sustainable basis. I strongly believe that
26
these attributes are extremely important for the enduring
success of a corporation.
2.2.3 From Organization Learning to Knowledge
Management
From above discussion it is evident that learning organizations
generate new knowledge. Knowledge Management is the
discipline that ‗takes the output from Learning Organization,
manages it and ensures that a proper environment to facilitate
knowledge transfer and sharing‘ (Jha & Joshi, p138). The sharing
creates both individual and organizational knowledge.
2.3 Knowledge Management
An exact definition of knowledge management is difficult as it
has been studied in various disciplines.(Lopez, et al., 2004, p93)
Davenport et al. (1998) define knowledge management as a
process of ‗collection, distribution and efficient use of knowledge
resource‘. It is also seen as a strategy to be developed in a
firm ‗to ensure that knowledge reaches the right people at the
right time, and that those people share and use the information
to improve the organization‘s functioning.‘ (O‘Dell and Grayson,
1998, cited in Lopez, et al., 2004) A third view is that knowledge
management is ‗a set of procedures, infrastructures, technical and
managerial tools, designed towards creating, sharing and

27
leveraging information and knowledge within and around
organizations‘ (Bounfour, 2003). Chait (1998) had described the
knowledge management process to include capturing, evaluating,
cleansing, storing, providing and using of the knowledge
The consensus amongst the different definitions though is that
knowledge management is a process that facilitates knowledge
exchange and sharing, and establishes continuous learning within
organizations. (Lopez, et al. 2004)
2.3.1 Structure, Culture & Technology in KM
Knowledge management in an organization has three aspects
to it – the structure of organization, the organizational culture and
technology (Bhat, 2001; Lopez, et al. 2004; Ellonen, et al., 2009).
Jha and Joshi (2008) and Payne (2008) described the foundation
of KM as people, process and technology. The three pillars and
the interaction between them is depicted in figure 4.
28
Figure 4 Components of KM
2.3.1.1 Role of Culture in KM & Organizational Learning
Schein (1985) has defined Organizational culture as a model
of ‗basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of
an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define an
organization's view of itself and its environment‘ (cited in Lopez,
et al., 2004). DeLong and Fahey (2000) have identified four ways
in which culture influence in creating, sharing and use of
knowledge. According to Delong and Fahey (2000), culture:
1. shapes assumption about what is knowledge and what is
worth sharing.
29
2. defines relationship between individual and organizational
knowledge; this determines who is expected to control,
share and hoard the knowledge
3. creates the context for social interaction which determines
how knowledge is used in particular situation
4. shapes the process by which new knowledge can be
created, legitimated and distributed.
From the works of various authors, following values have
been considered important in an organizational culture that
promotes organizational:
a long term vision and advance management of
change;
communication and dialogue;
trust and respect for all individuals;
teamwork;
empowerment;
ambiguity tolerance;
risk assumption;
respect and diversity encouragement. (Nevis et al.,
1995; Elkjaer, 1998; Von Krogh, 1998; Ruggles, 1998;
Liedtka 1999; Senge, et al., 1999; De Long and Fahey,
30
2000; Gupta et al., 2000; Sveiby and Simons, 2002,
cited in Lopez, et al. 2004)
Lopez et al. (2004), described a culture with the above
features as a ‗collaborative culture‘ and found through empirical
research that such cultures promote organization learning.
Ellonen, et al. (2008) found that a key component in fostering
a knowledge sharing culture and innovation is trust (p164) Trust
of the organization‘s leadership was found to greater contribution
of ideas from employees. Trust amongst individuals was
associated with more open learning and sharing of knowledge.
Suroweicki (2004) bluntly put it saying, ‗in the absence of trust
the purist of myopic self interest is the only strategy that makes
sense.‘(137)
Organizational culture as a subject is very vast topic. For
the purpose of this research, the role of organizational culture is
closely tied to just two aspects – a culture of sharing
(collaborative culture) and the level of trust. The other aspects of
culture and an exhaustive study of different types of culture
within the Indian organizations is not in scope of this piece of
work.
31
2.3.1.2 Knowledge Management Process
In his definition, Bhatt (2000b) refers to knowledge
management as a process of ‗creation, validation, presentation,
distribution and application‘. (p71) According to him, knowledge
management can be broken down into a 5 step process as
shown in figure below. These are the steps in knowledge
management, from an organization‘s perspective.
Figure 5 Knowledge Management Activities
Knowledge Creation: This refers to the ability of an
organization to create novel and useful ideas (Marakas,
1999, p. 440) (p71) This is an emergent process where
‗motivation, inspiration, experimentation and pure chance‘
play a role (Lynn, et al. 1995) This step is closely related
32
to ‗experimentation‘ by a learning organization. (Garvin,
1993)
Knowledge Validation: This is the organization‘s ability to
reflect and evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge for the
existing organizational environment. Identifying and
reconfiguring obsolete knowledge is extremely important
since core-competencies, even though not easily imitated
can get obsolete (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)
Knowledge Formatting: This refers to the different ways
knowledge can be presented, so that it is suitable to the
different ‗work-styles‘ of the people.
Knowledge Distribution: Unless knowledge is distributed
and shared, it cannot be exploited by the organizational
members. Knowledge transferred through a supervised and
predetermined channel will minimize interaction and
questioning of the validity of knowledge. Horizontal structure
can speed up knowledge transfer and interaction.
Knowledge Application: Knowledge needs to be applied
in its products, processes and services to create value.
Nonaka (1991) described a similar process from the view
of an individual. He termed it as the ‗knowledge creation cycle‘
(Figure 6). This process examined an individual‘s knowledge
33
transfer process based on the tacit and explicit knowledge
paradigm.
Socialization: Essentially a transfer of tacit knowledge from one
individual to another. This knowledge is not shared to the
organization as a whole and cannot be leveraged easily.
However, this can aid in the knowledge creation and validation
steps of KM as defined by Bhat (2001).
Figure 6 The Knowledge Spiral (Abdullah, et al., 2006)
Articulation: It is a process of converting tacit to explicit
knowledge. By doing so, knowledge is available to the
organization as a whole. This process closely resembles the
distribution process for an organization (Bhat, 2001).
Synthesis / Combination: In this mode, explicit knowledge is
combined with other explicit knowledge to gain better
34
understanding through different formatting and presentation
mechanism of the already existing knowledge.
Internalization: In this process, individuals digest the existing
explicit knowledge and reframe their tacit knowledge for their
application.
Articulation and internalization requires the active
involvement and commitment of an individual (Nonaka, 1991, p99)
Socialization requires a platform where individuals can meet and
discuss and synthesis requires tools that can aid in quickly re-
formatting the existing knowledge.
2.3.1.3 Technology in Knowledge Management
Bhat (2001) had defined the technological requirement saying
it is any IT that ‗enables the searching, storing, manipulating, and
sharing of a huge amount of information per unit of time, by
minimizing the limitations of time and space‘.
Various authors have written about the technology necessary
for Knowledge Management. It varies from being very generic like
emails to shared storage, to extremely specific like data
warehousing. (Junnarkar & Brown 1997; Offsey 1997; Liebowitz
1998; Borghoff & Pareschi 1998; Dieng et al. 1999; Alavi &
Leidner 1999; Hendriks & Vriens 1999; Earl 2001; Alavi &
35
Leidner 2001; cited in Edwards, et al., 2005) A few authors like
Liebowitz propose the usage of expert systems. However,
knowledge based systems and expert systems have largely fallen
out of favor due to lack of understanding and complexity.
(Adbullah, et al., 2006)
Other researchers have classified the technology as
communication technologies and storage technologies (Alavi and
Tiwana 2002; Malhotra and Majchrzak 2005, cited in Leonardi
and Bailey, 2008), based on the usage. Phones, chat rooms,
email and other communication technologies serve as conduits for
serving messages containing knowledge and information. Storage
technologies include knowledge management systems and
versioning control systems and they permit storage, retrieval and
sharing of explicitly codified knowledge and information.
Information is retrieved using search tools that work on the
technology of keyword indexing (McKnight, 2005 cited in Dursun
and Suleiman, 2009 p141). Table 1 below lists some of the
tools that have been identified by researchers for Knowledge
Management.
According to the research by Edwards et al.(2005), there is
no fixed technology that can be used as a Knowledge
management tool in an organization. Rather, the final solution
36
depends on how each of the following tensions is resolved
(p124)
1. Between the quantity and quality of information/knowledge.
2. Between centralized and decentralized organization.
3. Between head office and organizational knowledge.
4. Between ‗‗push‘‘ and ‗‗pull‘‘ methodology.
37
TABLE 1 Knowledge Management Tools
. AI Based Conventional
Code based reasoning Bulletin boards
Computer-supported co-operative
Data mining work
Expert systems Databases
Genetic algorithms Data warehousing
Intelligent agents Decision support systems
Knowledge based systems Discussion forums
Multi agent systems Document Management
Neural Networks Electronic Publishing
"Push" technology E-Mail
Executive information systems
Groupware
Information retrieval
Intranets
Multimedia/hypermedia
Natural language processing
People finder/ "Yellow pages"
Search engines
Workflow management
2.4 Challenges with Knowledge Management
Although Knowledge Management has been acknowledged as
being important for sustained competitive advantage, it has been
found hard to implement successfully. There are various reasons
for this failure.
On the structural front, management has been found to
pay a lot of attention towards technological aspects rather than
the social and cultural aspects of KM (Cross & Barid, 1999 cited
in Lopez et al., 2004) Knowledge has been subjected to the
38
traditional cost/benefit analysis. In many organizations, especially
small and medium enterprises, management is not ready to
invest in higher value-longer term project associated with
knowledge management (Nunes, et al., 2006 & Wickert &
Herschel, 2001).
Bhat (2001) stresses the fact that IT can only act as an
enabler and it is only through people and their interactions that
information is turned into knowledge and learning occurs (p73)
De Long and Fahey (2000) stress, that trust is the most
important aspect needed for effective knowledge management.
The level of trust in an organization impacts the flow of
knowledge ‗between individuals and from individuals into the firm's
databases, best practices archives and other records‘. Lack of
trust leads to a resistance of sharing – and this lack of sharing
is found as the hardest cultural barrier in effective sharing of
knowledge (Ruggles, 1998).
Centralization is identified as another barrier for effective
knowledge management. Levy (2009) says that in traditional
knowledge management paradigm, a central team encourages
people to add content and in some cases users are only allowed
to use existing knowledge. Sharing is controlled and content is
moderated through the central group. Not all users are thus able
39
to contribute to the knowledge management activity. This leads to
a ‗top-down‘ or a centralized management of the knowledge
management activity. A culture lacking trust, coupled with a
centralized structure prevents effective sharing.
Technologically, knowledge management has faced a lot of
hurdles. Primary amongst them is the cost and complexity.
(Spanbauer, 2006) A second issue has been the way the KM
systems are designed. Despite the increasing role of end-users,
the specifications for most KM systems are provided in a top-
down manner through managers who are far removed from the
day-to-day interactions. This mode of development has been
proven faulty in the Information Systems development (Haad et
al., 2004,cited in Patrick and Dotsika, 2007). Researchers have
also found that information stored is often decontextualized. Due
to the removal of the context, new users who try to use the
knowledge are hampered. (Leonardi and Bailey, 2008)
The final issue is the difficulty to encode tacit knowledge.
Since this knowledge is inherently hard to formalize,
communicating such knowledge is very difficult. According to
Clark and Rollo (2001), 42% of corporate knowledge is held in
employees‘ minds (cited in Singh 2008). Tebbutt (2007) advising
on a better knowledge management system writes
40
―forcing people to encode their knowledge formally is not
easy – in fact, it can‘t be done. But when people are
socializing, even in a work context, they are much happier
to share their thoughts and their experiences… there‘s this
hint of loosening the reins of corporate or IT control and
allowing systems to be focused more to human needs.
After all, it‘s in the humans that the knowledge resides
and between them where it adds value to the organization‘‘
(cited in Levy, 2009, p132).
The above issues are summarized in table below:
TABLE 2 Issues with Knowledge Management
Structure Excessive focus on technology but, less focus on social

