Professional Development Knowledge Management via Virtual Spaces 英文资料.pdfVIP

Chapter 31: Professional Development Knowledge Management via Virtual Spaces∗ NORIKO HARA AND ROB KLING Center for Social Informatics, School of Library Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. 1. INTRODUCTION In the U.S., the mid and late 1990s was a boom period in many ways that in- cluded an expanding economy, a growing emphasis upon the value of people’s working knowledge, and a range of new Information Technology (IT) appli- cations and information services that depended upon computer networking— often the internet. These themes were represented in professional discourse by a special emphasis upon “knowledge work”, “knowledge workers”, and new practices, such as “knowledge management”. While genuine referents for the “knowledge categories” are often elusive, at best they refer to serious efforts of managers to improve their staff’s abilities to become more knowledgeable by sharing information and insights within organizations and to leverage their enhanced knowledge for organizational value. For example, in Microsoft Secrets, Cusumano and Selby (1995: 330–339) report the ways in which Microsoft’s managers and software developers re- viewed major software development projects through extensive and relatively open “project post-mortems” with the aim of improving future software de- velopments. In Working Knowledge, Davenport and Prusak (1998: 6) men- tion the efforts of managers at Chrysler to develop “Engineering Books of Knowledge” for each new car platform to help to better inform designers of future platforms about more effective design strategies. While Microsoft’s post-mortems were based primarily upon written reports and intensive face- to-face meetings, Chrysler’s “Engineering Books of Knowledge” represent a 1990s move to use electronic environments as integral elements for helping professionals to share their information and knowledge with others in their organizations. They also