Levy considers the realm of web 2.0 in a knowledge management context and evaluates the similarities and differences between the two. She concludes by highlighting the need for web 2.0 applications to be adopted for the purposes of knowledge management within an organisation. This reader is inclined to agree with her conclusion, with caveats. Levy herself, cautions us against the “free” adoption of web 2.0 applications. There are other issues, that are touched on within her paper, which are of concern, which I will discuss further.
Regardless of these concerns, web 2.0 is a force that I predict will be adopted much more widely, as corroborated by Ribiere & Tuggle (2010), who suggest that knowledge management is indeed evolving into a more participative, social and open entity (in fact, it has been dubbed KM 2.0, to reflect the web 2.0 nature of it). This is also corroborated by the fact that knowledge management journal, VINE, recently published a special edition, entirely on web 2.0 and knowledge management. However, Levy’s assessment that “success will not be triggered by adopting tools” (p. 132) alone, is indeed correct, and that along with the adoption of the tools, the cultural and conceptual shift within organisations must inevitably be a slower process that needs to be managed carefully.
This review will attempt to comment and critique the significant points raised.
In a similar manner to other researchers and authors before her, Levy cites O’Reilly when defining the difficult to define concept, of web 2.0. A scan of the literature shows the diversity in definitions of this concept, as corroborated by Levy herself (p. 122). Levy provides a comprehensive overview of the defining literature and pinpoints those traits and principles of web 2.0 that relate to the body of knowledge management. It appears that there is consensus, both anecdotally and in the literature, that the principles O’Reilly originally outlined, are important defining principles (see Anderson, 2007).
Levy then moves on to discus what she terms “Enterprise 2.0”- that is, how web 2.0 has been adopted by organisations. Levy argues that the assimilation of the concept at organszational level will be difficult. Even three years after Levy’s paper was written, it is evident that the adoption of KM2.0 has not been as wide-spread as some originally thought. The lack of widespread adoption by the world’s top companies (Ribeire & Tuggle, 2010), echoes McLeans’ (2007 in Levy, 2007) opinion that the ‘nebulous ‘idea of the KM2.0 model ‘is too reminiscent of the good old days of the internet boom’ (p. 127) and that there’s little reason for companies to ‘get caught up’ in the hype (p. 127). This reader’s personal experience of working in a large university research library, with regards to web 2.0 adoption, both from a client-focused and internal organisational KM perspective, demonstrates that web 2.0 is still very new.
Levy moves on to discus the ways in which knowledge management can be enhanced by web 2.0 principles. She cites the work of Tebutt (2007), who argues that the inherently motivating, social nature of web 2.0 is the factor that separates web 2.0 from knowledge management- where people are forced to communicate their ideas, as Tebutt feels is the case with knowledge management, people are more inclined to share and collaborate in the web 2.0 sphere. While web 2.0 focuses on people, knowledge management focuses on the organisation. Levy asks, then, how organisations can change their focus. It is here that this reader recommends proceeding with caution.
The personal, diarising nature of some web 2.0 applications, such as Facebook, Twitter and the main KM related web 2.0 application that the literature suggests workplaces to use- blogs, could lend themselves to a blurring of what is work and what is not. The culture of work instills a work identity, which is entirely separate to a person’s personal “outside of work” identity. The problems with this blurring could in fact lead to, (and have) led to potential problems in the workplace, as people ‘do and say the unexpected” (Kennan, 2010) -one only needs to consider the many work-related Facebook controversies that have been hot topics on current affairs programs. The idea of perpetual digital pasts of professionals who make their identities open online is one facet of this issue. Another real world issue is based on the personal experience of this writer’s own organisation, embarking on an organisational Facebook page. There has been discussion with regards to employees using their own personal Facebook profiles to comment on the organisation’s Facebook page. This issue relates to employees identifying themselves as people who work in an organisation, versus the need to keep work and personal identities separate. The fact that Graham, Faix & Hartman (2007) have identified the humanising factor of having librarians on Facebook, with their own personal profiles, as a benefit, to library presence on Facebook, only adds to highlighting the complexity of this issue.