aspects of knowledge management
Small companies don‘t want look at long-term and don‘t
want to invest in additional cost
Transaction based cost structures that fails to identify ROI
on knowledge management initiatives
Culture Lack of trust to share knowledge
Fear of loss of management controls
Resistance to share
Lack of a collaborative environment
Technology Sophisticated and costly products
Specifications and requirements set in a top-down manner
Knowledge is often decontextualized – individuals using
the knowledge can‘t apply correctly
Inability in encoding tacit knowledge
In the past few years, managers and users have grown
skeptical on the knowledge management initiatives and are on
the lookout for KM system that‘s "actually being used" (Spenbaur,
2008).
41
2.5 Collaboration, participation and Web 2.0
In the last few years, the economy has been observed to
move towards a more participative medium. Instead of clear
demarcation consumers and producers, a new set of users called
prosumers or co-creators have been introduced. Such users
actively participate in the creation, use and improvement of a
product. (Toffler, 1980; Prahalad and Ramasamy 2004). A new
term called ‗Web 2.0‘ was introduced to explain the new
paradigm in technology. Several authors have publicized the
concepts of collaboration and ‗wisdom of crowds‘ when trying to
explain the success of phenomena like Open Source movement.
(Sureoweicki, 2004; Tapscott and Williams, 2006; Spenbaur 2006)
Following is an analysis of the modern changes in the view of
various scholars and how it could impact knowledge
management.
2.5.1 What is Web 2.0?
Although the term Web 2.0 is very prevalent, it does not
have a fixed definition. O‘Rielly has explains it as, ‗the business
revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the
internet as platform‘ (Musser and O‘Reilly, 2006). Boutin (2006)
observed that Web 2.0 is a term that currently encompasses ‗a
mishmash of tools and sites that foster collaboration and
42
participation‘. Weinberger (2007) defines it as an establishment of
‗open architecture, lowering the barriers to publishing, the ease
with which people can connect ideas, the increase in available
bandwidth and computing power‘. Levy (2009) observed that while
Weinberger spoke of Web 2.0 as an evolution, O‘Reilly spoke of
it as a revolution in computing.
2.5.2 Principles and Characteristics of Web 2.0
Rather than defining Web 2.0, O‘Rielly has described the
principles of Web 2.0 that would explain the concept. They are
summarized in the figure 4. The main principles of Web 2.0 are:
a. Web as a platform: Web is not an application by itself but,
it should be treated as a platform.
b. Services development: Innovation is in assembly of
services. Each service by itself may not be very innovative
but a combination of services produces interesting
innovations. For example, Google introduced the Map
services. Combining Google Maps with Wikipedia produced
the Placeopedia (Boutin, 2006).
c. Active participation of users: Levy (2009) explains that until
recently, in the Web and in KM paradigm, content
managers and experts were involved in creating, organizing
and collecting content while users mainly used it. In Web
43
2.0 paradigm, users contribute and add value to the
content. Patrick and Dotsika (2007) term this as the ‗pull‘
model where users active seek information rather then the
prevalent ‗push‘ model which is broadcasting of information.
Figure 4 Web 2.0 Characteristics (Source: O'Rielly, 2007)
Three different types of user activities lead to value add
depending on the level of collaboration. Collaboration itself has
been defined as ―individuals and companies employing widely
distributed computing and communication technologies to achieve
shared outcomes through loose voluntary associations‖ (Tapscott
and Williams, 2007; p17) Sobolak (2007) cited in Levy 2009)
identified 3 types of users:

44
a. Passive users – Such users just use a service. However,
their activities and history is used to provide value. For
example, Amazon purchase suggestions.
b. Minimally active users – Such users generate content,
probably in response to other content or, they may be
producing the content primarily by themselves. There is not
much collaboration and back-and-forth data. Example: tags
and blogs
c. Active (collaboration) – Such users work together over
the net adding collaborative value. Example: Wikipedia,
Open Source Software.
The collaboration propounded by Web 2.0 enthusiasts is to
tap the ‗collective intelligence‘ (Levy, 2009). Tapscott and Williams
(2007) define ‗collective intelligence‘ as ‗the aggregate knowledge
that emerges from the decentralized choices and judgments of
groups of independent participants‘ (p41). An outcome of the
collaboration is ‗emergence‘ which is the ‗the creation of
attributes, structures and capabilities that are not inherent to any
single node in the network‘ (p44). Elucidating the definition,
Tapscott and Williams point out that the emergence coupled with
web based tools is producing relative complex artifacts like open
source software. This has led to a new realization that power of
45
such self-organization can be tapped, especially in the areas of
innovation and knowledge management. (p45)
Figure 5 New realization on emergence
2.5.3 Organizational Structure & Culture and Web 2.0
Payne (2008) believes that an organization can only influence
the knowledge creation and sharing by creating an environment
that will encourage collaboration. This can be done though an
environment of trust, self-management, behavioral protocols,
shared intent and equitable sharing of returns (p6). She identified
that even traditional organizations can benefit from new social
software. She found that the extent of bureaucracy in an
organization does not itself lead to positive or negative effect on
collaboration. Instead of a ‗coercive bureaucracy‘ where managers
try to command and control reluctant employees was found to
hamper the collaboration. On the other hand, an ‗enabling
bureaucracy‘ was found to help in better sharing and innovation.
46
According to other authors, decentralization has been is as an
important aspect for an effective collaboration. Sureoweicki (2004)
explains that ‗if you set a crowd of self-interested people to work
in a decentralized way on the same problem, instead of trying to
direct their efforts from the top down, their collective solution is
likely to be better than any other solution you could come up
with‘. (87) Decentralization promotes individuals to specialize and
yet collaborate. It empowers an individual closest to the problem
to find a solution. But, decentralization‘s weakness is information
learnt may never be disseminated. For this purpose, an
aggregation of individual knowledge into a collective whole is
necessary. Paradoxically, aggregation, a form of centralization is
necessary for the decentralization to succeed. (p89-93).
Tapscott and Williams (2006) suggest that a culture
meritocracy helps in collaboration. Such meritocracy works on the
self-organizing power of the community to provide a hierarchy of
more experienced members. The experienced member provides
leadership as well as works on aggregating the contributions. For
example, Linus Trovalds provides the leadership to the kernel
development of the Linux operating system. Such an
arrangement, according to the authors works by assigning the
right person to the right task:
47
―When people voluntarily self-select for creative, knowledge
intensive tasks they are more likely than managers to choose
tasks for which they are uniquely qualified. Who, after all, is
more likely to know the full range of tasks you are best
qualified to perform you or your manager? (Pg- 68)‖
Chui, et al. (2009) found that the new collaboration tools have
a ‗strong bottom-up element and engage a broad base of
workers‘. It also demands ‗a mind-set different from that of earlier
IT programs, which were instituted primarily by edicts from senior
managers. (p1)‘ However, the transformation to a bottom-up
culture needs help the senior executives who can act as role
models. (p5)
The challenges to culture required for a successful Web 2.0
program has been found to be similar to the challenges faced in
Knowledge management. They are (a) need for trust, (b)
generating interest and (c) a sense of partnership where
contributions are justly rewarded. (Levy, 2009, p132). However,
since Web 2.0 acts as a platform, to encourage users to
participate, organizations will need to appeal the participants‘
egos and needs, rather than just monetary benefits. This can be
achieved by appealing to the participant‘s desire for recognition
by ‗bolstering the reputation of participants in relevant
48
communities, rewarding enthusiasm, or acknowledging the quality
and usefulness of contributions‘ (Chui et al., 2009; p6).
In summary, although decentralization and a collaborative
culture is stressed in the Web 2.0 literature, a form of self-
organized hierarchy based on meritocracy has been found to
succeed. To kick start such a self-sustaining effort, management
can select early leaders who generally are ‗enthusiastic early
technology adopters who have rich personal networks and will
thus share knowledge and exchange ideas‘ (Chui et al., 2009)
2.5.4 Technology and Web 2.0
Web 2.0 in essence is harnessing the ‗network effect‘. (EIU,
2007) Any tool that can harness this effect is defined to fall
under the Web 2.0 paradigm. Tools that fall under the Web 2.0
paradigm are Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Podcasts, Web Services, Social
Networking, Peer-to-peer and Mashups (Bughin, et al., 2008;
Levy, 2009).
Blog or weblog is defined an online journal that can be
updated regularly with entries typically displayed in chronological
order. (Wyld, 2008; p452) Blog is one of the most widely used
technologies due to the ease of creation and updation of content
on online websites. (Bughin, et al., 2008) Weil (2004) calls blogs
as an ―easy-to-use content management tool‖. Blog is a

49
mechanism where the traditional role of a content creator and
content consumer is blurred (Blood, 2004).
Wiki has been defined as a ‗structured website, i.e. collection
of pages sharing the same structure using templates‘. Users
participate in the creating, and editing of content as well as
influencing the structure of the templates. Such templates guide
the way users write the content and are much simpler to use
than the traditional Content Management Systems (Levy, 2009).
According to Wyld (2008), using the wiki model, if should be
possible to produce content, goods and services through joining
together of individuals located outside of traditional hierarchies by
forming ‗permanent, temporary or one-time collaboration‘. (p475)
Tagging or ‗collaborative tagging‘ is ‗a practice whereby users
assign uncontrolled keywords to information resources‘. (Levy,
2009) Usage of such tags allows users to classify the content
based on individual use. Sharing of the tags aids in indexing and
search by other users as well, apart from subsequent tagging by
popularity of tags. Popularity of tags is determined by the
frequency of use, generally depicted as a tag cloud. (Figure 6).
According to the website ―What is RSS?‖, ‗Rich Site
Summary‘ or ‗Really Simple Syndication‘ (RSS) is defined as ‗a
format for delivering regularly changing web content‘ ( 2009a).
50
Generally used by news site and weblogs, it provides an easy
way to ‗stay informed‘ and ‗save time‘ by automatically retrieving
the content without users having to visit each of the sites. RSS
is built on frameworks of ‗eXtensible Markup Language‘ (XML).
(Abdullah, et al., 2006)
Figure 6 Typical tag cloud
Social networking refers to the applications ‗that are
targeted to enabling the creation and enlargement‘ of a user‘s
social network. Users of such application first join in and then
invite their friends or colleagues to join. Each new member in
turn continues the cycle. (Levy, 2009).
Collective estimation refers to the ability to aggregate the
opinions which could help in idea generation or identifying trends
on general interest (Chiu, et al., 2009) Websites like Digg and
Techcrunch are examples of such Web 2.0 websites.
51
Social graphing refers to the leveraging of connection
between people which could be used to offer new application or
products. (Chiu, et al., 2009) For example, LinkedIn identifies
people that one may know based on the existing links of two
different people. The tools and their use is summarized in the
figure 7 below.
Figure 7 Web 2.0 Tools (Source: Chui, et al., 2009)
2.5.5 Current Usage of Web 2.0
According to an Economist survey, most of the
multinationals have begun to see Web 2.0 technologies as
corporate tools. 31% of the respondents felt that using web
as a platform for sharing and collaboration would affect all
parts of their business. (EIU, 2007, p1)
Companies have now moved from the initial
experimentation phase to an adoption of the tools for business
purpose. Satisfied companies have even started to leverage
52
the Web 2.0 tools in change management and organizational
structures. Web 2.0 tools were found to be used more for
internal purposes than for the external, supplier/customer
facing applications. (Bughin, et al., 2008) Contradicting this
was a survey by Economist (EIU, 2007) where 68% felt that
Web 2.0 would impact the way they interacted with the
customers as against 48% who felt it would impact they way
they interacted with internal employees.
Figure 8 Web 2.0 Usage (Source: Bughin, et al., 2008)
Two primary uses of the Web 2.0 technologies were in
management of knowledge and for fostering a collaborative
environment. (Figure 9). Blogs, RSS, Wikis and Podcasts were
the most commonly used tools. (Figure 10)
53
Figure 9 Internal use for Web 2.0 (Source: Bughin, et al., 2008)
Showing a similar pattern, a survey by Association of
Information and Image Management (AAIM, 2008), found that the
primary use of Web 2.0 was ‗to increase collaboration‘ followed
by ‗knowledge management‘.
To stress the importance of such tools, a new term called
Enterprise 2.0 has been defined. It is the use of ‗emergent social
software platforms within companies, or between companies and
their partners or customers‘ (AIIM, 2008).
54
Figure 10 Usage pattern of Web 2.0 technologies (Source: Bughin, et al.,
2008)
2.5.5.1 Classification of usage of Web 2.0 as a platform
To help organizations in understanding and using Web 2.0
technologies, Levy (2009) developed a grid model based on the
technology adoption and user orientation. Technology adoption
could be adoption of:
1. Web 2.0 software infrastructure – using web services, etc.
2. Web 2.0 applications – Wikis, blogs, tagging, etc.
Using the Web 2.0 applications with an internal focus (the
top-left quadrant of grid) was found as a right fit for knowledge
management initiatives.
55
Figure 11 Adoption of Web 2.0 (Source: Levy, 2009)
Chui, et al., (2009) on the other hand classified the Web
2.0 technology based on the commonality of purpose. They are:
(a) Broad collaboration such as Wikis, Blogs; (b) Metadata
creation through tagging; (c) Social graphing via social networking
tools; (d) Collective estimation in the form of polls and online
surveys. While the first model is more of a descriptive
framework, the second model is both descriptive as well as
prescriptive. Using the second model, organizations new to Web
2.0 can start the initiative via the use of appropriate tools. The
main technological attraction of Web 2.0 applications, according to
this survey is that they are ‗a relatively lightweight overlay to the
existing infrastructure and do not necessarily require complex
technology integration.‘ (p2)
56
Figure 12 Web 2.0 deployment and usage (Source: Chui, et al., 2009)
2.5.6 Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management
According to Levy (2009), the roots of many Web 2.0 tools
were derived from Knowledge Management tools. The two have
similar principles (summarized in figure 13). Elucidating on the
specific usage of Web 2.0 tools for KM, various authors have
highlighted the KM aspects of the Web 2.0 usage. For example:
1. Adams (2008) citing Burns (2005) and Li (2004) says that
blogs are being used for internal communication and
collaboration, along with wikis as engaging method of KM.
Anderson (2004) speaks of the ‗long tail‘ trend in blogs
where it enables communication with micro-audiences. The
57
movement of communication from emails to blogs also
makes it easily searchable medium (Adams, 2009; p467).
2. Intel has successfully created an internal learning initiative
called Intelpedia to ‗to share knowledge, collaborate with
employees and post need-to-know company information in
a safe, behind-the-firewall space‘ Meoster (2008) EIU
(2007, p6) has a story on the use of Wiki for KM in
Citibank.
Figure 13 Web 2.0 and KM (Source: Levy, 2008)
58
Despite the many similarities, there are a lot of gaps between
the concepts of Knowledge Management and Web 2.0. They are
summarized in figure 14 below. These gaps are also closely tied
with the issues faced in embracing the Web 2.0 solutions,
described in the next section.
Figure 14 Gaps between Web 2.0 and KM (Source: Levy, 2008)
59
2.5.7 Challenges with Web 2.0
Despite the potential of Web 2.0, it faces a lot of challenges.
Primary amongst them is awareness. According to EIU (2007,
p8), ‗many in the corporate world have never heard of Web 2.0‘
and amongst those who have heard, plenty of them ‗do not
know what it means‘. In a survey by AIIM (2008), 74% of the
respondents claimed only a vague familiarity with web 2.0, while
41% did not have a clear understanding. The second issue was
companies getting ‗caught up in trappings of Web 2.0 tools and
lose sight of what the tools are meant to build‘. In their survey,
Bughin, et al. (2008) found that the most commonly cited reason
for failure of web 2.0 were, ‗inability of management to grasp the
potential financial returns from Web 2.0, unresponsive corporate
cultures, and less-than-enthusiastic leaders‘. (p4).
Organizational Issues
Levy (2009) identified that the issues with Web 2.0 is quite
similar to Knowledge management, namely, a need for trust;
interest of participants and partnership.(p132) Complete openness
needed by Web 2.0 can cause issues, as examined by Adams
(2008). He identified 4 issues with publicly accessible blogs: (1)
exposure of trade secrets; (2) trade libel; (3) securities law
violations; and (4) unauthorized use/posting of protected
60
intellectual property. (p471) McNamara (2005) opines that there
is a possibility of employees ‗blogging off the cliff‘. Terming
collaborative platforms as ‗subversive‘, Payne (2008) says that
these technologies offer ability to collaborate but, this
collaboration can occur outside organizational structure and
processes thereby defeating the purpose. (p10)
Process and Technical Issues
McAfee (2006) cited in Grossman (2008) lists the following
technical challenges associated with the complete openness of
platforms of Web 2.0:
securing sensitive information behind the firewall,
controlling access to levels of information and databases,
protecting the integrity of information from tampering by
disgruntled employees
Patrick and Dotsika (2007) identified issues in knowledge
modeling, standardization, security, maintenance and scalability
with respect to Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 relies on tagging and folksonomies (open-ended,
collaboratively generated taxonomies) for classification which are
inherently ambiguous. Taxonomies, the formal means of
classification, on other hand are excessively restrictive in
61
modeling complex information and knowledge. Adoption of an
emergent, heuristic and locally agreed semantics for classification
is being could form a more useful. (Aberer et al., 2004)
To ensure retrieval across platforms and interoperability,
standardization is essential. Dodds (2006), says that using
Resource Description Framework (RDF), as the underlying model
for RSS could help in the standardization effort.
Security issues like cross-site scripting, insecure randomness,
etc. crops up due to emergent technologies, especially in the
quest to design the AJAX based applications (Twynham, 2006).
With respect to maintenance and scalability, although Web 2.0
applications are built mainly using Open Source software, lack of
documentation and support leads to a need for in-house
expertise (Patrick and Dotsika, 2007).
62
Figure 15 Gartner Hype Cycle, (Source: Gartner, 2009)
Despite all the issues, the general opinion is that Web 2.0 as
a technology is at a level of maturity that it can be used. (EIU,
2009; Bughin, et al., 2009; Chui, et al., 2009) Young workers
who come from a world exposed to such tools would expect the
same within the workspace as well (Levy, 2009) and if not
present, they can switch to the publicly accessible networks.
(Payne, 2008) According to Tapscott and Williams (2006, cited in
Adams, 2008), adoption of mass collaboration is not a luxury but
a strategic imperative. This has been validated by the Gartner
Hype Cycle for the technology trends of year 2009 which

