Is Web 2.0 Aiding in Knowledge Management? An Indian Perspective

IS WEB 2.
0 AIDING IN
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
An Indian Perspective
AKSHAY RANGANATH
Dissertation submitted to Oxford Brookes University for the partial
fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION.
October, 2009.
i
DECLARATION
This dissertation is a product of my work and is the result of
nothing done in collaboration.
I consent to University‘s free use of the whole or any part of
item of this Dissertation, to include online or electronic
reproduction and adaptation for teaching and education activities.
I agree that this dissertation may be available for reference and
photocopying at the discretion of the University.
AKSHAY RANGANATH
Word Length: 16,153 words.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I‘d like to thank my supervisor Dr. Hassall for the multiple
reviews and the invaluable comments that he provided. He was
always present to help me and in ensuring that I tried my best.
I‘d also like to thank all the participants in the research for
their time and thoughts.
Finally, I‘d like to thank my wife for being so
understanding and my family for providing me the encouragement
and support while working on the dissertation.
iii
ABSTRACT
Knowledge management as a discipline has met with
varying levels of success and failure. Web 2.0 is a disruptive
new concept. With its emphasis on sharing and collaboration and
foundation on 'user generated content', it promises to promote a
bottom-up culture of knowledge sharing.
The purpose of this paper is to examine if Web 2.0 is
aiding in the process of Knowledge Management, from the
perspective of India based organizations. Not much of published
research is available on KM or on Web 2.0 in India despite
Indian being a preferred destination for IT. The purpose of
research is to address the question of whether using Web 2.0
concepts, tools and technologies is improving the Knowledge
Management effort in the India-based IT organizations.
Perhaps a limitation of the research is the smaller research
group identified due to resources. A larger employee base in
organizations would have provided a much wider opinion on the
perception and use of the Web 2.0 technologies.
iv
Contents
chapter……………………….…………………………………………..page
Declaration…………………………………………...……………….…….. ii
Acknowledgements.…………………………………………...……………iii
Abstract…………………………………………...…………………….……iv
Contents………………………...……………………………….…….……..v
List of Tables……………………………………………………………….. ix
List of Figures….………………………………...………………...……..….x
1 Introduction .................................................................................... 1
2. Literature Review .......................................................................... 4
2.1 Knowledge and ‗knowledge creating company‘ ................... 4
2.2 The Learning Organization .................................................... 6
2.2.1 Individual and organizational learning ............................ 9
2.2.2 Types of organizational learning .................................... 9
2.2.3 From Organization Learning to Knowledge
Management ................................................................................ 12
2.3 Knowledge Management ...................................................... 13
2.3.1 Structure, Culture & Technology in KM ...................... 14

v
2.4 Challenges with Knowledge Management .......................... 22
2.5 Collaboration, participation and Web 2.0 ........................... 26
2.5.1 What is Web 2.0? ......................................................... 26
2.5.2 Principles and Characteristics of Web 2.0 .................. 27
2.5.3 Organizational Structure & Culture and Web 2.0 ...... 30
2.5.4 Technology and Web 2.0 ............................................. 33
2.5.5 Current Usage of Web 2.0........................................... 36
2.5.6 Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management ....................... 40
2.5.7 Challenges with Web 2.0.............................................. 43
2.5.8 Web 2.0: Suggestions & Best Practices for usage ... 47
2.6 India – National Culture ...................................................... 51
2.7 India – Knowledge Management & Web 2.0 .................... 54
3 Research Methodology ............................................................... 58
3.1 Research Objectives............................................................. 58
3.2 Research Methodology ......................................................... 59
3.3 Research Design .................................................................. 59
vi
4 Research Findings ...................................................................... 64
4.1 Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture......... 66
4.2 Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Management ............ 70
4.3 Web 2.0 – Perception and Usage ..................................... 74
4.4 Survey Summary .................................................................. 81
4.5 Web 2.0 and KM – Management Perspective.................. 82
4.5.1 About KM – Current state and challenges ................. 83
4.5.2 Where does Web 2.0 fit in? ........................................ 85
4.5.3 Challenges in Web 2.0 adoption ................................. 87
4.5.4 Web 2.0 and unanticipated benefits ............................ 90
4.5.5 Summary of Interviews .................................................... 91
4.6 Putting it all together – a case study ............................... 92
4.7 Best Practices based on Research .................................... 98
4.8 Web 2.0 based KM system - Implementation framework 99
5 Conclusions ............................................................................... 101
6 Research Limitations ................................................................. 104
vii
7 Further Research ....................................................................... 105
8 References ................................................................................ 106
9 Appendix.................................................................................... 117
9.1 Semi-structured Interview Questionnaire ........................... 117
9.2 Sample Questionnaire ......................................................... 119
viii
LIST OF TABLES
table…………………………………………………………………….. page
1 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS ..................................................... 22
2 ISSUES WITH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ............................................ 25
3 METHODOLOGY FOR QUESTIONNAIRE RESEARCH ................................. 62
4 METHODOLOGY FOR SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS ........................... 64
5 QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSE SUMMARY ................................................ 65
6 W EB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES IN USE ......................................................... 87
7 W EB 2.0 / KM PRODUCTS IN USE ....................................................... 90
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
figure…………………………………………………………………….page
1 SINGLE LOOP LEARNING ................................................................. 10
2 DOUBLE LOOP LEARNING ................................................................. 11
3 TRIPLE LOOP LEARNING ................................................................... 11