Another critique of Levy’s article is her concluding suggestion to embrace KM 2.0. This relates to the original principles of KM. It is my understanding that KM relates to sharing information and knowledge more efficiently. Concerns are raised, with regards to potentially sensitive or private information. If there is a blurring of the distinction between work and play, organisational knowledge could be inadvertently leaked or shared with others who should not be privy to such information. Hancock (2009), in a blog post on the Wikinomics blog suggests something even more sinister, which he dubs the paradox of wikinomics- that potentially millions of jobs could be on the chopping block, if organizations replace people power with “more effective, collaborative technologies” (para. 4), if KM2.0 applications are widely adopted.
Another valid argument that supports the need for caution is the idea that web 2.0 applications may in fact be vulnerable to security hacks and bugs. A PC World article by McMillan (2007) suggests that “if you allow a site to access your drive, you’re relying on that site to be secure” (p. 19), which further raises valid concerns. My point here, is that organisations seeking to “change the focus” of KM to a web 2.0 focus must proceed with caution, and put in place guidelines with regards to how these applications are going to be used in the KM arena.
Levy concludes by advocating for organisations to adopt the use of wikis and blogs, post-haste. However, this reader’s concerns, that there still hasn’t been enough evidence for the uptake of these applications in the major companies of the world, for a knowledge management purpose (Rebiere & Tuggle, 2010) is one criticism of this conclusion. Also, Levy makes the assumption that younger generation will be the drivers of KM2.0, who will be ‘expecting to find them and use them in organisations’ (p. 132). According to recent research by Jones (2010), the use of social media by students of this younger generation do not necessarily expect to see or use these applications in the university environment. It is however, unclear whether these findings can be extrapolated for the work environment, or whether this will in fact change in the coming years, as only time will tell.
In conclusion, the more this reader reads, the more baffling the situation becomes. Others suggest that the nature of web 2.0 applications themselves, lend themselves to greater knowledge sharing without the inhibitions of more traditional knowledge-sharing modes (Martin-Niemi & Greatbanks, 2010) There is already much support in the literature for KM2.0, but this reader feels, that there is a need for more research and more case studies, on the successful implementation of KM2.0. Levy’s overall conclusion is optimistic- that “something is changing” (p. 133) and that as long as organisations take the plunge, KM2.0 will flourish. Time will tell if this is indeed the case.
Anecdotal Evidence
- I went to the first ALIA Library Technician web2.0 unConference in 2009. I ran a session on web 2.0 with a colleague, which turned out to be a discussion on what is web 2.0- how it can be defined and examples of web 2.0. Before we went to the unConference, we did our own brainstorm of what we thought web 2.0 was, and this is a picture of the result of that session:
Click here to go back to blog post.
Other links
- The discussion about perpetual digital pasts made me think of a Hungry Beast story about the policies that web companies, such as Facebook, Yahoo and MySpace, have with regards to what happens to people's pages, when they die. This is related to the very new idea of digital (or virtual) assets, the virtual afterlife and digital legacy. Check it out:
- Anderson, P. (2007). ‘All that glisters is not gold’ Web 2.0 and the librarian. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 39, 195-198.
- Graham, J.M., Faix, A., & Hartman, L. (2007). Crashing the Facebook party: one library’s experiences in the students’ domain. Library Review, 58(3), 228-236.
- Halmari, H. (2009). The dichotomous rheteric of Ronald Reagan. Multilingua- Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 12(2), 143-176. doi: 10.1515/mult.1993.12.2.143
- Hancock, D. (2009). Is there a paradox of wikinomics? Retrieved 7th April, 2010 from http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/06/is-there-a-paradox-of-wikinomics/
- Jones, C. (2010). Net generation: encountering elearning @ university. The University of Sydney, CoCo Research Centre. Sydney, NSW. 31 March, 2010.
- Kennan, M. (2010). 4.3.2. Web 2.0 and business. Web 2.0 and social networking [course notes] Retrieved 7th April, 2010 from http://interact.csu.edu.au/portal/site/INF405_201030_W_D/page/dde9f43a-dbac-440f-0002-8db1dfba609f
- Levy, M. (2007). Web 2.0 implications on knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13(1), 120-134.
- McMillan, R. (2007). Us web 2.0 safe? PC World, 25(7), 18-20.
- Martin-Niemi, F., & Greatbanks, R. (2010). The ba of blogs: Enabling conditions for knowledge coversion in blog communities. VINE: The journal of information and knowledge management systems, 40(1), 7-23
- Ribiere, V.M., & Tuggle, F.D. (2010). Fostering innovation with KM2.0. VINE: The Journal of information and knowledge management systems, 40(1), 90-101.
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