63
predicts that Web 2.0 will be transformational, with an adoption
time-window of 0 to 2 years. (MacManus, 2009 citing Gartner,
2009).
Thus a prudent option would be to embrace the Web 2.0
methodologies. Best practices for such an adoption are examined
in the next section.
2.5.8 Web 2.0: Suggestions & Best Practices for usage
To get the best out of Web 2.0, changes have to be made
to address the aspects of structure, culture and technology.
Adams identified four steps as the Enterprise 2.0 best practices
(2008).
The first step is to ‗create a receptive culture to prepare the
way for new practices‘. Essentially, this involves creating a more
bottom-up culture and increasing the level of trust between
employees. Ellonen, et al. (2008) define organizational trust as
composed of two parts. One aspect is the horizontal trust
involving ‗positive expectations individuals have about the
competence, reliability and benevolence of organizational
members‘. The other aspect is the lateral trust, or the
‗institutional trust‘ which is the trust in the organizational
processes and policies. Trust needs to exist on both dimensions.
64
Web 2.0 works best in a bottom-up culture and with senior
executives acting as the role models and leading through informal
channels. (Chui, et al., 2009)
The next step is to ‗create a common platform to allow for a
collaboration infrastructure‘. From a technology perspective, it is
better to start the initiative with Open source tools which are
themselves a form of collaborative outsourcing (Tapscott and
Williams, 2005). The products themselves are not central or core
to business models and peer produced software generally fits
such needs. However, applications need to scale to all users and
Chui, et al. (2009) suggest management must actively encourage
products that start to show higher usage and promise. Dursan
and Suliman (2009) advise on a holistic platform that can be
accessed, searched and indexed so that the content becomes
easily accessible to all the users. In summary, it translates to
using open source tools and scaling those that work well, and
investing in a good search technology so that users can find the
information they are looking for.
The third suggestion is to use an ‗informal rollout approach as
opposed to a more formal procedural one‘. Snowden (2007) says
that the new paradigm is ‗not about selecting a tool based on
pre-determined criteria, [but] it is about allowing multiple tools to
co-evolve with each other, people and environments so that new

65
patterns of stable interaction form, and destabilize as needed to
reform in new and contextually appropriate ways‘‘ (cited in Levy,
2009; p128) This is termed as the perpetual beta (Levy, 2009).
Generally, the Web 2.0 initiative has succeeded whenever the
business unit has been given freedom to choose the tools. (Chui,
et al., 2009; Bughin, et al., 2009; Levy, 2008)
Participants can be encouraged by recognizing contributions,
bolstering reputation and acknowledging the usefulness of
contribution. These methods are more in-tune with the ethos of
web users. Allowing self-organization of communities through
meritocratic principles of organization provides for a better
participation (Chui, et al., 2009; Tapscott and Williams, 2005, p
67).
The final suggestion from Adams (2008) is to get ‗managerial
buy-in‘. The role of a leader in managing information and
knowledge is via two broad routes of technology and via the
social networks. Leaders can act as catalysts for the change
from a top-down to bottom up culture by acting as role-models.
They can prove as the champions of new initiatives by constantly
contributing and engaging with participants by networking, listening
and acting on the comments received from other employees.
They can trigger new modes of thought and influence
communities by actively questioning and challenging the members

66
and finally encourage participation by recognizing the contribution
and celebrating the success of communities. (Kouzes and Posner,
2002; Ritchie and Martin, 1999; Debowski, 2006; cited in Lopez,
et al., 2008; Chui, et al., 2009; Bughin, et al., 2009).
Figure 16 Web 2.0 Best Practices
Bughin, et al., (2009) and Chui, et al. (2009) have pointed
out that participation can be increased if Web 2.0 initiatives are
aligned with the existing processes. Due to its novelty, Web 2.0
initiatives could be considered as separate from the mainstream
67
work. If it is incorporated into the daily workflow, such initiatives
have a higher chance of success.
The best practices are summarized in figure 16.
2.6 India – National Culture
The focus of the research that this paper addresses is the IT
organizations based out of India. An exploration of the national
culture and the Knowledge Management and Web 2.0 trends
observed by various authors is examined in the following two
sections.
Hofstede (1980 & 1991) in his seminal work on exploration of
the national cultures had defined 4 parameters and ranked
various countries on a comparative scale on these four
parameters. The parameters and the relative position of India
compared to other national cultures is shown in Figure 17.
Uncertainty avoidance: India is rated to have moderate
uncertainty avoidance. However, Budhwar (2001) reported a
study by Kanungo and Mendonca (1994) that found Indians as
having ‗an unwillingness to accept organizational change or take
risk, reluctance to make important decisions in work-related
matters or lack of initiative in problem solving, a disinclination to
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accept responsibility for job-related tasks and an indifference to
job feedback‘. (p80)
Power Distance: India has a high power distance derived from
the hierarchical nature of Hinduism, one of the primary religions
of India. Indian organizational structures are hierarchal with age
and seniority playing an important role in decisions about
promotions and pay. (Budhwar, 2001; p80-81)
Figure 17 Hofstede's classification of Indian National Culture (Source:
Budhwar, 2001)
Masculinity: India is rated as ‗low‘ in masculinity that is reflected
in a ‗paternalistic management style and preference of
personalized relationships rather than a more divorced
performance orientation‘ (Kanuango and Jaeger, 1990)
Individualism: Being rated low on ‗individualism‘, family and
group attainments are supposed to take precedence over work
outcomes for Indians. The purpose of work is thus a ‗means to
fulfill one‘s family and social obligations‘ and not to express or
fulfill one‘s self. (Budhwar, 2001, p83).
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The research reported by Budhwar (2001) was primarily on
manufacturing sector and in the 90s when India was not
liberalized. In a study by Heuer (2006), India and US had similar
uncertainty avoidance scores (40 and 46) as well as in the
masculinity scores (56 and 62) respectively. However, power
distance remained significantly high (Kakar, et al., 2002). Heuer
also found that although both public and private sector
organizations were affected by globalization and liberalization, the
private sector synthesized the adjustments differently and the
Indian culture was termed to be in ‗transition‘. Tan and Khoo
(2002) identified that there was a mass adoption of western
technology, knowledge and management systems especially in
private sector.
In direct contradiction to Budhwar (2001), Deshpande, et al.,
(1999) too found that most successful Indian firms had an
‗entrepreneurial culture‘ (Quinn 1988; Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983)
and this was the most prevalent form of organizational culture in
India. Such a culture encourages risk taking and innovation.
Based on research on Indian companies, they could also find
evidence to an earlier hypothesis by Capon et al. (1991) that
high performance organizations have an organizational climate
that encourages ‗innovativeness, communication, participation,
decentralization, friendliness, and trust ‗ (p112).
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On the leadership front, in the GLOBE research project,
Liddell (2005) reported that ‗transformational-charismatic‘ and
‗team-oriented‘ leaders were found to be effective in India. Such
leaders are ‗visionary, inspirational, decisive, performance-oriented,
and willing to make personal sacrifices‘. Leaders who are
diplomatic, collaborative and team builders are also highly valued.
(p6-7)
The adoption of a professional and meritocratic corporate
culture rather than a caste-based or hierarchical culture was seen
in the IT organizations. Heuer (2006) observed that ‗corporate
culture and business practices of India's IT firms are vastly
superior to the traditional business houses and is at the forefront
of improved corporate governance‘. Indian managers were also
found to be capable of handling sophisticated strategy planning
but bad at execution.
2.7 India – Knowledge Management & Web 2.0
There is a lack of published research on innovation and
knowledge management in emerging economies. (Knowledge and
Process Management, 2008; p 184). However, with its large
English speaking professionals, and large Diaspora that has
already achieved thought leadership in knowledge intensive fields,
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Ghosh and Ghosh (2008) predict that India will have a
considerably big knowledge industry.
Based on a limited research Sanghani (2008) found that there
is a considerable association between KM and organization size,
measured in turnover as well as number of employees. (p14-15)
Big organizations were found to be more organized and
structured and the sheer size led to an investment in KM system
to manage the organizational knowledge. (p19) Chatzkel (2004)
published a case study of KM implementation at Wipro
technologies, a large Indian IT organization. One of the prime
drivers for a systematic KM implementation has been mentioned
as ‗huge growth‘. Wipro has implemented a top-down knowledge
management strategy and no special investment in technology,
except for Microsoft Sharepoint server. Emphasis has been
placed on ‗connecting people‘ via discussion forums and yellow
pages, with the understanding that tacit knowledge cannot be
easily encoded but, socializing can help in transfer of such
knowledge or skill.
On the other hand, smaller organizations were lagging behind
due to the scale of investment and lack of clarity in terms of
return on investment (Sanghani, 2008; p19). A potential area of
research that is unanswered is this: if the cost of investment
towards KM system were to reduce drastically by usage of Web

