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Chapter 3.18
Technologies in
Support of Knowledge
Management Systems
Murray E. Jennex
San Diego State University, USA
INTRODUCTION
Knowledge management systems (KMSs) support
the various knowledge management (KM) functions
of knowledge capture, storage, search, retrieval, and
use. To do this, KMSs utilize a variety of technolo-
gies and enterprise systems. This chapter surveys
the various technologies and enterprise systems.
Specific attention is placed on enterprise systems
that integrate KM into organizational business
processes, and technologies that enhance the ef-
fectiveness of these implementations. The chapter
is based primarily on research summarized in Case
Studies in Knowledge Management (Jennex, 2005a)
and articles published by the Knowledge Manage-
ment Track at the Hawaii International Conference
on System Sciences (HICSS).
BACKGROUND
Knowledge
Davenport and Prusak (1998) view knowledge
as an evolving mix of framed experience, values,
contextual information, and expert insight that
provides a framework for evaluating and incorporat-
ing new experiences and information. They found
that in organizations, knowledge often becomes
embedded in artifacts such as documents, video,
audio, or repositories and in organizational routines,
processes, practices, and norms. They also say that
for knowledge to have value, it must include the
human additions of context, culture, experience, and
interpretation. Nonaka (1994) expands this view by
stating that knowledge is about meaning in the sense
that it is context specific. This implies that users of
knowledge must understand and have experience
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-026-4.ch588