4 W EB 2.0 CHARACTERISTICS (SOURCE: O'RIELLY, 2007) ................. 28
5 NEW REALIZATION ON EMERGENCE .................................................. 30
6 TYPICAL TAG CLOUD ....................................................................... 35
7 W EB 2.0 TOOLS (SOURCE: CHUI, ET AL., 2009) ............................ 36
8 W EB 2.0 USAGE (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET AL., 2008)........................ 37
9 INTERNAL USE FOR WEB 2.0 (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET AL., 2008) ..... 37
10 USAGE PATTERN OF W EB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET
AL., 2008) .................................................................................... 38
11 ADOPTION OF W EB 2.0 (SOURCE: LEVY, 2009) ........................... 39
12 WEB 2.0 DEPLOYMENT AND USAGE (SOURCE: CHUI, ET AL., 2009)
..................................................................................................... 40
13 WEB 2.0 AND KM (SOURCE: LEVY, 2008) ................................... 41
x
14 GAPS BETWEEN WEB 2.0 AND KM (SOURCE: LEVY, 2008).......... 42
15 GARTNER HYPE CYCLE, (SOURCE: GARTNER, 2009) .................... 46
16 WEB 2.0 BEST PRACTICES ........................................................... 50
17 HOFSTEDE'S CLASSIFICATION OF INDIAN NATIONAL CULTURE
(SOURCE: BUDHWAR, 2001) ......................................................... 52
18 WEB 2.0 IN INDIA AND NORTH AMERICA (SOURCE: BUGHIN, ET AL.,
2009) ........................................................................................... 56
19 RESPONDENT ORGANIZATION TYPE AND SIZE ................................. 66
20 LEADERSHIP TYPES IN INDIAN IT ORGANIZATIONS ......................... 67
21 TRUST IN ORGANIZATIONS ............................................................. 68
22 W HAT HOLDS ORGANIZATION TOGETHER? ...................................... 69
23 EXISTENCE OF A BASIC KM.......................................................... 70
24 EFFECTIVENESS IN 'CAPTURING' KNOWLEDGE ................................. 71
25 ROLE OF GATEKEEPERS AND CENTRALIZED KM TEAM................... 73
26 MOTIVATION TO SHARE KNOWLEDGE.............................................. 74
27 SURVEY RESPONSE: W HAT IS WEB 2.0?...................................... 76
28 WEB 2.0 – W HICH TOOLS DO YOU USE? ..................................... 77

xi
29 W HY DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION USE W EB 2.0? .......................... 78
30 HOW IS W EB 2.0 INTRODUCED? ................................................... 79
31 HOW HAS W EB 2.0 IMPACTED YOU? ............................................. 80
32 BARRIERS TO W EB 2.0 ................................................................. 80
33 IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY: W EB 2.0 AIDED KM ....................... 101
xii
xiii
1 INTRODUCTION
While beginning his seminal work, Nonaka (1991) had written,
that ‗in an economy where the only certainty is uncertainty, the
one sure source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge‘.
Toffler (1980) identified knowledge as the most powerful
component in his power triad along with wealth and force as the
other components. The knowledge based economy, also referred
as a ‗third wave economy‘ is built on information and knowledge,
a resource that is infinite and doesn‘t get exhausted through
usage (Toffler and Toffler, 2006).
When knowledge tends to become the source of competitive
advantage, organizations need to manage it as a competitive
resource. Authors like Senge (1992), Garvin (1993), Nonaka
(1991) and others introduced the concepts of ‗knowledge
management‘ and the ‗learning organization‘. Garvin argued that
scholars at times explained these concepts as grandiose concepts
with no clarity on how organizations should actually manage an
intangible resource like knowledge. Knowledge management as a
field evolved under the scholarly research based on works of
authors like Davenport et al., (1998), O‘Dell and Grayson (1999),
Bhat (2001) and met various degrees of success. Various
knowledge management tools were introduced but, many
1
organizations did not achieve the level of success (Levy, 2009).
Some of the tools like Microsoft Sharepoint server, Content
Management systems (CMS) have been used in organizations
successfully. Some authors have proposed more advanced
concepts like expert systems and artificial intelligence systems to
model the complex artefact of knowledge (Liebowitz, 1998).
However, these systems have proved to be moderately
successful.
O‘Rielly (2005) introduced a term called ‗Web 2.0‘ to describe
a new form of participative culture on the internet. Web 2.0 tools
were designed to leverage the collaborative nature of the users
(Tapscott and Williams, 2006). Inherently, these tools were
supposed to tap into the collective intelligence of the users or as
Surowiecki (2004) termed it, the‗wisdom of the crowds‘. Websites
that depend on user generated content like Wikipedia, the blogs
and photo sharing sites like Flickr or social networking websites
like Facebook and MySpace have proved that given an
opportunity, users would like to contribute content and share their
knowledge (Tapscott and Williams, 2006). Levy (2009) connected
the field of Knowledge Management and the philosophy of Web
2.0 to question if there was a potential to use the Web 2.0 tools
for knowledge management in organizations. She found a lot of
similarities as well as a few gaps. Research by Economist
2
Intelligence Unit (EIU, 2007) and McKinsey Consulting (Bughin, et
al., 2008 and Chui, et al., 2009) found that Web 2.0 tools were
being used for knowledge management purpose but, there were
still misconceptions and a lack of understanding in many
organizations. (Chui, et al., 2009)
India has largely been unexplored in both the Knowledge
Management as well as the Web 2.0 initiatives. India has a
substantial IT sector involved in IT solutions and services. (Ghosh
and Ghosh, 2008) This sector would be facing similar issues in
knowledge management as the western counter-parts involved in
knowledge sector.
The purpose of this research is to identify the usage and
issues in Knowledge Management and the perception of Web 2.0
and to explore if the concepts and tools of Web 2.0 can aid in
Knowledge Management.
The next section is a review of the existing work by various
scholars, followed by the objectives of this research, the
methodology and results from the research and a suggestion on
future research.
3
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter examines the concepts of knowledge
management, learning organization and the implementation issues
associated with knowledge management. It is followed by an
analysis of Web 2.0. Existing literature on these topics is critically
evaluated to identify potential frameworks and models that would
be useful for the research.
2.1 Knowledge and ‘knowledge creating company’
Adams (2008, p190-191) describing the current times says
that it an intersection between the industrial and knowledge
economies. Whereas the former was a tangible economy
involving raw materials and products, the latter is an economy
composed of intangibles like knowledge, ideas and services that
can‘t be touched or seen. Explaining further, she says that
knowledge is like oil – it can have stand-alone value (in the
form of books, training, consulting, etc) or secondary value where
knowledge is embedded in a product (savings achieved through
an improved business process).