72
2.0, would such organization show more interest in investing
towards KM efforts.
Bughin, et al., (2009) examined the usage pattern of Web 2.0
technologies. India has a higher adoption rate for blogs, wikis
while North America had a slightly higher usage of Social
Networking tools compared to India (Figure 18). Kushan (2007)
has explored the trend of CEO blogging in India. Apart from
these articles, there is no authoritative data in terms of Web 2.0
and its usage in Indian organizations. There is a lack of
information on the usage and deployment of blogs and wikis in
India based organizations.
Figure 18 Web 2.0 in India and North America (Source: Bughin, et al.,
2009)
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Summarizing the entire section, various authors have provided
a viewpoint on how an organization can manage knowledge, both
for its individuals as well as an organization itself. Knowledge
management as a discipline has been examined under various
disciplines and its implementation has seen varied levels of
satisfaction. The concept of Web 2.0 is quite promising due to
its emphasis on user-generated content through sharing and
collaboration. It has a potential to address the main ask of a KM
system – engaging the audience to contribute and collaborate.
Younger workforce is exposed to these technologies and expects
the same in organizations.
India has the advantage of a ―demographic dividend‖ (Murthy,
2009) – a rise of working age population, coupled with rapid
growth in the IT sector. These organizations, either Indian owned
or subsidiaries of foreign companies must be facing similar issues
with KM but, there is a lack of research. Same is the case with
Web 2.0 and its usage across the India based IT organizations.
The purpose of this research is to qualitatively examine if
Web 2.0 is being adopted and used as per the existing findings
of the literature. Specifically, this research aims to answer the
following questions:
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In the Indian IT companies, is Knowledge Management
practiced and does it depend on the organization size?
Is Web 2.0 understood by employees and management in
IT organizations?
Is Web 2.0 being used for KM in the IT organizations in
India?
Does top management and leadership play a role in
adoption of Web 2.0 in the organizations?
The research objectives, methodologies and findings are part
of the following sections.
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3 RESEARCH
The purpose of this research is to understand how Web 2.0
is being used and how the knowledge is being management in
India-based IT organizations. The best primary source of
information would be the people within these organizations who
would be exposed to the tools and processes. However, there
was an issue with directly asking an opinion on Knowledge
Management process or Web 2.0 since it assumed that all
employees would understand be aware of these specific topics.
To work-around the problem, the research tried to gain an
understanding of the typical tools and processes involved in
gathering knowledge, the method by which knowledge was
shared and exposure to specific tools like blogs and wikis.
Senior management opinion was necessary to answer the
broader question on strategy that organizations use for
implementing the knowledge management system and how they
viewed Web 2.0. The role of leadership and the importance of
specific cultural aspects like trust in helping adoption was also
explored via the research through senior management‘s opinion.
Opinions from employees was used to build the foundation of
the research whilst the senior management‘s opinion was
76
necessary to address the strategic aspects associated with KM
and Web 2.0.
During the research process, a successful implementation of
Web 2.0 in Knowledge Management was identified. This specific
implementation is presented as a case study to illustrate the
validity of the research findings.
This research involved understanding the perception of
employees on Knowledge Management and Web 2.0, the way
they use it and adopt it and the role of senior management in
designing or leading the adoption.
3.1 Research Objectives
Knowledge management, as examined in the previous chapter
has faced a lot of challenges in implementation. Web 2.0 being
relatively new has its own set of gray areas. IT organizations
operating in India have not been researched in depth with
respect to the impact and issues faced in implementing a
Knowledge Management program and adoption of Web 2.0. The
purpose of this research is to initiate this examination and
propose a framework for implementing a Knowledge Management
program while adopting the best practices and philosophy of Web
2.0. Specifically, this research tries to answer following questions:
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1. Does IT organizations in India stress on Knowledge
Management
2. Does the importance of KM vary with the size of the
organization?
3. How is Web 2.0 being perceived and utilized by IT
organizations operating in India?
4. Highlight the pain points in implementation of successful
KM programs and Web 2.0 initiatives.
5. Understand if the Web 2.0 adoption was bottom-up or
strategically implemented as a top-down program.
6. Does the top management and leadership play a role in
the adoption of Web 2.0 initiatives?
7. Identify if Web 2.0 will:
a. Act as the new Knowledge Management system
b. Complement existing KM systems OR
c. Remain separate from existing KM systems
8. Propose a framework for implementing a Web 2.0 based
KM program.
3.2 Research Methodology
The authors objective is to understand the adoption and
impact of Web 2.0 in a few IT organizations of India. Since Web
2.0 is a new concept and at various stages of adoption,
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understanding how employees are learning and using it was an
important point to analyze.
According to Collis and Hussey (2003), phenomology deals
with the subjective state of the individual. Remenyi (1998)
explained that a positivistic research is independent of and
neither affects nor is affected by the subject of the research and
the results can be generalized in a mathematical model. This
research does not fall either into a clear ‗positive‘ paradigm or a
‗phenomological‘ paradigm. It includes aspects of identifying
mathematical relationship (e.g.: if organizational size has an impact
on KM activities) as well as subjective insights (e.g.: perception of KM
as a means to make employees redundant).
The research consisted of an online questionnaire for
employees from various organizations with follow-up clarification
email where necessary. Ideally, semi-structured interviews with
each research participant would have yielded ‗richer‘ information
necessary for a better qualitative research. However, due to time
constraints, a questionnaire to general participants had to be
used. According to Bell (2005), survey can be used to obtain
information which can be analyzed and patterns can be extracted along
with making comparisons. They are also a cost effective way of
obtaining information.
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Surveys are good to find the ‗what?‘, ‗where?‘, ‗when?‘ and ‗how‘
but not necessarily the ‗why?‘. However, causal relationships are
generally hard to identify through a survey (Bell, 2005). Semi-
structured interviews lend themselves to this exploratory research
(Saunders et al., 2003) According to Wass and Wells (1994),
semi-structured interviews can be used to explain the themes
that have emerged from the use of questionnaire. Hence,
semi-structured interviews were held with two senior managers to
gain a more in-depth and a broader perspective.
Figure 19 Why Questionnaire and Interviews?
Conclusions are based on level of agreement with the
previous literature and points of digression. Based on the inputs
from the participants of questionnaire and the interview, a
framework for implementing Web 2.0 is presented.
3.3 Research Design
Earlier researchers have identified the generic trends in usage
of Web 2.0 tools (Bughin, et al, 2008; Chui, et al., 2009)
According to Tapscott and Williams (2006), the greatest impact of

80
new collaborative technologies has been in the production of
information goods, such as software, media and entertainment
products (p25). Hence, the focus of research is organizations
involved in software services or software product development.
The initial research done was to identify trends in usage and
understanding of Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management in such
IT organizations. Towards this purpose, an online survey was
initiated to employees of various organizations.
3.3.1 Questionnaire Survey – Design & Rationale
The complete sample size of the target audience was the
entire set of employees in the IT organizations working in India.
Gaining access to information on this population would be very
difficult and hence, probability sampling was not used. Instead,
non-probability sampling was used since the author would have
the liberty to identify specific survey respondents and thus violating
the principle of probability sampling where ‗each item in
population should have equal chance of being selected‘ (Research
Methods and Dissertation, 2006). The salient features of the sample
size were:
Statistical inferences were not necessary since the research
objective is to identify a general trend.
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It is hard to get a representative sample due to limitation
of time and researchers‘ resources.
The purpose of the research is exploratory and identify
individuals for the questionnaire was based on features like
their total experience and age.
A sampling technique of Purposive sampling with a focus on key
themes was necessary. Hence, a sampling technique of
heterogeneous sampling was used. (See figure 20 for the flow-chart)
The respondents for the questionnaire were chosen from a
sample with two different set of experience levels. Employees
with 6 years or less of experience formed one set of participants
and those with more experience formed the second set. The first
group of respondents would have been exposed to nascent Web
2.0 initiatives either when they started the career or during their
college days. According to Levy (2009), as noted in Section
2.5.7, younger population is already exposed to the Web 2.0
tools and expect same in the workplace. This group, the author
felt would utilize the tools more than the older employees.
The second set of respondents would have seen the evolution
of Knowledge Management as well as the impact (if any) by
Web 2.0 on KM. The survey further classified the respondents as
employees into two categories:
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1. Employees working for Indian IT companies: An Indian IT
company according to this research, is an organization that
has its core development/support office in India. The
customers of such a company could be globally located.
Typical examples of such companies are Infosys, Wipro,
TCS, Cognizant, HCL, etc. These companies generally
design and implement their KM strategy from India.
2. Employees working for multi-nationals that operate in India
but, could have a global spread. IBM, Accenture, Microsoft
are some examples of such companies. Such organizations
could import the Knowledge Management strategy that is
developed in US (or parent country) and customize it to
India. The research method is summarized in table below:
The classification was done to identify if there was any
remarkable differences in the way these organizations operated in
terms of Knowledge Management and Web 2.0. In section 2.6, it
was noted that traditional Indian organizations had an
organizational culture that is more hierarchical and less averse to
risk taking while the new IT organizations had a more culture
that resembled the US culture of risk-taking and individual
excellence.
The questions within the survey were categorized into following
areas:
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1. Questions on organizational structure and organizational
culture.
2. Prevalence of a Knowledge Management system and its
usage.
3. Web 2.0, its perception, usage and future plans.
Here is the mapping of the objectives of the research (listed on
page 73) to specific questions within the questionnaire:
TABLE 3 Research Objectives and Survey questions
Objective# Research Objective Question Numbers

*Background 1, 2
*Organization size 3, 4, 5
1 Stress on KM by IT Organizations 17-27
2 KM - importance varies with organization size 22-27
3 Perception of Web 2.0 28, 29, 30, 35, 36, 37
4 Pain points in KM and Web 2.0 implementation

Culture
People
Technology 6-15, 23-27
5 Web 2.0: Top down or bottom up 31,32, 33
6 Role of top management in Web 2.0 32, 33, 34
7 Web 2.0 helps KM or different? No direct questions
8 Framework of Web 2.0 based KM No direct questions
* questions necessary for background research, no mapping to research
objectives.
The first set of questions was used to identify the type of a
leadership, the level of trust, and the level of openness that is
84
present in an organization. These set of questions were meant to
establish the organizational structure, organizational culture and
the type of leadership prevalent in IT organizations. According to
Section 2.2, effective Knowledge Management is dependent on
prevalence of trust within the organization and a form of
leadership that is espouses drive, questioning and encourage
employees to contribute. The questions also tried to identify if a
‗collaborative culture‘, as defined in section 2.3.1.1 existed in
organizations that came across as being good at KM.
The second set of questions was used for understanding the
existing Knowledge Management practices as seen by general
employees, rather than from the perspective of top management.
These questions were to establish if the organization was
operating in the ‗double‘ or ‗deutero-loop learning‘ mode, which is
necessary to be a good learning organization (Section 2.2.2).
The final set of questions within this section were to help identify
the technologies used commonly for communicating and sharing
knowledge. Section 2.3.1.3 identified the commonly used
technologies and the questions were to identify if there any tools
not already explored in the research.
TABLE 4 Methodology for Questionnaire Research
Sampling technique Purposive sampling
85
(Heterogeneous sampling)
Sampling Unit Employees from selected
subset
Sample size 33
Research Instrument Online questionnaire
The final set of questions was to help gauge the level of
exposure, understanding and usage of Web 2.0 technologies in
various organizations. The initial questions were to identify if
employees understand the concept of Web 2.0. As seen in section
2.5.1, Web 2.0 has a very vague imprint and people are often confused
between the concept of Web 2.0 and its technologies. The aim of the
questions were to how clear employees were in understanding
the concept and tools, and the patterns of usage and to identify
if there was any noticeable difference between the usage
patterns highlighted by various authors as explained in section
2.5.5.
Attempt was also made to identify of how Web 2.0 enters the
organization and the road ahead, as seen by the employees. For
this, the questions had to be put at two different levels. One
involved identifying the manifestations of use and direct opinions.
An example of manifestation of use was – does senior
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management communication happen via blogs or videos as
compared to emails and face-to-face meetings. In the literature,
authors feel that Web 2.0 enters organizations via individual
employees and then spreads in a bottom-up manner. The aim
was to analyze if the same happened in Indian organizations or
if Web 2.0 usage was still a strategic, top-management decision.
3.3.2 Semi-structured interviews – Design & Rationale
The questionnaire responses was followed by semi-structured
interviews with senior managers who were either responsible or
have seen the evolution of the Knowledge Management and the
Web 2.0 systems in Indian IT organizations. Two telephonic
interviews were held. Both the respondents have more than 10
years of experience in KM and have been working in India-based
IT organizations.
Semi-structured interview and open ended questions allow
for responses to reflect the richness and complexity of views
(Denscombe, 2003). The purpose of these interviews were to
gather anecdotal evidence, best practices and lessons learnt in
the implementation of the KM and Web 2.0 systems with the
Indian context.
Identification of the participants was based on the following
points:
87
Statistical inferences were not necessary since the purpose
of interview was to build on the questionnaire data.
It is hard to get a representative sample due to limitation
of access to such senior managers.
Focus was on senior managers who had an exposure to
Web 2.0 and worked for implementing KM for their
respective organizations to provide an in-depth expertise.
Figure 20 Non-probability Sampling methods

