Exploiting The
Potential Of Intranets For Managing Knowledge In Organisations
Abdus Sattar Chaudhry, Nor Ainah Ali,
Damayanti Iman Abadi, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication
and Information, Singapore
ABSTRACT:
Intranet has been embraced by many organisations to support their knowledge
management. The use of knowledge resources available through intranets,
however, seems to be fairly low chiefly due to employees’ difficulties in
finding relevant information. This paper reviews the use of intranets for
knowledge management focusing on the experience of the stakeholders in relation
to the use of intranet in a public sector organization in
Keywords: Knowledge management, Intranets, Knowledge organisation,
Content management
1. Introduction
Today, intranet also
prevails as an organisational knowledge base. It has advantages over prior
digital knowledge bases in that it facilitates the capturing and handling of
unstructured and implicit knowledge, in comparison to database management
systems that require very structured schemas to be effective.
Intranets that are networked across organisational boundaries are seen as
user-friendly and cost effective ways of achieving the goal of facilitating knowledge
sharing (Skyrme, 1997). This is an important factor from the knowledge
management (KM) perspective since it enables the organisation more freedom in
sharing information not intended for competitors (Stenmark, 2002). Intranet can also
be seen as an infrastructure that allows collaborative KM systems to grow and
adapt to changing organisational needs.
Capitalizing on an intranet
as a KM tool is indeed a complex task that involves making a myriad of choices and
decisions that can directly affect the ultimate success of the venture. Because
knowledge can be fluid and ephemeral, organisations can only communicate and
collaborate effectively through the intranets and exploit their competitive
advantage of sharing if specific techniques and processes are adequately put in
place. Firstly,
information that is placed on the intranet must be carefully selected,
organised and structured according to a consistent policy (Rowley, 2000). This
should be aided with mechanisms that facilitate navigation for effective search
(Delphi Group, 2002a & 2002b). The crux of the issue for almost every
aspect of the intranet,
however, is the core
consideration that knowledge is made readily accessible. Everything should serve the main goal of enabling
users to find what they need (Futterman, 2001).
There have been very few
specific studies on how knowledge should be organised and content should be
managed on the intranet. It is worth noting, however, that there are two
clashing paradigms over the issues of control in intranet management. One
paradigm asserted that centrality of control is the key to effectively
manageable intranets (Ciborra, 2000; Curry and Stancich, 2000; Damsgaard and
Scheepers, 2000). Another paradigm rejected such centralised control, for
instance, Stenmark (2003) argued that innovation and knowledge creation in the
intranet should not be limited to a certain group of people only. He also
believed that all information should be made accessible for all
employees, supporting Malhotra’s (2000) assertion that nobody could
safely decide what information is relevant to whom in today’s volatile
environment.
We
conducted a study of
the intranet of a local organisation focusing in particular on knowledge
organisation and content management. We reviewed the salient features of the
intranet, the use of intranet as a preferred source of organisational
knowledge, the relevance of the knowledge provided on the intranet in the
context of work, the organisation and presentation of knowledge resources to
facilitate information discovery and management of contents with respect to
their currency, authority and reliability. We also gathered users’
suggestions to optimise and exploit the use of the intranet as a KM tool. This
paper reports the results of this study. The name of the organisation is not
mentioned on the request of the organisation.
This organisation was selected as a case study mainly because of the
researchers’ exposure to the use of the site. It was also considered
appropriate as most of the staff had access to the intranet. The intranet
structure was similar to other public sector organisations.
The study was carried out
in two phases. The first phase focused
on collecting information about the site using a checklist. The
checklist was used to collect crucial information on the main features of the intranet pertaining
to knowledge organisation and content management. These include questions pertaining to
searching and browsing capabilities, the classification system, issues of
metadata, resource selection, and authority control and documents life cycle
parameters. The following steps were taken to populate the information on the
checklist: browsing through the intranet, random interviews on informal basis to
a few stakeholders, interview with the IT consultant in-charge of the intranet.
The stakeholders’ interaction with the intranet was observed in the
context of their work and working environment.
The second phase focused on
a survey to obtain stakeholders’ feedback on the use of the intranet. The
questions asked were generated from the informal interviews and the literature
reviewed. The questionnaire is given in
Appendix B. The second phase focused on
a survey to obtain stakeholders feedback on the use of the intranet. The
questions asked were generated from the informal interviews and the literature
reviewed. Questionnaires were sent along
with a cover letter that described the objectives of the survey and assured the
respondents that the information provided would remain confidential and would
only be used for research purposes in an aggregated manner. A list of potential
survey respondents was obtained from the Human Resource Department in the
organisation. Questionnaires were sent to 72 officers. They were briefed during
a management meeting on the purpose of the survey. The final response rate was
48 percent.
Initial findings from the
observations and informal discussions with the employees about the intranet
suggested the following points:
¨
The intranet was gaining popularity as a tool for knowledge
dissemination and sharing.
¨
The information on the intranet was growing at an exponential rate as
the organisation grew in size to meet the increasing need of the stakeholders.
¨
It was becoming increasingly difficult and time consuming to access
information on the intranet with the rapid growth of information which were not
adequately organised.