In his research at Japanese companies, Nonaka (1991) had
opined that successful companies would be those that
‗consistently create new knowledge, disseminate it widely
throughout the organization and quickly embody it in new

4
technologies and products.‘ (p96) Stressing the importance of
knowledge, Peter Drucker had said that, ‗the collective knowledge
residing in the minds of its employees, customers, suppliers etc.,
is the most vital resource of an organization growth, even more
than the traditional factors of production (like land, labour and
capital)‘. (Martin, 2006, cited in Jha and Joshi, 2007, p134) The
Resource Based View (RBV) of organizations and the
competencies perspectives too highlight this changing trend in the
business strategy arena. (Nelson and Winter, 1982 cited in Bhatt,
2001, p68) Many authors also contend that the organization‘s
ability to learn faster than competitors is a significant source of
competitive advantage (Stata, 1989; Senge, 1990; Ulrich et al.,
1993; McGill and Slocum, 1993; Slocum et al. 1994; Nevis et al.
1995, cited in Lopez, et al. 2004)
A new term ―knowledge-creating company‖ was coined by
Nonaka (1991) to explain such companies whose sole purpose
was continuous innovation. He divided the knowledge as being
‗tacit‘ and ‗explicit‘. Explicit knowledge is that which can easily be
communicated and shared. This is the knowledge that is known
to the Western management which looks for ‗hard‘ and
quantifiable data due to a formal and systematic way of working.
(p98)
5
On the other hand, Japanese companies were seen to view
knowledge as more than just ‗processing of objective information.‘
(p97) Creating knowledge was seen as tapping the ‗tacit‘
knowledge which is composed of highly subjective insights,
intuitions and hunches of individual employees and exposing
these insights to the company for further testing and usage. Tacit
knowledge being highly subjective is difficult to formalize and
hard to communicate. (p98)
Regardless of knowledge being explicit or tacit, new
knowledge always begins with an individual. The job and the
biggest challenge for a ‗knowledge-creating company‘ is to ensure
that this personal knowledge, both tacit and explicit, is available
to the company. (Nonaka, 1991 p98; Suroweicki, 2004)
2.2 The Learning Organization
It has been noted that although organizations recognize the
importance of the explicit and tacit knowledge transfer, very few
organizations are able to handle the knowledge effectively.
(Singh, 2008; Foos, et al., 2006) Singh (2008) argues that
‗learning organizations‘ are better suited to handle the knowledge
transfer.
Garvin (1993) had defined a learning organization as ‗an
organization skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring

6
knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new
knowledge and insights. (p80)‘. Elaborating this concept, he
further clarified that such learning organizations are good at
following 5 things:
systematic problem solving
experimentation with new approaches
learning from their own experience
learning from the experience and best practices of others
transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the
organization
Garvin‘s main contribution was the idea that companies can
actively manage the learning process so that it occurs by ‗design
rather than by chance‘ (1991) and specific policies and practices
can shape the up the learning process. Three factors form the
building block of such a learning organization (Garvin, et al.,
2008, p110; Jha & Joshi, 2007, p136):
a. supportive learning environment – an open environment
where differences are valued, mistakes are not ridiculed,
innovativeness is encouraged and time is set aside for
reflection to review existing processes
7
b. concrete learning processes and practices that covers the
entire gamut of generation, collection, interpretation and
dissemination of information.
c. leadership behaviour that reinforces learning – leaders who
actively question and listen to employees, prompting a
debate and dialogue and encouraging employees to learn.
They espouse, drive and role-model on the importance of
continuous learning.
Senge (1992) had offered a different viewpoint from the point
of an individual. He had defined a learning organization as ‗a
group of people continuously enhancing their capacity to create
what they want to create‘. A learning organization, is
characterized by ‗systems thinking‘ or ‗the fifth discipline‘. This
discipline is acquired through the mastery of ‗shared values‘,
‗personal mastery‘, ‗mental models‘ and ‗team learning‘. This
system talks about profound knowledge that is universal to all
businesses, which once understood would be applied by an
individual in her daily relationships and thus enable better
decisions for organizational transformation. (Jha & Joshi, 2007,
p136) Murthy (2009) described the similar concept as ‗learnability‘
which is the ‗ability to extract generic inferences from specific
instances and to use them in new, unstructured situations.‘
(p233)
8
2.2.1 Individual and organizational learning
New knowledge, it has been observed, always begins with an
individual (Nonaka, 1991). However, this knowledge is different
from the knowledge held by a group of individuals. (Jha & Joshi,
2007). According to Mark (2000), individual learning leads to
individual knowledge while organizational learning leads to
collective knowledge. Conflict between the two is bound to occur
and it acts as a stimulant for innovation and creativity. Bhatt
(2000a) had observed that ‗organizational knowledge is not a
simple sum of the individual knowledge‘ but, it is formed through
unique patterns of interactions between technologies, techniques,
and people. Organizational knowledge cannot be easily imitated
by other organizations, as the unique interactions are shaped by
the every organization's unique history and culture.
Organization learning can occur at multiple levels, as
explained below.
2.2.2 Types of organizational learning
Three different types of organizational learning have been
identified by various researchers– the single loop, double loop
and deutro-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1974; Flood and
Romm, 1996; Snell and ManKuen Chak, 1998 cited in Georges
& Witteloostuijn, 1999)).

9
Single loop learning occurs when simple corrective actions
are taken to solve a problem. In this mode of learning,
organization‘s knowledge base is enhanced but results in no
change to existing processes and policies.
Figure 1 Single Loop Learning
Double loop learning occurs when an ‗error is detected
and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an
organization's underlying norms, policies and objectives‘. (Argyris
and Schön, 1978, p. 3) Double loop learning is a transformation
process. In this, the knowledge base and competency base
changes are accompanied by a change in problem definition,
policies, objectives and mental maps (Snell and Man-Kuen Chak,
1998). Argyris and Schön (1996) argue that double loop learning
is necessary if decisions are to be made in rapidly changing and
uncertain environment.