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Based on the above points, a purposive sampling with a focus
on in-depth knowledge was necessary. In other words, a
homogenous sampling method was used. (See figure 20 for flow-
chart). The sampling methodology is summarized in table below.
TABLE Methodology for Semi-structured Interviews
Sampling technique Purposive sampling of senior
managers who have
implemented or worked
supervised the
implementation efforts of
Web 2.0/KM systems
Homogeneous sampling
Sampling Unit Employees from selected
subset
Sample size 2
Research Instrument Semi-structured interview
Follow-up emails were used with both the interview
participants and a few of the questionnaire respondents as well.
These emails threw up points that the author hadn‘t anticipated.
For example, one email led to question if Web 2.0 is not being
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adopted precisely because it is open and reduced management‘s
control.
4 RESEARCH FINDINGS
The first part of the research involved an on line
questionnaire and the second half of research involved sem-
structured interviews. The findings of the questionnaire survey are
presented in section 4.1 and the interview summary is presented
in section 4.2.
4.1 Web 2.0 and KM – Employees perspective
An online survey was published and 33 participants were
identified based on the organization size and experience levels. A
sample questionnaire has been in included in Appendix 2. 20
usable responses were received from the survey. (See table
below).
17 of the respondents were from India-based IT
organizations while 3 of the participants were from multi-national
organizations that have an office in India. The organizations were
split into 4 different categories based on the number of
employees:
Small organizations (0-499)
Mid-sized organization (1000-4999)

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Large organization (5000 and above)
TABLE 5 Questionnaire response summary
Survey No of respondents
Total respondents 33
Partially complete 11
Total complete 22
Incomplete/unusable survey 2
Total useful surveys 20
There was a category for organizations with 500-999
employees, but no responses were received for this category.
(See Fig 19)
The research findings are split into 3 sections, regarding the
Organizational Research, findings on KM and opinions about Web
2.0.
Figure 21 Respondent organization type and size

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4.1.1 Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture
According to literature, Knowledge Management requires a
culture where trust is built-in and employees feel empowered to
share the knowledge. The first set of questions were to identify
the type of culture prevalent in the organizations.
Based on the survey, all the respondents felt that their
organizational environment was ‗friendly‘ and ‗personal‘ with the
colleagues being part of a ‗family‘. This finding is similar to the
research by other authors (Hofstede, 1980 & 1991; Budwar,
2001; Deshpande, et al., 1999) who identified that a group
orientation and low masculinity are features of the Indian national
culture. On the question of leadership, ‗entrepreneurial‘ culture
seems to be the most prevalent followed by a coordinator type
of leadership As the size of the organization grows, the primary
leadership type changed from being entrepreneurial to being more
paternalistic and coordinational. All three leadership patterns are
similar to the findings in by Liddell (2005).
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Figure 22 Leadership types in Indian IT Organizations
Trust has been pointed out as an important factor for
organizations to have an effective Knowledge Management
initiative (section 2.3.1) or a Web 2.0 program (section 2.5.3).
According to Ellonen, et al. (2008), the key factor contributing
to knowledge sharing culture and innovation is trust. The survey
asked respondents whether they trusted their colleagues and
superiors. In the small and mid-sized organizations, all
respondents trusted their colleagues and superiors equally, and
completely. However, in larger organizations, employees tend to
trust their colleagues more than their superiors. There is a
relatively less trust in superiors despite a majority of respondents
agreeing that there is very good communication between senior
management and staff. This lack of horizontal and especially
93
vertical trust, could act as a challenge towards effective
implementation of Knowledge management or Web 2.0 efforts.
The exact cause of this reduction in trust, apart from
organizational size is not clear.
Figure 23 Trust in organizations
Kanungo and Mendonca (1994) and Budhwar (2001) had
concluded that Indians were generally not open to change and
did not like to take ownership of tasks. This would imply an
organization with formal processes and bureaucracy to ensure
compliance or an organization with stress on tradition.
However, 90% of respondents (18 out of 20) in this survey
felt complete ownership of their task. Being open to change and
objective goal setting were seen to be important in all
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organizations. KM and Web 2.0 requires individuals to have a
sense of ownership. Without the freedom, individuals may not
reflect and analyze a situation and double-loop or deuteron loop
learning may not exist.
Employees in large organizations felt that ‗loyalty and
tradition‘ was as important as ‗innovation and change‘ when
asked what holds the organization together (figure 24). There
appears to be a gradual change in the risk appetite and
openness to change.
Figure 24 What holds organization together?
The next question asked if the employees felt that their
opinions were considered in their organization for decision
making. This question is loosely tied to level of trust and the
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openness of senior management to seek feedback from
employees.
66% of the respondents felt that their opinions mattered
while 20 % were not clear if their opinions . The rest were not
sure on the importance placed to their opinions. Hence, close to
40% of employees are not sure if their opinions matter implying
that the decision making is still either hierarchical and or the
decision making process is opaque and individual opinions are
not acknowledged.
In summary, according to the survey, the broad picture of
an Indian IT organization is that of a place driven by
commitment, having a friendly and family-oriented atmosphere ;a
place where individuals feel ownership for their own sphere of
work and tend to trust each other. The role of a leader is that of
an entrepreneur, mentor or coordinator depending on size of
organization. Employees feel measured on performance by clear
goals, but are not completely sure if their opinions matter.
4.1.2 Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Management
In this section of questionnaire, the respondents were asked
question on how knowledge is created, captured, formatted,
shared and rewarded (Bhat, 2001). The first few questions were
to gauge the prevalence of basic systems for capture

96
organizational knowledge. Almost all the organizations seem to
have some form of a knowledge sharing system as well as a
discussion forum (See figure 23). Two of the small organizations
said they don‘t have an enterprise level knowledge sharing
system but, they did have standard templates for sharing
documents.
Figure 25 Existence of a Basic KM
The next question put to the survey audience was on the
clarity of Knowledge Management process in terms of knowledge
capture. This is the first step in Knowledge Management, as per
Bhat‘s model (section 2.3.1.2) and closely resembles the
‗experimentation‘ phase of a learning organization (section 2.2).
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The respondents were asked to rate their choice for the 5
parameters (Figure 26). Here, ‗hard knowledge‘ is recording
information like the technical complexity, identifying best practices,
etc. ‗Soft‘ knowledge is information necessary for personal rapport
with the customer or the customer‘s preferences. For example,
this could the preference of emails for communication rather than
calls by a customer.
In one of the small organizations, the respondent indicated
that they had a clear process for problem solving but, were not
open to experimentation. The same respondent was not sure if
he/she was supposed to record the learning from project. In a
start-up, the employee indicated that they only record ‗soft‘
information but no other knowledge is captured. Finally, in
another small organization, knowledge seems to be recorded by
individuals but it is not shared.
In most organizations, ‗soft‘ information seems to captured well
but, ‗hard‘ information is not being captured efficiently. A lot of
responses were marked ‗Neither agree nor disagree‘ indicating
the respondents were not completely clear on the expectation
from the organization.
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Figure 26 Effectiveness in 'capturing' knowledge
The next two survey questions were on openness and
freedom in sharing information. Members in a learning
organization, as per Garvin (1993) must be good at learning from
their own experience and from experience of others. This entails
an ability to share the learnings, reflect and brain-storm on
improvements. This process is similar to the ‗double-loop learning‘
and the ‗knowledge validation‘ step in Batt‘s model (section 2.2.2
and 2.3.2.1).
As per the survey, the amount of freedom seems to reduce
as the organization size increases. The role of a designated
gatekeeper for information as well as the importance of a
centralized team responsible for facilitating sharing of knowledge
increases with the increase in organization size (figure 27).
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Similarly, the importance of middle managers as decision-maker
for sharing information increased with increase in organization
size.
An interesting aspect when looking at the result is that earlier
respondents felt that horizontal and vertical trust reduced with
organizational size. Here, it is felt that freedom reduces with
organizational size. This leads to an interesting point that as trust
reduces, the freedom for employees to start initiatives and share
ideas reduces.
Figure 27 Role of gatekeepers and Centralized KM team
The final set of questions in this section was on rewards
and recognition for those who contribute and share knowledge.
De Long and Fahey (2000) had hypothesized in their study that
the organizational culture itself can act as a motivator for
knowledge creation, sharing and use. The responses from this

100
survey corroborates the findings. Rather than recognition, a
collaborative culture has been noted as the main reason for
sharing knowledge (41% overall). This is followed by recognition
by senior management through emails, meetings and other non-
financial rewards (figure 28). In large organizations, the CXO
blogs were pointed out by respondents as an important medium
for recognizing an individual‘s contribution as well encouraging
and motivating employees for sharing knowledge (20%).
Figure 28 Motivation to share knowledge
Summarizing this part of questionnaire responses, most
organizations seem to use some form of a portal/discussion
forum. There appears a bit of confusion in knowledge capture.
Technical and process related learnings are not being effectively
captured. This particular weakness violates the definition of
‗learning organization‘ (Garvin, 1993) as well as the double-loop
101
learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978). To be termed as true
‗learning organization‘ more effective capturing of the ‗hard‘
knowledge is necessary. Organizations depend on a ‗culture of
sharing‘ as the prime motivator for knowledge sharing rather than
any specific motivation/rewards mechanism. However, larger the
organizational size, the motivation and freedom to share reduces.
Thus, there is a contradictory requirement – better knowledge
dissemination is achieved through a culture of sharing but, the
motivation and freedom to share reduces as the organizational
size increases. An organization requiring an effective KM will
thus need to build a culture of trust that is retained even as it
grows in size. Web 2.0 with its ability to reach all employees or
with a freedom to engage a micro-audience can play a significant
role in balance this requirement. Such an effective use is
highlighted in the case study under section 4.6.
4.1.3 Web 2.0 – Perception and Usage
In the third and final section of the questionnaire, respondents
were asked about their understanding of Web 2.0, their
perception of how it is being used and how they see it
impacting their organization.
According to various researchers (EIU, 2007; Adams, 2008;
Levy, 2009), Web 2.0 suffers from a lack of clarity due to

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multiplicity of definitions. The primary definition of Web 2.0 should
include ‗user generated content‘ followed by its utility of sharing
and collaboration. EIU (2007) had found that there was a
possibility of users getting stuck in the ‗trappings‘ of Web 2.0
while losing sight of the core concept of ‗network effect‘.
However, in this the survey, it appears that the respondents
generally understand the technologies that adhere to concept of
Web 2.0 while not always being clear on Web 2.0 as a concept
(figure 28). 85% of users understood Web 2.0 as ‗sharing and
collaboration‘ signifying that they were not trapped in just the
technology of Web 2.0.
Figure 29 Survey Response: What is Web 2.0?
The next 2 questions were to identify the tools used by
respondents as compared to the tools used within the

