The role of technology support in knowledge management evolution in innovative companies

Shpakova, Agnessa and Dörfler, Viktor and MacBryde, Jill (2018) The role of technology support in knowledge management evolution in innovative companies. In: EURAM 2018: 18th Annual Conference of the European Academy of Management, 2018-06-19 - 2018-06-22, University of Iceland.

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Abstract

Technology is an essential part of most knowledge management (KM) initiatives, and the researchers have been both praising and criticising it for almost three decades. In this paper we take a more balanced view of the role of technology in KM and suggest that the impact of technology and the reliance on changes depend on the phase of KM evolution in a company (company's experience with KM practices). In particular, we examined different types of knowledge management systems (KMS) in the context of innovative companies from the energy sector and found that at the beginning companies are quite reliant on document repositories that help them to manage explicit knowledge. When they start paying more attention to knowledge sharing practices, the role of technology shifts to the periphery where wikis were found to be the most useful tool.