10
Figure 2 Double loop learning
However, most organizations find it difficult to learn in a
double loop manner. (Argyris, 1996). Hence, a deuteron-learning
(Bateson, 1973) or a triple loop learning (Flood and Romm,
1996; Snell and Man-Kuen Chak, 1998) was proposed that
focuses on structures and strategies. In this mode of learning,
local learning units are linked together in one overall learning
infrastructure as well as ensuring development of competencies to
use this infrastructure. This mode manifests itself in the
―collective mindfulness‖, where members discover how they and
their predecessors have facilitated or inhibited learning and
produce new structures and strategies for learning. (Georges &
Witteloostuijn, 1999)
Figure 3 Triple loop learning
11
A learning organization has to operate at double-loop or
deuteron-loop learning mode. Without the step of ‗thinking‘ or
‗reflecting‘, learning from past mistakes or learning from others‘
mistake cannot occur. This is exemplified by a quote Murthy
(2009), the founder of Infosys Technologies. Speaking about
building a successful organization, he writes:
As long as you constantly ask the questions, ‗Can we do
things faster today than yesterday, last month, last quarter
and last year?‘, ‗Can we bring better ideas to the table today
than yesterday, last month, last quarter and last year?‘, ‗Can
we execute those ideas with a better level of excellence and
quality today than yesterday, last month, last quarter and last
year?‘, I believe you will create a learning organization and
will succeed on a sustainable basis. I strongly believe that
these attributes are extremely important for the enduring
success of a corporation.
2.2.3 From Organization Learning to Knowledge
Management
From above discussion it is evident that learning organizations
generate new knowledge. Knowledge Management is the
discipline that ‗takes the output from Learning Organization,
manages it and ensures that a proper environment to facilitate
12
knowledge transfer and sharing‘ (Jha & Joshi, p138). The sharing
creates both individual and organizational knowledge.
2.3 Knowledge Management
An exact definition of knowledge management is difficult as it
has been studied in various disciplines.(Lopez, et al., 2004, p93)
Davenport et al. (1998) define knowledge management as a
process of ‗collection, distribution and efficient use of knowledge
resource‘. It is also seen as a strategy to be developed in a
firm ‗to ensure that knowledge reaches the right people at the
right time, and that those people share and use the information
to improve the organization‘s functioning.‘ (O‘Dell and Grayson,
1998, cited in Lopez, et al., 2004) A third view is that knowledge
management is ‗a set of procedures, infrastructures, technical and
managerial tools, designed towards creating, sharing and
leveraging information and knowledge within and around
organizations‘. (Bounfour, 2003) Chait (1998) had described the
knowledge management process to include capturing, evaluating,
cleansing, storing, providing and using of the knowledge
The consensus amongst the different definitions though is that
knowledge management is a process that facilitates knowledge
exchange and sharing, and establishes continuous learning within
organizations. (Lopez, et al. 2004)
13
2.3.1 Structure, Culture & Technology in KM
Knowledge management in an organization has three aspects
to it – the structure of organization, the organizational culture and
technology (Bhat, 2001; Lopez, et al. 2004; Ellonen, et al., 2009).
Jha and Joshi (2008) and Payne (2008) described the foundation
of KM as people, process and technology. The three pillars and
the interaction between them is depicted in figure 4.
Figure 4 Components of KM
2.3.1.1 Role of Culture in KM & Organizational Learning
Schein (1985) has defined Organizational culture as a model
of ‗basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of
an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define an
organization's view of itself and its environment‘ (cited in Lopez,
et al., 2004). DeLong and Fahey (2000) have identified four ways
14
in which culture influence in creating, sharing and use of
knowledge. According to Delong and Fahey (2000), culture:
1. shapes assumption about what is knowledge and what is
worth sharing.
2. defines relationship between individual and organizational
knowledge; this determines who is expected to control,
share and hoard the knowledge
3. creates the context for social interaction which determines
how knowledge is used in particular situation
4. shapes the process by which new knowledge can be
created, legitimated and distributed.
From the works of various authors, following values have
been considered important in an organizational culture that
promotes organizational: (a) a long term vision and advance
management of change; (b) communication and dialogue; (c) trust
and respect for all individuals; (d) teamwork; (e) empowerment;
(f) ambiguity tolerance; (g) risk assumption; (h) respect and
diversity encouragement. (Nevis et al., 1995; Elkjaer, 1998; Von
Krogh, 1998; Ruggles, 1998; Liedtka 1999; Senge, et al., 1999;
De Long and Fahey, 2000; Gupta et al., 2000; Sveiby and
Simons, 2002, cited in Lopez, et al. 2004) Lopez et al. (2004),
described a culture with the above features as a ‗collaborative
15
culture‘ and found through empirical research that such cultures
promote organization learning.
Ellonen, et al. (2008) found that a key component in fostering
a knowledge sharing culture and innovation is trust (p164) Trust
of the organization‘s leadership was found to greater contribution
of ideas from employees. Trust amongst individuals was
associated with more open learning and sharing of knowledge.
Suroweicki (2004) bluntly put it saying, ‗in the absence of trust
the purist of myopic self interest is the only strategy that makes
sense.‘(137)
2.3.1.2 Knowledge Management Process
In his definition, Bhatt (2000b) refers to knowledge
management as a process of ‗creation, validation, presentation,
distribution and application‘. (p71) According to him, knowledge
management can be broken down into a 5 step process as
shown in figure below. These are the steps in knowledge
management, from an organization‘s perspective.
16
Figure 5 Knowledge Management Activities
Knowledge Creation: This refers to the ability of an
organization to create novel and useful ideas (Marakas,
1999, p. 440) (p71) This is an emergent process where
‗motivation, inspiration, experimentation and pure chance‘
play a role (Lynn, et al. 1995) This step is closely related
to ‗experimentation‘ by a learning organization. (Garvin,
1993)
Knowledge Validation: This is the organization‘s ability to
reflect and evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge for the
existing organizational environment. Identifying and
reconfiguring obsolete knowledge is extremely important
since core-competencies, even though not easily imitated
can get obsolete (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)
17
Knowledge Formatting: This refers to the different ways
knowledge can be presented, so that it is suitable to the
different ‗work-styles‘ of the people.