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organizations. This question was used to understand if there was
a gap in terms of tools used by individuals and if there was a
lag in organizational adoption. Most individual users as well as
organizations use Wikis, Blogs, RSS and Web . Within
organizations, social networking and tagging is lagging by a
larger percentage when compared to individual use (figure 30).
This could be due to lack of proper software and integration
effort for the products, which was identified by a senior manager
in a clarification email.
Figure 30 Web 2.0 – Which tools do you use?
On the question of ‗Why does your organization use Web
2.0?‘ (figure 31), the responses were similar to the findings of
study by Bughin, et al. (2008) 85% of the respondents felt that
―Managing Knowledge‖ is the primary internal use of Web 2.0
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followed by ―fostering collaboration‖ and ―Training‖. Further, the
survey found that in 75% of the cases, senior managers were
leading or encouraging the initiatives.
When combined with the findings of Chiu, et. al., (2009)
(section 2.5.6), the tools used are chiefly for broad collaboration
and communication and the purpose of Web 2.0 is mainly for
content generation and community building. Usage of tagging and
social networking tools would help in both the purpose and
enhance the ‗pattern of interactions‘ thereby enhancing the
organizational knowledge, as envisioned by Bhat (see Section
2.2).
Figure 31 Why does your organization use Web 2.0?
EIU (2007) identified lack of exposure to open source
technologies as a hindrance in Web 2.0 adoption. In the IT
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companies surveyed, 70% felt their organization had capability to
use Open Source platforms and thus adopt Web 2.0
technologies. As the organizations surveyed are IT companies,
technology itself is not seen as a big hindrance in adoption of
Web 2.0.
The next question in the survey was to identify if Web 2.0
had been adopted bottom-up or via a strategic top-down
approach. According to various research (Bughin, et al., 2008;
Chui, et al., 2009; Levy, 2009 and EIU, 2007) Web 2.0 is
generally a bottom-up movement with the business units driving
the adoption. However, the respondents to this survey were not
so sure. In most organizations, especially in small and mid-sized
organizations, it was the Senior Managers/IT Managers who
choose Web 2.0 tools. However, business units seem to exert
more influence as the organization size increases since
responses were split evenly in large organizations (Figure 32).
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Figure 32 How is Web 2.0 introduced?
In the next question the respondents were asked if Web
2.0 had made an impact on them and their organizations.
In the organizations that used Web 2.0, peer to peer
communication is seen the greatest improvement (Figure 33). All
5 respondents from small and medium sized organizations agreed
that Web 2.0 improved effectiveness in three aspects: knowledge
sharing, peer communication and senior management
communication. In larger organization, 25% felt no change was
seen in senior management communication. On further email with
a respondent, no improvement was seen in senior management
communication when the senior mangers were not playing a
leadership role in Web 2.0 adoption.
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Figure 33 How has Web 2.0 impacted you?
On the question of barriers to Web 2.0, employees clearly
indicated that an organization‘s structure, culture or the leadership
were not seen as an issue. However, lack of incentive coupled
and an unclear ROI were seen as barriers to its success. As
pointed out in Section 4.2.3, this requires more role-models,
frequent recognition mailers, newsletters and non-financial
rewards.
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Figure 34 Barriers to Web 2.0
On the whole, Web 2.0 seems to have made a positive
impact on most organizations. It was seen to improve
communication as well as knowledge sharing. Leadership was not
generally lacking on this effort and organizations seemed to be
technically equipped to work with the Web 2.0 tools. The
satisfaction was confirmed with the final response where 80%
agreed that their organization was planning to expand use of
Web 2.0. A need for training employees and ensuring the
involvement of senior managers in the adoption was also pointed
out in the survey.
4.1.4 Survey Summary
The Indian IT organization is seen as a place filled with a
family-oriented atmosphere, led by a leader acting as an
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entrepreneur/mentor. Performance goals seem to be relatively
clear and there is a sense of ownership. Organizations seem to
be having issues in capturing knowledge and generally depend
on a culture of sharing for contribution. Encouragement and
motivation for contributing to Knowledge management effort is
lacking. Finally, Web 2.0 is seen as an enabler for better sharing
and collaborating. It is not seen as a technical challenge and
employees are generally open to use the tools.
With respect to the research objectives, following were clear from
the survey:
Knowledge sharing happens in organization but, the steps of
Knowledge capture and validation are not clear to all
employees.
Importance of Knowledge management appears to be more
important in larger organizations than smaller organizations.
Web 2.0 technologies are quite well understood, but, the usage
is limited to collaboration and communication (mainly wikis and
blogs). The technology underlying these tools is not seen as a
challenge.
However, there were a few unanswered questions from the
survey:
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On the question of barriers to Web 2.0, 30% of
respondents were not sure if the incentives were sufficient.
With a work-experience of at least 6 years for most
respondents, this lack of clarity needs investigation.
Even though senior management is involved in introducing
Web 2.0, it was not clear if the introduction was done as
a pilot or as a strategic launch across organization.
The specific tools used for Web 2.0 initiatives and
Knowledge Management program were not clear.
Employees are unclear if their contributions are seen
valuable. There is a perception that sufficient
encouragement is not being provided for contributing
towards knowledge sharing. If Senior Management is
committed to KM, this lack of encouragement is unclear.
As organizations grow in size, the amount of freedom and
trust reduces. For an effective KM and Web 2.0 effort,
these two factors are essential. It is not clear how the
growth and erosion of freedom and trust can be balanced.
To answer these questions and to gain a further clarity on
the actual process of KM/Web 2.0 implementation, two semi-
structured interviews were conducted. The findings from these
interviews are explained in the next section.
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4.2 Web 2.0 and KM – Management Perspective
Two telephonic semi-structured interviews were held to explore
the unanswered questions from the previous section. One
interviewee is responsible for KM initiative in the Asia region of a
very large global product company. The second interviewee is the
former Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) of a huge IT services
organization. The findings are based on the meeting notes
(Ranganath, 2009a; Ranganath 2009b). Unfortunately, the
complete contents of the meeting notes could not added to the
appendix due to the corporate policies of the organizations.
4.2.1 About KM – Current state and challenges
One of the managers defined KM as ensuring availability of
information to the consultants whenever they needed and felt that
Drucker was right that knowledge is the primary competitive advantage
in any modern organization (section 1). The definition of KM is similar
to the work of O‘Dell and Grayson (section 2.3).
According to one senior manager, KM has been around in
most organizations in one form or another. KM implementation
generally starts with simple project repositories and evolves into a
combination of tools including expertise databases, training
portals, workspaces and discussion forums. These are the
conventional KM systems that were described in section 2.3.1.3.

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However, there are three main challenges seen in the existing
KM systems:
Objective: In many organizations, it was difficult to
motivate people to contribute. One of the primary reasons
is the very objective of KM. According to a manager,
employees perceive KM systems as a knowledge repository
that hordes knowledge so that the organizations did not
suffer when the employees quit. Since KM systems not
perceived as productivity enhancement applications, their
usage was low.
Participation: Participation on KM systems is generally
very low. Encouraging experts to document their knowledge
is generally difficult. In typical KM systems, usage has
been observed to be very low and this low usage further
discourages experts to contribute. Discussion forums are
the only platforms where the participation has been
generally better.
Alignment: Aligning the goals of KM and the business has
generally been challenging. Without sufficient time from
Senior Managers, getting the right alignment is seen to be
difficult. Over the past few years, however, senior business
managers have taken responsibility of KM and this has
helped in better alignment.
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Rapid growth: As per one senior manager, their
organization was witnessing a rapid growth and effective
KM systems are necessary to quickly assimilate the new
employees.
Indian culture: The Indian national culture too plays a part
in hampering the sharing of knowledge. Three aspects of
the culture act as barriers to KM:
o Indians typically face a lot of competition during
education. Due to extreme competition, they generally
don‘t like to trust or share knowledge.
o Indians have a tendency for using information without
providing feedback. Contributors are thus discouraged
since they don‘t get an opinion on the acceptance of
their work.
o Finally, hierarchy in organizations prevents an open
communication and feedback.
The underlying cause for many issues could be a lack of
clarity on the objective of a KM system, an organizational culture
that doesn‘t promote sharing or an incentive structure that doesn‘t
reward collaboration. These points would be against the building
blocks of a learning organization (section 2.2) and seriously
hamper the integration of individual knowledge into the
organizational knowledge base.
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However, Indians are generally open to a paternalistic
leadership and respond well to mentoring. A senior management
actively involved in sharing and encouraging participation is seen
important in effective KM.
Knowledge Management In Small Organizations
In smaller organizations, ‗everyone knows everyone‘. In such a
situation, people tend to walk to other person‘s desk or send an
email for specific information. Enterprise KM systems are
generally not used, nor is it effective. However, a small system
with simple information regarding corporate policies would be
useful in ramping up new employees. A full-fledged KM system
is seen useful when:
Organizations are spread across multiple geographies/offices
The organization is undergoing a rapid growth and needs
to assimilate new employees faster.
The primary challenge in such large organizations is the
erosion of trust and motivation to share across teams. The
secondary challenge is the ‗know-who‘ problem. Since each
person does not every other employee, approaching the right
person for a given problem tends to get difficult.
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4.2.2 Where does Web 2.0 fit in?
When asked the question, ―Does Web 2.0 fit into the
philosophy and concepts of KM?‖, both the senior managers
answered in affirmative. Web 2.0 is seen as a mechanism that
elevates the practice of KM through better participation and
usage by employees.
Web 2.0 and sustaining trust
The primary concern identified in previous section was the
lack of trust, both culturally and organizationally that contributes
to a incompletely effective KM.
According to the managers, through its philosophy of being
―open, public and transparent‖ (Ranganath, 2009b), Web 2.0
builds more trust and adoption increases. The relatively young IT
employees are already familiar with the tools and are willing to
share and collaborate (Ranganath, 2009a). The new technology is
thus seen to help in creation of virtual relationships by the
means of ―weak ties‖ relationships (Granovetter, 1973). This
hypothesis says that it is possible to reach people outside the
group of known people (―strong ties‖) and generally it is these
people who have novel or innovative solutions. Thus, Web 2.0 is
able to sustain the culture of trust even as the organization
grows as well as addressing the ‗know-who‘ problem. Social

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networking concepts of Web 2.0 is specifically targeted at
addressing the ‗know-who‘ problem and leveraging the ‗weak ties‘
relationship as explained in section 2.5.4.
Web 2.0 and engaging the employees
Web 2.0 is also seen as a better mechanism to tap into the
‗wisdom of the crowds‘ (Surowiecki, 2004). This is seen through
the ability to engage the audience via blogs or freedom to edit
Wiki pages or the ability to add meaning through tagging and
making this available to everyone. Prior to Web 2.0, only
discussion forums managed to tap the knowledge held by
experts.
Web 2.0 is also seen as an effective tool for capturing the
―know-who‖ along with the ―know-how‖ (Ranganath, 2009a).
Traditional KM stressed on capturing knowledge but did not
effectively cater to the question of identifying an expertise with a
person. By using the tagging functionality and identifying topics
generally blogged or wiki edits by a person, experts can be
identified. This mechanism helps in building a ‗yellow-page‘ of
experts through the contribution of users, rather than through a
centralized classification exercise. This concept is similar to the
meritocracy in open source software development described by
Tapscott and Williams (2006). This meritocracy itself acts as a
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motivator. Getting into the ‗yellow-page‘ as an expert is seen as
a positive challenge and a motivator towards more contribution.
Web 2.0 – Tools that matter
The table below summarizes the tools that are mainly used in
the Web 2.0 initiatives.
Tools like mashups and ‗collective estimation‘ identified by
Bughin et al., (2008) are not yet prevalent in IT organizations.
Although no clear reason was identified, the author opines that
these tools being a higher-order deployments could be used after
the basic Web 2.0 tool adoption is more mature.
TABLE 6 Web 2.0 Technologies in Use
Web 2.0 technology Status

Blogs, Wikis, Tagging, Discussion forums,
Shared workspaces In use
1-3
RSS, Social Networking, Podcasts years
Blogs and Wikis are seen as the most prevalent tools even by
the senior managers along with the traditional KM tools like
shared workspaces.
4.2.3 Challenges in Web 2.0 adoption
Here are a few challenges in Web 2.0 adoption that were
identified by the two interviewees:
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Management buy-in
Web 2.0 being ‗inherently disruptive‘ (Chui, et al., 2009) has
its own challenges from a management perspective. Web 2.0 is
seen to turn the concept of KM upside down. In the traditional
KM, senior management is the main driver and gaining the
adoption and buy-in of all employees was difficult.
On the other hand, Web 2.0 being bottom-up and
participative, is easier to adopt by users. For a better
participation, Web 2.0 initiatives cannot have rigorous procedures.
However, Management feels a loss of control due to openness
and getting their buy-in is challenging. This is the exact same
problem identified by Chiu et al., (2009) and detailed in section
2.5.8.
Thus, a Senior Manager who is already aware of Web 2.0
and who can lead by example in Web 2.0 adoption is seen to
be effective in gaining the buy-in from management as well as
encouraging better participation from all employees. This is similar
to the observation by Chiu, et al. (2009, p5) that ―transformation
to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top‖.
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Participation, Recognition and Education
To ensure people adopt and participate, encouragement is
necessary. (Chui, et al., 2009) Rather than just financial rewards,
recognition through newsletters and corporate occasions have
been effective (Ranganath, 2009b).
To gain a better adoption, training, awareness campaigns and
‗unconferences‘ (Monahan, 2007) have been found to be very
useful. The case study in the next section provides an example
of different modes of encouragement that have proven to be
successful.
While interviewing the senior managers, it came across to the
author that both the mangers were very hands-on users of
blogging platforms like Wordpress as well as social networkers
using KCommunity (a KM community). Outside of their work too,
the managers were active in community-building via constantly
questioning, encouraging and challenging other users on their
blog site and the other portals. Such a leadership was one of
the criteria identified as necessary for building a good learning
organization (Section 2.2).
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Metrics and ROI
Metrics are generally a pain in the KM industry (Ranganath,
2009a). However, a starting point would to be measure two
main aspects of Web 2.0 – contribution and consumption. For
example, few metrics related to blogs that are useful would be
number of unique contributors, number of blog posts, average
number of blog views and comments (Adams, 2008). Such
primary metrics provide information on the usage and adoption of
the tools.
Secondary metrics are not standardized and depends on the
business objective being met. For example, one organization used
the metric ‗effort saved‘ to measure the effectiveness of the
discussion forum. It compared the time taken to solve a problem
via discussion forum as against time it would have taken without
the forum.
During the interviews, it was striking that the traditional
analysis of ‗cost v/s benefit‘ was not raised since the inherent
belief was KM has an unlimited ROI (Ranganath, 2009a) and
thus escaping the common short-sightedness that many
organizations face while embarking on KM (see ‗challenges to
KM‘, section 2.4).
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Products Used
The latest version of Sharepoint by Microsoft has been seen
to address multiple KM requirements by one manager. Since
most organizations already use Microsoft products, adopting
Sharepoint is seen to be easier.
Other technologies that are generally used for KM and Web
2.0 initiative are summarized in table below.
TABLE 7 Web 2.0 / KM Products in Use
KM / Web 2.0 Requirement Product Used
Blogging Sharepoint / Wordpress /
Enterprise version of Wordpress
Wiki Confluence
Search Sharepoint search, Apache
SOLR
Social bookmarking / tagging Custom built
Reporting / metrics Custom built / Product provided
Both the mangers were not stuck with any specific technology
or product, escaping the traditional trap of being stuck with the
technical aspects of KM or Web 2.0 (see section 2.4 and section
2.5.7).
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4.2.4 Web 2.0 and unanticipated benefits
According to the interviewees, Web 2.0 implementation has
led to benefits that were not planned and were quite completely
unanticipated (Ranganath, 2009a). Some of them are:
‘Stronger employee engagement’: In larger organizations,
newcomers may not feel appreciated. Through participation
and contribution to web 2.0 initiatives like blogs, discussion
forums and social bookmarking, such employees can feel a
stronger affiliation and a sense of recognition. Similarly, the
author observed talent groups like photography group,
trekking communities and open source evangelists
participating, blogging and engaging with each other which
bolstered the feeling of being a part of the ‗family‘.
CSR Initiatives: In one of the organizations, a community
of employees was formed on the blog platform, working
towards giving back to community. Such an effective usage
of the platform was well-received and was provided with
funding and adoption as the corporate CSR program.
4.2.5 Summary of Interviews
The main objective of the interviews were to get a
management perspective on Knowledge Management and Web
2.0 and to address the gaps identified in the survey