The above findings formed a
catalyst to the formulation of the checklist and the survey questionnaires used
for data collection. Dated collected on
the usage using the two instruments were reflected in an aggregated manner as
the results sought to provide the overall trends in the use of the intranet as
a tool to facilitate KM.
The findings are discussed
in two parts. Part 1 delves in discussing the salient features of the intranet
based on the checklist, while Part 2 discusses the use of the intranet based on
the survey questionnaire. A summary of features related to browsing and
searching capabilities provided are given in Table 1.
Table 1: Salient Features Of
The Intranet
Information Organization
|
Status |
|
|
Yes |
No |
|
|
Provision of searching and
browsing capabilities |
Ö |
|
|
Provision of a system for classification, e.g. controlled
vocabulary |
|
Ö |
|
Structuring of subject categories to reflect professional vocabularies |
|
Ö |
|
Use of metadata to organize resources |
|
Ö |
|
Inclusion of thesaurus browser |
|
Ö |
|
Use of taxonomy software |
|
Ö |
|
Compliance with interface usability heuristics |
|
Ö |
|
Content Management |
Status |
|
|
Yes |
No |
|
|
Availability and enforcement of
enterprise-wide standards for content management in the organization’s
Intranet |
|
Ö |
|
Availability of standard policies
and guidelines |
|
Ö |
|
Institution of standard procedures
for formally reviewing and validating mission critical Intranet content
before publication |
|
Ö |
|
Content could be tracked according
to date of creation or last update |
Ö |
|
|
Automatic routing of outdated
content to reviewers for validation or retirement |
|
Ö |
|
Availability of explicit rules for
the retirement or validation of resources that are older than preset expiration dates, if
any |
|
Ö |
It was also noted that
there was no specific person who was put in-charge to monitor the use of the
intranet although an IT intranet manager was around to assist with the
technical problems. The onus of the authenticity, integrity and validity of
contents rests on the shoulders of the content providers.
The findings from the
survey revealed that the intranet was becoming more prevalent and there was a
growing recognition of its use in relation to information sharing and
discovery. The general observation made was that the intranet was not being
exploited to its fullest potential and that knowledge was not well-organised
and contents were not sufficiently managed to facilitate knowledge sharing and
discovery. These might impede the effective use of the intranet as a KM tool.
3.1. The Use
Of Intranet As A KM Tool
All employees in the
organisation were asked about the frequency of intranet use in their day-to-day
work (see Figure 1 for details).
Figure 1: Frequency Of Intranet Use On Daily
Basis
As evident from Figure 1,
more than 50 percent of the respondents accessed the intranet daily, which is
indicative of its important role as a source of organisational knowledge. The
frequently used categories on the intranet are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Frequently Accessed Categories
In order to assess
users’ needs, respondents were asked to suggest additional categories
which they felt should be included on the intranet. Seven respondents indicated
that the precedent database should be included, 10 respondents indicated
personnel database, 14 respondents indicated the bulletin board and eight
respondents indicated the creative corner. Precedent database, for example
encourages knowledge re-use, bulletin board encourages the exchange of tacit
knowledge while the personal database functions as a knowledge map, which can
assist in the location of expert knowledge within the organisation.
When asked to appraise the
current information organisation on the intranet, the majority (56 percent)
responded with “reasonably effective”, while 8 percent said
“very effective”, 3 percent said “not effective”, and
the remaining 33 percent stated “not very much effective”. The findings
implied that although information organisation on the intranet was fairly
acceptable for more than half of users, improvements were considered necessary.
With regard to how useful
the intranet for finding work related tasks, most respondents (88 percent) found
intranet helpful as it provided key information and pointers to valuable
information, while 9 percent of respondents felt that intranet did not help
them much when they needed to do work-related tasks and only 3 percent of
respondents neither agreed nor disagreed. It appeared that the content of
intranet is practically useful for most users.
3.2. Perception On The Organisation’s
Intranet
All employees were asked
about their perception of the intranet. Table 2 shows the distribution of
respondents’ perception on the organisation’s intranet. An
important factor to consider as regards to whether or not an intranet functions
well a KM tool depends on how easy and fast the organisational knowledge can be
accessed. The results of this study revealed that many of the employees were of
the opinion that this function was fulfilled by the organisation’s
intranet. In addition to facilitate information discovery, information has to
be well-structured and organised.
Table 2: Respondents’
Perception On The Organisation’s Intranet
|
Statement |
Strongly
agree
|
Agree
|
Neutral |
Disagree
|
Strongly disagree |
|
Intranet provides important sources of
organisational information |
3 |
59 |
38 |
- |
- |
|
Access to the right information is easy and
fast |
6 |
35 |
38 |
15 |
6 |
|
Information is well structured and organised |
3 |
26 |
44 |
24 |
3 |
|
Information is very current and up-to-date |
6 |
15 |
47 |
32 |
- |
|
Expired
information is systemically deleted or archived |
- |
12 |
47 |
38 |
3 |
|
The general layout, look and feel of the
intranet are great |
3 |
12 |
64 |
21 |
- |
|
The
interface is user-friendly to facilitate searching and information retrieval |
- |
21 |
76 |