Knowledge Distribution: Unless knowledge is distributed
and shared, it cannot be exploited by the organizational
members. Knowledge transferred through a supervised and
predetermined channel will minimize interaction and
questioning of the validity of knowledge. Horizontal structure
can speed up knowledge transfer and interaction.
Knowledge Application: Knowledge needs to be applied
in its products, processes and services to create value.
Nonaka (1991) described a similar process from the view
of an individual. He termed it as the ‗knowledge creation cycle‘
(Figure 6). This process examined an individual‘s knowledge
transfer process based on the tacit and explicit knowledge
paradigm.
Socialization: Essentially a transfer of tacit knowledge from one
individual to another. This knowledge is not shared to the
organization as a whole and cannot be leveraged easily.
However, this can aid in the knowledge creation and validation
steps of KM as defined by Bhat (2001).
18
Figure 6 The Knowledge Spiral (Abdullah, et al., 2006)
Articulation: It is a process of converting tacit to explicit
knowledge. By doing so, knowledge is available to the
organization as a whole. This process closely resembles the
distribution process for an organization (Bhat, 2001).
Synthesis / Combination: In this mode, explicit knowledge is
combined with other explicit knowledge to gain better
understanding through different formatting and presentation
mechanism of the already existing knowledge.
Internalization: In this process, individuals digest the existing
explicit knowledge and reframe their tacit knowledge for their
application.
Articulation and internalization requires the active
involvement and commitment of an individual (Nonaka, 1991, p99)
Socialization requires a platform where individuals can meet and
19
discuss and synthesis requires tools that can aid in quickly re-
formatting the existing knowledge.
2.3.1.3 Technology in Knowledge Management
Bhat (2001) had defined the technological requirement saying
it is any IT that ‗enables the searching, storing, manipulating, and
sharing of a huge amount of information per unit of time, by
minimizing the limitations of time and space‘.
Various authors have written about the technology necessary
for Knowledge Management. It varies from being very generic like
emails to shared storage, to extremely specific like data
warehousing. (Junnarkar & Brown 1997; Offsey 1997; Liebowitz
1998; Borghoff & Pareschi 1998; Dieng et al. 1999; Alavi &
Leidner 1999; Hendriks & Vriens 1999; Earl 2001; Alavi &
Leidner 2001; cited in Edwards, et al., 2005) A few authors like
Liebowitz propose the usage of expert systems. However,
knowledge based systems and expert systems have largely fallen
out of favor due to lack of understanding and complexity.
(Adbullah, et al., 2006)
Other researchers have classified the technology as
communication technologies and storage technologies (Alavi and
Tiwana 2002; Malhotra and Majchrzak 2005, cited in Leonardi
and Bailey, 2008), based on the usage. Phones, chat rooms,

20
email and other communication technologies serve as conduits for
serving messages containing knowledge and information. Storage
technologies include knowledge management systems and
versioning control systems and they permit storage, retrieval and
sharing of explicitly codified knowledge and information.
Information is retrieved using search tools that work on the
technology of keyword indexing (McKnight, 2005 cited in Dursun
and Suleiman, 2009 p141). Following are some of the tools that
have been identified by researchers for Knowledge Management.
According to the research by Edwards et al.(2005), there is
no fixed technology that can be used as a Knowledge
management tool in an organization. Rather, the final solution
depends on how each of the following tensions is resolved
(p124)
(1) Between the quantity and quality of information/knowledge.
(2) Between centralized and decentralized organization.
(3) Between head office and organizational knowledge.
(4) Between ‗‗push‘‘ and ‗‗pull‘‘ methodology.
21
TABLE 1 Knowledge Management Tools
. AI Based Conventional
Code based reasoning Bulletin boards
Computer-supported co-operative
Data mining work
Expert systems Databases
Genetic algorithms Data warehousing
Intelligent agents Decision support systems
Knowledge based systems Discussion forums
Multi agent systems Document Management
Neural Networks Electronic Publishing
"Push" technology E-Mail
Executive information systems
Groupware
Information retrieval
Intranets
Multimedia/hypermedia
Natural language processing
People finder/ "Yellow pages"
Search engines
Workflow management
2.4 Challenges with Knowledge Management
Although Knowledge Management has been acknowledged as
being important for sustained competitive advantage, it has been
found hard to implement successfully. There are various reasons
for this failure.
On the structural front, management has been found to
pay a lot of attention towards technological aspects rather than
the social and cultural aspects of KM (Cross & Barid, 1999 cited
in Lopez et al., 2004) Knowledge has been subjected to the
22
traditional cost/benefit analysis. In many organizations, especially
small and medium enterprises, management is not ready to
invest in higher value-longer term project associated with
knowledge management (Nunes, et al., 2006 & Wickert &
Herschel, 2001).
Bhat (2001) stresses the fact that IT can only act as an
enabler and it is only through people and their interactions that
information is turned into knowledge and learning occurs (p73)
De Long and Fahey (2000) stress, that trust is the most
important aspect needed for effective knowledge management.
The level of trust in an organization impacts the flow of
knowledge ‗between individuals and from individuals into the firm's
databases, best practices archives and other records‘. Lack of
trust leads to a resistance of sharing – and this lack of sharing
is found as the hardest cultural barrier in effective sharing of
knowledge (Ruggles, 1998).
Centralization is identified as another barrier for effective
knowledge management. Levy (2009) says that in traditional
knowledge management paradigm, a central team encourages
people to add content and in some cases users are only allowed
to use existing knowledge. Sharing is controlled and content is
moderated through the central group. Not all users are thus able
23
to contribute to the knowledge management activity. This leads to
a ‗top-down‘ or a centralized management of the knowledge
management activity. A culture lacking trust, coupled with a
centralized structure prevents effective sharing.
Technologically, knowledge management has faced a lot of
hurdles. Primary amongst them is the cost and complexity.
(Spanbauer, 2006) A second issue has been the way the KM
systems are designed. Despite the increasing role of end-users,
the specifications for most KM systems are provided in a top-
down manner through managers who are far removed from the
day-to-day interactions. This mode of development has been
proven faulty in the Information Systems development (Haad et
al., 2004,cited in Patrick and Dotsika, 2007). Researchers have
also found that information stored is often decontextualized. Due
to the removal of the context, new users who try to use the
knowledge are hampered. (Leonardi and Bailey, 2008)
The final issue is the difficulty to encode tacit knowledge.