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questionnaire. The gaps were quite clearly addressed through
these interviews. Apart from the gaps, a few important
observations came to the fore:
The senior managers are aware of the employees‘ concern
that KM is disguised to extract knowledge to make them
redundant. This concern is being addressed through
educating and proving the value of using KM and Web 2.0
as productivity tools.
From the interviews, it is clear that Senior Managers are
aware of the contribution-consumption problem where
experts don‘t contribute due to lack of audience and
people don‘t use a system due to lack of quality articles.
Web 2.0 can be used successfully to surmount the passive
consumption through the usage of blogs for more active
participation since it is capable of even engaging with the
‗long-tail‘ topics and communicating to micro-audience
(Anderson, 2004).
By regularly communicating the importance of the
contributions via senior management blogs and emails,
organizations have started to address the motivational
needs of employees. A unique thought was introduction of
a ‗frequent-contributor‘ points that can be redeemed for
various goodies.
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Within the organizations, Web 2.0 is being introduced as a
pilot and with a strategic intent. In most cases, clear
objectives and policies exist for the introduction of Web 2.0
applications. However, the underlying framework is kept
flexible to introduce new tools. Clearly, the introduction of
Web 2.0 is considered strategic and does not follow the
bottom-up approach as suggested by Chiu et al., (2008).
However, usage of a particular tool is still bottom-up. For
example, the decision of introducing a blogs in an
organization is strategic. But, the decision to contribute,
read and comment on others‘ blogs is still a decision by
the employees. So, the quality of the whole system can
improve only with participation and that cannot be easily
mandated. Such a deployment model follows the concept of
emergence (section 2.5.2) which is about managing and
orchestrating self-managed groups for innovations and
creative solutions.
The focus seems to be on leveraging the tags and linking
it to search technology to provide more relevant results to
the users. Tags are being used as metadata and the
provided as an input to the search system as a ‗user-
generated metadata‘. By leveraging user-generated tags,
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the search results are being optimized to provide a better
contextual result for the employees.
Finally, KM managers see Web 2.0 as an enabler in the
process of Knowledge management. Some of the tools fit into
the process of capturing knowledge and helping in sharing.
However, Knowledge Management is seen as a much bigger
than just the Web 2.0 philosophy of user-generated content and
collaboration. It is seen as alignment of knowledge activities
towards satisfying the business goals. These business goals vary
from one organization to another and so does the implementation
of the Knowledge Management program.
4.3 Putting it all together – a case study
Following is the case study of an effective KM implementation
that leverages the Web 2.0 technologies and concepts to derive
a better usage and robust sharing of knowledge. The case is
representative of an IT services organization that has a very
large development center presence in India.
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Case Study : Implementation of Web 2.0 based KM
System
About Cognizant
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation provides
information technology (IT) consulting and technology
services, as well as outsourcing services in North
America, Europe, and Asia. It has over 64,000 full-time
employees (Yahoo, 2009). Cognizant is global company
with significant presence in markets like North America
and Europe and development centers in India and China.
(Cognizant, 2009)
The problem
Cognizant has over 64,000 people and growing
rapidly. Knowledge Management was essential to ensure
quick assimilation of newcomers apart from “getting
knowledge to consultants when they need it” (Akshay,
2009a).
According to the Chief Knowledge Office, Sukumar
Rajagopal, Knowledge Management has two aspects –
contribution and consumption. In the traditional
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model, „1% rule applied‟ since the focus was on
contribution. According to this rule, "if you get a group
of 100 people online then one will create content, 10
will „interact‟ with it (commenting or offering
improvements) and the other 89 will just view it".
(Arthur, 2006) Due to low consumption as well as
difficulty in documenting expert knowledge, the
effectiveness of traditional portal based KM systems was
low. Such systems catered only to the “know-how” need
of KM and could not satisfy the “know-who” requirement
necessary in a large organization.
The solution
Increase participation
Instead of addressing the contribution problem,
Cognizant started by addressing the consumption aspect.
Web 2.0 was introduced to build a culture of
participation. Blogs were introduced with a single
corporate policy that essentially asked users not to write
anything that could harm or hurt the organization or
individuals. Bloggers started to contribute with topics
ranging from technological trends to sharing their
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hobbies. With average age of employees being mid-20s,
the adoption was easier due to their exposure to the
technologies.
Contributors and consumers were constantly
encouraged through non-financial rewards ranging from
special recognition on the Senior Management‟s blogs as
well as redeemable points, similar to „frequent flier‟
programs. These points could be exchanged for
Cognizant branded goodies. Frequent training, awareness
weeks and unconferences were held to connect people
face-to-face to increase awareness and usage (Monahan,
2007).
Web 2.0 was adopted as a combination of top-down
and grassroots approach. However, the overall adoption
for the organization was a strategic decision.
Router Model of KM
The Router Model of KM is “based on a distributed
architecture where knowledge is not necessarily in one
central knowledge repository”. Instead of having a
centralized repository, search technology is used to
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connect the various data sources. A single centralized
repository is difficult to manage (Dusun and Suliman,
2009). A federated system, based on loose integration
would be successful, if the data dictionaries are kept
up-to-date. (p143). Towards this end, the search
indexing occurs daily at Cognizant to keep the data
dictionaries updated.
Thus, with a combination of various technologies, user
generated content and external content is made
available, either as a „pull‟ like search or as a „push‟
via RSS feeds to the employees.
To ensure better searchability, Cognizant is working
on building a controlled vocabulary that can be used for
tagging. However, flexibility is provided to users who
can request for new words to be added. Such requests
are vetted and approved by a centralized team to
maintain integrity of the vocabulary.
Measuring RoI
According to Cognizant, KM has an unlimited RoI.
However, to measure the success of a tool deployment,
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two relatively simple metrics have been used – reach
and frequency. The reach metric is a measure of how
many employees are reading the contribution while the
frequency metric is a measure of how many people
are contributing and how often do they make the
contributions. These metrics are used to ensure that the
performance is better than the 1% rule.
According to internal reports, the 1% rule has been
broken almost since the inception of the program and
usage has been quite high and proved very effective.
Conclusion
The purpose of the case study was to help analyze if
the research findings from the survey and interviews
were practical in a real world scenario. The case study
was also used to identify solutions to some of the
issues raised in the research.
The primary concern with Knowledge Management
initiative was identified as alignment of business
objectives with the KM effort. In Cognizant, this
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objective was summarized as “getting knowledge to
consultants when they need it”.
The subsequent issue is that of participation - both
due to a lack of motivation and incentive, as well as
the Indian culture of passive consumption. Through the
deployment of blogs and a very open policy on content,
Cognizant ensured that employees started to experiment
with the new platform and finally started to participate
in the blogosphere. With „paternalistic‟ senior managers
acting as role models, the adoption was easier for rest
of employees. Trust was built into the system through a
mechanism not allowing anonymous access combined
with a simple policy of requesting users to not write ill
about organization or other employees. The simplicity
itself added to a better adoption. Watching a senior
manager „walk-the-talk‟ also helped to bring in more
contributors.
Blogs and tagging helped in the „know-who‟ aspect as
well. For example, looking for expert on a specific topic
was about identifying a person blogging passionately on
the topic and seeking the expert‟s help, as postulated
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by Gronovetter (1973). Similarly, new employees could
be assimilated easily by allowing them to blog which
were read and commented by other employees – thus
making the new hires a part of family.
Senior management‟s role in strategically identifying
the tools and deployment of the technology ensured that
the business objectives were monitored and adherence
was tracked.
Due a one or more managers‟ active participation
and demonstration of the Web 2.0 capability, buy-in
from top-management must have been easier. However,
this is a conjecture by the author and not a finding of
the research.
The final point about ensuring a federated search
through a „spoke-and-hub‟ model of Knowledge
Management clearly indicates that Web 2.0 is just one
part of the entire spectrum of Knowledge Management.
Another essential ingredient is a powerful search that
can index and return results from multiple data-sources
in a seamless fashion.
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4.4 Discussion
Based on the research and the case study above, many best
practices came forth. The interviews with the managers also
helped identify a thought process that has generally yielded a
good KM system that is robust to accommodate new
technologies like Web 2.0 and ensure relevancy to end users.
The first section is a discussion on the best practices and the
next section develops the generic thought process into a formal
model that can be explored in future research.
4.4.1 Best Practices based on Research
Based on the research and the case study above and the
rest of the research, some of the best practices that were
observed in organizations with an effective Web 2.0 based KM
programs are:
Piloting an implementation: Rather than launch a Web 2.0
initiative at organizational level, pilot a solution or tool and
measure participation. Such experimentation itself is a sign
of a learning organization (section 2.2). Sukumar mentioned
that Web 2.0 initiatives are introduced as ‗pilot with a
strategic intent‘ (Ranganath, 2009a and section 4.2.5).
Focus on addressing the consumption problem: Rather than
solving the 1% problem, try to get more participation by

134
encouraging users to start by reading. The increased
audience acts as a motivation for contributors leading to
higher contribution and a virtuous cycle is setup.
Active user participation is a hallmark of Web 2.0
(Levy, 2009). Senior Managers can engage with
participants by networking, challenging, questioning, listening
to the feedback and celebrating the successes of
communities (Kouzes and Posner, 2002; Ritchie and Martin,
1999; Debowski, 2006; cited in Lopez, et al., 2008; Chui, et al.,
2009; Bughin, et al., 2009)
Build a flexible IT architecture which is capable of
integrating various tools and applications.
Chiu et al. (2009) identified that a Web 2.0 initiative can
succeed when it gets integrated to existing processes. Such
processes may use various tools and an integration with those
tools would ensure a faster adoption (section 4.1.3). Web 2.0 is
an ideal choice for such a use since most of web 2.0 tools ‗a
relatively lightweight overlay to the existing infrastructure and do
not necessarily require complex technology integration‘ (p2).
Make everything searchable so that instead of just
knowledge documents, search returns relevant information
regarding employees, work projects and tags.

