Knowledge Management Systems

Information and knowledge have fundamentally transformed the way businesses and social institutions work. Knowledge management promises concepts and instruments that help organizations to create an environment supportive of knowledge creation, sharing and application. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are often regarded as the enabler for knowledge management initiatives. The book presents an almost encyclopedic treatise of the facets, concepts and theories that have influenced knowledge management and the state of practice concerning strategy, organization, systems and economics. The second edition updates the material to cover the most recent developments in ICT-supported knowledge management. The book particularly provides a more in-depth coverage of its theoretical foundation including a new account of knowledge work, discusses the potentials and challenges of process-oriented knowledge management, adds a new chapter on modelling that plays an important role in knowledge management initiatives and contrasts architectures for centralized and distributed or peer-to-peer knowledge management systems.