On challenges and opportunities of designing integrated IT platforms for supporting knowledge works in organizations

Abstract: Designing and implementing comprehensive IT-based support environments for KM in organizations is fraught with many problems. Solving them requires intimate knowledge about the information usage in knowledge works and the scopes of technology intervention. In this paper, the Task-oriented Organizational Knowledge Management or TOKM, a design theory for building integrated IT platforms for supporting organizational KM, is proposed. TOKM brings together two apparently mutually exclusive practices of building KM systems, the task-based approach and the generic or universalistic approach. In developing the design, the information requirements of knowledge workers in light of an information usage model of knowledge works is studied. Then the model is extended to study possibilities of more advanced IT support and formulate them in form of a set of meta-requirements. Following the IS design theory paradigm, a set of artifacts are hypothesized to meet the requirements. Finally, a design method, as a possible approach of building an IT-based integrated platform, the Knowledge Work Support Platform (KWSP) to realize the artifacts in order to meet the requirements, is outlined. The KWSP is a powerful platform for building and maintaining a number of task-type specific Knowledge Work Support Systems (KWSS) on a common sharable platform. Each KWSS, for the task-type supported by it, can be easily designed to provide extensive and sophisticated support to individual as well as group of knowledge workers in performing their respective knowledge work instances