135
Anderson (2005) writing about collaboration said that
making ‗everything searchable‘ would ensure a higher adoption.
Dursun and Suliman (2009) as noted in section 2.5.8 too
suggest a ‗holistic platform‘ that can be accessed, indexed and
searched so that content is easily accessible to all users.
Do not allow anonymity in access. This should prevent any
potential misuse. This simple step generally assuages the
management concern of losing control (identified in section
2.4) since user activity can be audited and tracked, in case
of any misuse.
Web 2.0 technologies can allow any user to add or
edit content. This could result in potential organizational
issues identified in section 2.5.7. However, shutting out
Web 2.0 systems from an organization would just
encourage users to collaborate outside the organization
(Payne, 2008). Hence, deploying the Web 2.0 tools within
an organization with no anonymous access has been found
to provide a sense of responsibility and traceability required
in an enterprise (Ranganath, 2009a).
Have a simple policy of usage. Essentially, it should
mention that writing anything that is defamatory against an
individual or organization is unacceptable. When information
136
is taken from another source, the source should be
mentioned clearly. Apart from this, users should have
freedom of usage. This was the policy used at cognizant,
as seen in the case study above.
Lead by example: Indians generally respond well to
mentoring and entrepreneurial leaders. Hence, leading by
example and participating by blogging regularly or
commenting acts as a great motivator.
Leaders can act as change catalysts from a top-
down to bottom-up culture (Kouzes and Posner, 2002;
Ritchie and Martin, 1999; Debowski, 2006; cited in Lopez,
et al., 2008; Chui, et al., 2009; Bughin, et al., 2009).
Indians tend to respond well to paternalistic leaders (section 2.6)
Leaders who can participate and walk-the-talk in using KM
processes are also seen to build better learning organizations
(section 2.2).
Encourage participants: Identify early leaders and adopters
of new technology and leverage their reach to further
increase participation. For example, ‗blog memes‘ (The Daily
Meme, 2009) were used effectively to introduce new ideas
and spread awareness in Cognizant (Ranganath, 2009a).
Chui, et al., (2009) suggest a similar approach of
137
leveraging the early adopters for driving the self-sustaining
effort of Web 2.0 adoption and usage.
4.4.2 Web 2.0 based KM system - Implementation
framework
Based on the theory and the above research, it is clear that
trust in the organization and trust within the superiors and the
colleagues is the bedrock on which knowledge sharing can occur
(see Web 2.0 best practices, section 2.5.8). Without building such a
framework of trust, knowledge management effort is bound to fail.
To build the trust, active participation of senior managers who
adopt Web 2.0 technologies is seen quite imperative. This
participation – both as active contributor (writing blogs) or as an
audience (providing feedback comments) helps build trust which
ensures better adoption (Kouzes and Posner, 2002; Ritchie and
Martin, 1999; Debowski, 2006; cited in Lopez, et al., 2008; Chui,
et al., 2009; Bughin, et al., 2009).
The next step is to build a culture of participation. KM
succeeds through the virtuous cycle of consumption encouraging
more content contribution (Ranganath, 2009a and section 4.3).
Without this self-sustaining loop, contributions will either have to
be forced or is seen as an effort apart from regular work.
Various avenues for contribution will have to be created.
138
Integrating the tool into an existing workflow would ensure
quicker adoption (Chiu, et al., 2009) Encouraging participation by
newsletters or senior management blog posts can also help
motivate employees towards better participation (see section 4.2.3).
Non-monetary rewards like ‗frequent-flier points‘ too could be
used to bring about a higher adoption (see case study).
The third step in the process is to pilot a tool and measure
the participation. Piloting will provide an idea of whether a
particular tool will ‗fit‘ the organization (Ranganath, 2009a). For
example, introducing blogs to a small organization may be
ineffective as the ‗long tail‘ phenomenon of engaging with micro-
audience does not exist (Anderson, 2005). However, collaboration
by using Wiki could provide much more value in such
organizations. As there is no one right solution, organizations
should pilot a tool and decide if it meets the organizational
strategy along with requisite interest and participation. Once it
meets these requirements, the tools can be rolled out to the
organization. Letting individual business units to pilot tools and
measure its adoption over time is also a good strategy before
rolling out to the organization (Ranganath, 2009a & Chiu, et al.,
2009). Any tool that shows a promise and aligns to the business
goals of an organization must be scaled up and deployed across
the organization.
139
Figure 35 Implementation strategy: Web 2.0 aided KM
Finally, any implementation or tool must expose an
interface for search (Suliman and Dursan, 2009). Interfacing with
search platform is necessary to ensure that the information
created on the new tool is also available to users via search
(Anderson, 2005 and Ranganath, 2009a).
In the existing literature on Knowledge Management and Web
2.0, the importance of a search technology has not been
highlighted. However, as demonstrated in the case study, real
organizations have multiple systems that act as repositories of
knowledge and unless they can be tied together they would exist
as silos and effectiveness of KM programs will reduce. Identifying
mechanism for implementing such an interface and defining the
taxonomy for such a search is an area for further research.
140
Figure 35 summarizes the points discussed as an
implementation framework that explains a KM implementation that
is aided by Web 2.0 concepts and tools. The first step is
building a organizational trust and a culture of participation. This
is followed by a pilot implementation of a tool that is monitored
against the organizational metric that a tool is supposed to aid.
Based on the outcome, a decision is made to go-ahead or to
stop the effort. If a pilot implementation measures to the
organizational goals, it is rolled out to the organization. Any
implementation is designed with an interface to search platform to
ensure that data generated is easily accessible.
For example, an organization may be planning to build a
better ‗know-who‘ culture. It could start with a pilot
implementation of blogs. This would play a dual role of first
increasing the participation (as shown in Case Study) as well as
building a culture open to sharing. An organizational benchmark
could be reduced ‗do you know who can help‘ type emails on
discussion forums and a subsequent metric could be turn-around
time for an issue-resolution within an IT organization. The pilot
could be in a team that is typically customer facing, for example,
the sales marketing and product teams. Based on success
obtained, the effort could be rolled out to the rest of
organization.
141
5 CONCLUSIONS
According to this research, Web 2.0 is seen as a complement
to Knowledge management (paragraph 1, p 116) as well as an
effective mechanism to increase user participation (p 120) and
interest in the knowledge management initiative . The trend
seems to point out that the adoption of Web 2.0 technology will
grow further (paragraph 1, p 163). Social networking and tagging
(paragraph 3, p 125) within the work context are two technologies
that would gain importance. Few other observations from the
research are:
Knowledge management is seen as an important aspect
(paragraph 2, p 112) for the success of an organization
(paragraph 2, p 19). However, an investment in enterprise
knowledge management is seen useful only in mid-sized to
larger organizations (more than 1000 employees)
Both employees (p 108) and management (paragraph 1, p
113) feel that knowledge sharing can be made better.
Suspicion and lack of motivation are two primary reasons
for employees to not share knowledge. Management
understands this problem and is also aware of the
underlying suspicion of employees towards KM. This can
be mitigated through clear communication (paragraph 3, p
124) and active participation (paragraph 3, p 120) of the

142
senior managers in various forums like blogs, emails and
‗unconferences‘ (paragraph 2, p120).
The challenge in encouraging experts (paragraph 3, p 113)
to contribute can be addressed by providing ownership
(paragraph 2, p 47) of communities in Web 2.0 forums.
Active participation (paragraph 1, p 132) by Senior
Managers and encouragement in the form of 'walking the
talk' is seen to motivate more employees. Indian national
culture (paragraph 2, p 69) too points towards mentoring
(paragraph 1, p 71) as a favored way of change
management.
Capturing the ‗know-who‘ (paragraph 3, p 115) is found to
be quite important (paragraph 2, p 117) aspect that is not
easily possible in the KM tools. Web 2.0 technologies like
tagging (paragraph 3, p 50) and social networking
(paragraph 2, p 51) is found to cover (paragraph 3, p
125) this gap.
Web 2.0 is seen as an enabler (paragraph 2, pp 109-110)
in improving the contribution (paragraph 3, pp 127-128) by
users. Its inherent approach of openness helps in building
trust (paragraph 3, p 64) and collaboration (paragraph 1, p
128).
143
However, Web 2.0 tools are seen as an aid
(paragraph 2, p 57) to the Knowledge Management
process. The field of Knowledge Management is considered
bigger (paragraph 1, p 126) than just Web 2.0. Thus, Web
2.0 is seen more a complement (paragraph 1, p 116) to
KM and not a replacement to it.
Technology is not seen as a challenge (paragraph 2, p
105) to introduction of Web 2.0 tools. This could be due
to the technical nature of business in most of the surveyed
organizations and a maturity in understanding (paragraph 3,
p 122) Web 2.0 concepts (paragraph 2, p 143).
Web 2.0 initiatives are sometimes run as pilots (paragraph
1, p 125) within small divisions within the organization.
These initiatives are then introduced to the organization
after a strategic decision (paragraph 2, p 129) making
process. Thus, Web 2.0 adoption is a combination of top-
down and bottom-up approach. The bottom-up adoption
and improvements possible during the pilot and post
implementation is used to further refine the systems.
However, the task of identifying (paragraph 1, p 133) a
tool that fits an organizational requirement is still strategic
and decided by the top management.
144
The research was not able to conclusively answer the
question on how employees learn the Web 2.0
technologies.
On the whole, the research was able to answer almost all the
objectives. Web 2.0 is generally perceived as a positive
development both for fostering better collaboration and
participation. Web 2.0 is seen as aiding in Knowledge
Management from the perspective of Indian IT organizations.
6 RESEARCH LIMITATIONS
The research was carried out for the scholarly purpose. The
limitations of this research were:
The sample size was limited due to the resources
available for analyzing the responses. A larger sample size
spread across more organizations would have been
appropriate.
Most of the participating organizations have been in
existence for 10 or more years and most of the
participants have 6 or more years of experience.
Perspective from a younger audience or a younger
organization could be different. This needs to be examined
since they are the generation more exposed to the Web
145
2.0 technologies. Patterns of sharing and collaboration may
differ with such an audience.
Organizations that were dissatisfied with Web 2.0 or
organizations not planning to use Web 2.0 were not
explored. Concerns and implementation difficulties in such
organizations could help identify pain points and issues that
have not been addressed in this research.
All the organizations examined were from the IT services
sector. Other organizations needs to be examined for a
holistic picture on Web 2.0 and KM adoption in India.
On hindsight, the questionnaire was too lengthy. Many
questions were too focused on organizational culture that
participants may not answer openly and was not even
necessary considering the scope of the dissertation.
7 FURTHER RESEARCH
The importance of search technology was not initially observed
by the author. However, during the research, it became apparent
that Web 2.0 and KM will tend to be a combination of multiple
tools. A scalable search platform is gaining in importance. The
importance of search technologies and its impact on Web 2.0
based KM is an area for further exploration. Search technologies
could also leverage the tagging functionality. Impact of such
tagging based KM is an area for future research.

146
India has been undergoing a rapid growth. The growth of
offshore-development centers and R&D facilities of many IT
companies have exposed Indian workforce to other work cultures.
Such employees may not be aligned to the traditional national
culture of India. An impact such a change and trends of culture
across less-developed and more-developed parts of India could
be undertaken.
147
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9 APPENDIX
9.1 Semi-structured Interview Questionnaire
1. You have had extensive experience with Knowledge

Management. From your opinion, what were the pain points
with a KM strategy and implementation, if any?
2. What were the systems used for managing knowledge prior
to the introduction of Web 2.0?
3. In your opinion, do the Web 2.0 philosophy and technology
fit into the KM practice? Do they even mesh or are they
complete separate things?
4. Web 2.0 is supposed to be about ‗wisdom of crowds‘ and
tapping the ‗collective intelligence‘. Do you believe that KM
systems earlier did not fulfill this role?
5. How did Web 2.0 enter into your organization? Was it
introduced as a strategy in a top-down manner or was it
adopted in some units and then expanded to broader
audience?
6. Web 2.0 is generally considered to be a mixture of
following. Which do you think will play a role in KM
strategy in the near future (1-3 years):
a. Blogs
b. Wikis
c. RSS
d. Social Networking
e. Podcasts
f. Tagging / Social bookmarking
g. Shared workspaces
h. Web services
7. With respect to Indians and the Indian culture, do you see
anything specific that:
a. Helps in knowledge management?
b. Hampers in knowledge management?
8. For a small IT organization in India, investing in KM may
not appeal. In the typical cost/benefit analysis, short term
could win over the long term KM efforts.
a. How would you justify the RoI for a KM program?
160
b. Does Web 2.0 tools (being free) help in this analysis
in any way?
c. How would you define RoI for Web 2.0 programs?
9. What are the typical risks & challenges in using Web 2.0
at an organizational level? What according to you could
help in mitigating these risks?
10. What do you feel should be the focus of top management
while introducing Web 2.0 as a knowledge sharing system?
11. Cognizant 2.0 and ChannelOne – please can you tell the
story of how they were planned and introduced?
12. The challenges with these systems – especially moving
towards an open system where people could write
potentially write anything.
161
9.2 Questionnaire with summarized responses
Attached is the questionnaire survey and responses. The extract
below is the aggregated response, which may consist of partially
completed surveys.
162

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IS WEB 2.

Dissertation submitted to Oxford Brookes University for the partial

fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF

This dissertation is a product of my work and is the result of

nothing done in collaboration.

I consent to University‘s free use of the whole or any part of

item of this Dissertation, to include online or electronic

reproduction and adaptation for teaching and education activities.

I agree that this dissertation may be available for reference and

photocopying at the discretion of the University.

Word Length: 21,058 words.

I‘d like to thank my supervisor Dr. Hassall for the multiple

reviews and the invaluable comments that he provided. He was

always present to help me and in ensuring that I tried my best.

their time and thoughts.

Finally, I‘d like to thank my wife for being so

understanding and my family for providing me the encouragement

and support while working on the dissertation.

Knowledge management as a discipline has met with

varying levels of success and failure. Web 2.0 is a disruptive

new concept. With its emphasis on sharing and collaboration and

foundation on 'user generated content', it promises to promote a

bottom-up culture of knowledge sharing.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if Web 2.0

is aiding in the process of Knowledge Management, from the

perspective of India based organizations. India being a preferred

IT outsourcing destination provides an interesting case study on

the adoption of Knowledge Management. Being a recent entrant,

Web 2.0 could help in better designing the Knowledge

Management practices. The purpose of research is to address

the question of whether using Web 2.0 concepts, tools and

technologies is aiding in the Knowledge Management effort in the

This findings of the dissertation is based on the survey

conducted on 19 people across various organizational segments

of India based IT organizations coupled with the viewpoints and

experiences of two senior managers.

1. Literature Review ........................................................................ 18

2.1 Knowledge and ‗knowledge creating company‘ ................. 18

2.2 The Learning Organization .................................................. 21

2.2.1 Individual and organizational learning .......................... 23

2.2.2 Types of organizational learning .................................. 24

2.2.3 From Organization Learning to Knowledge

2.3 Knowledge Management ...................................................... 27

2.3.1 Structure, Culture & Technology in KM ...................... 28

2.5 Collaboration, participation and Web 2.0 ........................... 42

2.5.1 What is Web 2.0? ......................................................... 42

2.5.2 Principles and Characteristics of Web 2.0 .................. 43

2.5.3 Organizational Structure & Culture and Web 2.0 ...... 46

2.5.4 Technology and Web 2.0 ............................................. 49

2.5.5 Current Usage of Web 2.0........................................... 52

2.5.6 Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management ....................... 57

2.5.7 Challenges with Web 2.0.............................................. 60

2.6 India – National Culture ...................................................... 68

2.7 India – Knowledge Management & Web 2.0 .................... 71

3.1 Research Objectives ............................................................. 77

3.2 Research Methodology ......................................................... 78

3.3 Research Design .................................................................. 80

3.3.2 Semi-structured interviews – Design & Rationale ........... 87

4 Research Findings ...................................................................... 90

4.1 Web 2.0 and KM – Employees perspective ........................... 90

4.1.1 Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture .. 92

4.1.2 Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Management ...... 96

4.1.3 Web 2.0 – Perception and Usage ............................ 102