Since this knowledge is inherently hard to formalize,
communicating such knowledge is very difficult. According to
Clark and Rollo (2001), 42% of corporate knowledge is held in
employees‘ minds (cited in Singh 2008). Tebbutt (2007) advising
on a better knowledge management system writes
24
―forcing people to encode their knowledge formally is not
easy – in fact, it can‘t be done. But when people are
socializing, even in a work context, they are much happier
to share their thoughts and their experiences… there‘s this
hint of loosening the reins of corporate or IT control and
allowing systems to be focused more to human needs.
After all, it‘s in the humans that the knowledge resides
and between them where it adds value to the organization‘‘
(cited in Levy, 2009, p132).
The above issues are summarized in table below:
TABLE 2 Issues with Knowledge Management
Structure Excessive focus on technology but, less focus on social

aspects of knowledge management
Small companies don‘t want look at long-term and don‘t
want to invest in additional cost
Transaction based cost structures that fails to identify ROI
on knowledge management initiatives
Culture Lack of trust to share knowledge
Fear of loss of management controls
Resistance to share
Lack of a collaborative environment
Technology Sophisticated and costly products
Specifications and requirements set in a top-down manner
Knowledge is often decontextualized – individuals using
the knowledge can‘t apply correctly
Inability in encoding tacit knowledge
In the past few years, managers and users have grown
skeptical on the knowledge management initiatives and are on
the lookout for KM system that‘s "actually being used" (Spenbaur,
2008).
25
2.5 Collaboration, participation and Web 2.0
In the last few years, the economy has been observed to
move towards a more participative medium. Instead of clear
demarcation consumers and producers, a new set of users called
prosumers or co-creators have been introduced. Such users
actively participate in the creation, use and improvement of a
product. (Toffler, 1980; Prahalad and Ramasamy 2004). A new
term called ‗Web 2.0‘ was introduced to explain the new
paradigm in technology. Several authors have publicized the
concepts of collaboration and ‗wisdom of crowds‘ when trying to
explain the success of phenomena like Open Source movement.
(Sureoweicki, 2004; Tapscott and Williams, 2006; Spenbaur
2006) Following is an analysis of the modern changes in the
view of various scholars and how it could impact knowledge
management.
2.5.1 What is Web 2.0?
Although the term Web 2.0 is very prevalent, it does not
have a fixed definition. O‘Rielly has explains it as, ‗the business
revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the
internet as platform‘ (Musser and O‘Reilly, 2006). Boutin (2006)
observed that Web 2.0 is a term that currently encompasses ‗a
mishmash of tools and sites that foster collaboration and
26
participation‘. Weinberger (2007) defines it as an establishment of
‗open architecture, lowering the barriers to publishing, the ease
with which people can connect ideas, the increase in available
bandwidth and computing power‘. Levy (2009) observed that while
Weinberger spoke of Web 2.0 as an evolution, O‘Reilly spoke of
it as a revolution in computing.
2.5.2 Principles and Characteristics of Web 2.0
Rather than defining Web 2.0, O‘Rielly has described the
principles of Web 2.0 that would explain the concept. They are
summarized in the figure 4. They main principles of Web 2.0
are:
a. Web as a platform: Web is not an application by itself but,
it should be treated as a platform.
b. Services development: Innovation is in assembly of
services. Each service by itself may not be very innovative
but a combination of services produces interesting
innovations. For example, Google introduced the Map
services. Combining it with Wikipedia produced the
Placeopedia (Boutin, 2006).
c. Active participation of users: Levy (2009) explains that until
recently, in the Web and in KM paradigm, content
managers and experts were involved in creating, organizing
27
and collecting content while users mainly used it. In Web
2.0 paradigm, users contribute and add value to the
content. Patrick and Dotsika (2007) term this as the ‗pull‘
model where users active seek information rather then the
prevalent ‗push‘ model which is broadcasting of information.
Figure 4 Web 2.0 Characteristics (Source: O'Rielly, 2007)
Three different types of user activities lead to value add
depending on the level of collaboration. Collaboration itself has
been defined as ―individuals and companies employing widely
distributed computing and communication technologies to achieve
shared outcomes through loose voluntary associations‖ (Tapscott
28
and Williams, 2007; p17) Sobolak (2007) cited in Levy 2009)
identified 3 types of users:
a. Passive users – Such users just use a service. However,
their activities and history is used to provide value. For
example, Amazon purchase suggestions.
b. Minimally active users – Such users generate content,
probably in response to other content or, they may be
producing the content primarily by themselves. There is not
much collaboration and back-and-forth data. Example: tags
and blogs
c. Active (collaboration) – Such users work together over
the net adding collaborative value. Example: Wikipedia,
Open Source Software.
The collaboration propounded by Web 2.0 enthusiasts is to
tap the ‗collective intelligence‘ (Levy, 2009). Tapscott and Williams
(2007) define ‗collective intelligence‘ as ‗the aggregate knowledge
that emerges from the decentralized choices and judgments of
groups of independent participants‘ (p41). An outcome of the
collaboration is ‗emergence‘ which is the ‗the creation of
attributes, structures and capabilities that are not inherent to any
single node in the network‘ (p44). Elucidating the definition,
Tapscott and Williams point out that the emergence coupled with
web based tools is producing relative complex artifacts like open

29
source software. This has led to a new realization that power of
such self-organization can be tapped, especially in the areas of
innovation and knowledge management. (p45)
Figure 5 New realization on emergence
2.5.3 Organizational Structure & Culture and Web 2.0
Payne (2008) believes that an organization can only influence
the knowledge creation and sharing by creating an environment
that will encourage collaboration. This can be done though an
environment of trust, self-management, behavioral protocols,
shared intent and equitable sharing of returns (p6). She identified
that even traditional organizations can benefit from new social
software. She found that the extent of bureaucracy in an
organization does not itself lead to positive or negative effect on
collaboration. Instead of a ‗coercive bureaucracy‘ where managers
try to command and control reluctant employees was found to
hamper the collaboration. On the other hand, an ‗enabling
bureaucracy‘ was found to help in better sharing and innovation.

