Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

Practical Implications

This penultimate section draws upon the analysis presented in the previous sections to establish guidelines for developers to consider; first, when IT is used to support work between communities and, second, for work within communities. The term ‘developers’ is a deliberately broad category in order to refer to all those involved in the creation, introduction, and review of shared forums.

First and foremost, developers need to establish education programs to assist in countering the difficulties that have reportedly arisen in relation to acting, accounting, and sense-making processes. These programs should aim to provide staff with an insight into the conventions and rationales of members of other professional domains and, furthermore, a detailed understanding of their work practices. To achieve this, the program should first consist of experts from different professional backgrounds making presentations that outline the typical tasks they perform and the logic that they use to undertake their work. They should also present examples of the different types of information and expertise that they would like members of other functions to contribute.

Second, to solidify their sense making, giving, and reading processes, participants should undertake exercises on the knowledge management application with program participants from different professional domains, so as to provide them with feedback about how they could improve their accounting processes. Third, developers ...