30
According to other authors, decentralization has been is as an
important aspect for an effective collaboration. Sureoweicki (2004)
explains that ‗if you set a crowd of self-interested people to work
in a decentralized way on the same problem, instead of trying to
direct their efforts from the top down, their collective solution is
likely to be better than any other solution you could come up
with‘. (87) Decentralization promotes individuals to specialize and
yet collaborate. It empowers an individual closest to the problem
to find a solution. But, decentralization‘s weakness is information
learnt may never be disseminated. For this purpose, an
aggregation of individual knowledge into a collective whole is
necessary. Paradoxically, aggregation, a form of centralization is
necessary for the decentralization to succeed. (p89-93).
Tapscott and Williams (2006) suggest that a culture
meritocracy helps in collaboration. Such meritocracy works on the
self-organizing power of the community to provide a hierarchy of
more experienced members. The experienced member provides
leadership as well as works on aggregating the contributions. For
example, Linus Trovalds provides the leadership to the kernel
development of the Linux operating system. Such an
arrangement, according to the authors works by assigning the
right person to the right task:
31
―When people voluntarily self-select for creative, knowledge
intensive tasks they are more likely than managers to choose
tasks for which they are uniquely qualified. Who, after all, is
more likely to know the full range of tasks you are best
qualified to perform you or your manager? (Pg- 68)‖
Chui, et al. (2009) found that the new collaboration tools have
a ‗strong bottom-up element and engage a broad base of
workers‘. It also demands ‗a mind-set different from that of earlier
IT programs, which were instituted primarily by edicts from senior
managers. (p1)‘ However, the transformation to a bottom-up
culture needs help the senior executives who can act as role
models. (p5)
The challenges to culture required for a successful Web 2.0
program has been found to be similar to the challenges faced in
Knowledge management. They are (a) need for trust, (b)
generating interest and (c) a sense of partnership where
contributions are justly rewarded. (Levy, 2009, p132). However,
since Web 2.0 acts as a platform, to encourage users to
participate, organizations will need to appeal the participants‘
egos and needs, rather than just monetary benefits. This can be
achieved by appealing to the participant‘s desire for recognition
by ‗bolstering the reputation of participants in relevant
32
communities, rewarding enthusiasm, or acknowledging the quality
and usefulness of contributions‘ (Chui et al., 2009; p6).
In summary, although decentralization and a collaborative
culture is stressed in the Web 2.0 literature, a form of self-
organized hierarchy based on meritocracy has been found to
succeed. To kick start such a self-sustaining effort, management
can select early leaders who generally are ‗enthusiastic early
technology adopters who have rich personal networks and will
thus share knowledge and exchange ideas‘ (Chui et al., 2009)
2.5.4 Technology and Web 2.0
Web 2.0 in essence is harnessing the ‗network effect‘. (EIU,
2007) Any tool that can harness this effect is defined to fall
under the Web 2.0 paradigm. Tools that fall under the Web 2.0
paradigm are Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Podcasts, Web Services, Social
Networking, Peer-to-peer and Mashups (Bughin, et al., 2008;
Levy, 2009).
Blog or weblog is defined an online journal that can be
updated regularly with entries typically displayed in chronological
order. (Wyld, 2008; p452) Blog is one of the most widely used
technologies due to the ease of creation and updation of content
on online websites. (Bughin, et al., 2008) Weil (2004) calls blogs
as an ―easy-to-use content management tool‖. Blog is a

33
mechanism where the traditional role of a content creator and
content consumer is blurred (Blood, 2004).
Wiki has been defined as a ‗structured website, i.e. collection
of pages sharing the same structure using templates‘. Users
participate in the creating, and editing of content as well as
influencing the structure of the templates. Such templates guide
the way users write the content and are much simpler to use
than the traditional Content Management Systems (Levy, 2009).
According to Wyld (2008), using the wiki model, if should be
possible to produce content, goods and services through joining
together of individuals located outside of traditional hierarchies by
forming ‗permanent, temporary or one-time collaboration‘. (p475)
Tagging or ‗collaborative tagging‘ is ‗a practice whereby users
assign uncontrolled keywords to information resources‘. (Levy,
2009) Usage of such tags allows users to classify the content
based on individual use. Sharing of the tags aids in indexing and
search by other users as well, apart from subsequent tagging by
popularity of tags. Popularity of tags is determined by the
frequency of use, generally depicted as a tag cloud. (Figure 6).
According to the website ―What is RSS?‖, ‗Rich Site
Summary‘ or ‗Really Simple Syndication‘ (RSS) is defined as ‗a
format for delivering regularly changing web content‘ (Anon,
34
2009a). Generally used by news site and weblogs, it provides an
easy way to ‗stay informed‘ and ‗save time‘ by automatically
retrieving the content without users having to visit each of the
sites. RSS is built on frameworks of ‗eXtensible Markup
Language‘ (XML). (Abdullah, et al., 2006)
Figure 6 Typical tag cloud
Social networking refers to the applications ‗that are
targeted to enabling the creation and enlargement‘ of a user‘s
social network. Users of such application first join in and then
invite their friends or colleagues to join. Each new member in
turn continues the cycle. (Levy, 2009). The tools and their use is
summarized in the figure below.
35
Figure 7 Web 2.0 Tools (Source: Chui, et al., 2009)
2.5.5 Current Usage of Web 2.0
According to an Economist survey, most of the
multinationals have begun to see Web 2.0 technologies as
corporate tools. 31% of the respondents felt that using web
as a platform for sharing and collaboration would affect all
parts of their business. (EIU, 2007, p1)
Companies have now moved from the initial
experimentation phase to an adoption of the tools for business
purpose. Satisfied companies have even started to leverage
the Web 2.0 tools in change management and organizational
structures. Web 2.0 tools were found to be used more for
internal purposes than for the external, supplier/customer
facing applications. (Bughin, et al., 2008) Contradicting this
was a survey by Economist (EIU, 2007) where 68% felt that
Web 2.0 would impact the way they interacted with the
36
customers as against 48% who felt it would impact they way
they interacted with internal employees.
Figure 8 Web 2.0 Usage (Source: Bughin, et al., 2008)
Two primary uses of the Web 2.0 technologies were in
management of knowledge and for fostering a collaborative
environment. (Figure 9). Blogs, RSS, Wikis and Podcasts were
the most commonly used tools. (Figure 10)
Figure 9 Internal use for Web 2.0 (Source: Bughin, et al., 2008)
Showing a similar pattern, a survey by Association of
Information and Image Management (AAIM, 2008), found that the
37
primary use of Web 2.0 was ‗to increase collaboration‘ followed
by ‗knowledge management‘.
To stress the importance of such tools, a new term called
Enterprise 2.0 has been defined. It is the use of ‗emergent social
software platforms within companies, or between companies and
their partners or customers‘ (AIIM, 2008).
Figure 10 Usage pattern of Web 2.0 technologies (Source: Bughin, et al.,
2008)
Classification of usage of Web 2.0 as a platform
To help organizations in understanding and using Web 2.0
technologies, Levy (2009) developed a grid model based on the
technology adoption and user orientation. Technology adoption
could be adoption of:
1. Web 2.0 software infrastructure – using web services, etc.
2. Web 2.0 applications – Wikis, blogs, tagging, etc.
38
Using the Web 2.0 applications with an internal focus (the
top-left quadrant of grid) was found as a right fit for knowledge
management initiatives.
Figure 11 Adoption of Web 2.0 (Source: Levy, 2009)
Chui, et al., (2009) on the other hand classified the Web
2.0 technology based on the commonality of purpose. They are:
(a) Broad collaboration such as Wikis, Blogs; (b) Metadata
creation through tagging; (c) Social graphing via social networking
tools; (d) Collective estimation in the form of polls and online
surveys. While the first model is more of a descriptive
framework, the second model is both descriptive as well as
prescriptive. Using the second model, organizations new to Web
2.0 can start the initiative via the use of appropriate tools. The
main technological attraction of Web 2.0 applications, according to
this survey is that they are ‗a relatively lightweight overlay to the
existing infrastructure and do not necessarily require complex
technology integration.‘ (p2)
39
Figure 12 Web 2.0 deployment and usage (Source: Chui, et al., 2009)
2.5.6 Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management
According to Levy (2009), the roots of many Web 2.0 tools
were derived from Knowledge Management tools. The two have
similar principles (summarized in figure 13). Elucidating on the
specific usage of Web 2.0 tools for KM, various authors have
highlighted the KM aspects of the Web 2.0 usage. For example:
1. Adams (2008) citing Burns (2005) and Li (2004) says that
blogs are being used for internal communication and
collaboration, along with wikis as engaging method of KM.
Anderson (2004) speaks of the ‗long tail‘ trend in blogs
where it enables communication with micro-audiences. The
40
movement of communication from emails to blogs also
makes it easily searchable medium (Adams, 2009; p467).
2. Intel has successfully created an internal learning initiative
called Intelpedia to ‗to share knowledge, collaborate with
employees and post need-to-know company information in
a safe, behind-the-firewall space‘ Meoster (2008) EIU
(2007, p6) has a story on the use of Wiki for KM in
Citibank.
Figure 13 Web 2.0 and KM (Source: Levy, 2008)
41
Despite the many similarities, there are a lot of gaps between
the concepts of Knowledge Management and Web 2.0. They are
summarized in figure 14 below. These gaps are also closely tied
with the issues faced in embracing the Web 2.0 solutions,
described in the next section.
Figure 14 Gaps between Web 2.0 and KM (Source: Levy, 2008)
42
2.5.7 Challenges with Web 2.0
Despite the potential of Web 2.0, it faces a lot of challenges.
Primary amongst them is awareness. According to EIU (2007,
p8), ‗many in the corporate world have never heard of Web 2.0‘
and amongst those who have heard, plenty of them ‗do not
know what it means‘. In a survey by AIIM (2008), 74% of the
respondents claimed only a vague familiarity with web 2.0, while
41% did not have a clear understanding. The second issue was
companies getting ‗caught up in trappings of Web 2.0 tools and
lose sight of what the tools are meant to build‘. In their survey,
Bughin, et al. (2008) found that the most commonly cited reason
for failure of web 2.0 were, ‗inability of management to grasp the
potential financial returns from Web 2.0, unresponsive corporate
cultures, and less-than-enthusiastic leaders‘. (p4).
Organizational Issues
Levy (2009) identified that the issues with Web 2.0 is quite
similar to Knowledge management, namely, a need for trust;
interest of participants and partnership.(p132) Complete openness
needed by Web 2.0 can cause issues, as examined by Adams
(2008). He identified 4 issues with publicly accessible blogs: (1)
exposure of trade secrets; (2) trade libel; (3) securities law
violations; and (4) unauthorized use/posting of protected
43
intellectual property. (p471) McNamara (2005) opines that there
is a possibility of employees ‗blogging off the cliff‘. Terming
collaborative platforms as ‗subversive‘, Payne (2008) says that
these technologies offer ability to collaborate but, this
collaboration can occur outside organizational structure and
processes thereby defeating the purpose. (p10)
Process and Technical Issues
McAfee (2006) cited in Grossman (2008) lists the following
technical challenges associated with the complete openness of
platforms of Web 2.0:
securing sensitive information behind the firewall,
controlling access to levels of information and databases,
protecting the integrity of information from tampering by
disgruntled employees
Patrick and Dotsika (2007) identified issues in knowledge
modeling, standardization, security, maintenance and scalability
with respect to Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 relies on tagging and folksonomies (open-ended,
collaboratively generated taxonomies) for classification which are
inherently ambiguous. Taxonomies, the formal means of
classification, on other hand are excessively restrictive in
44
modeling complex information and knowledge. Adoption of an
emergent, heuristic and locally agreed semantics for classification
is being could form a more useful. (Aberer et al., 2004)
To ensure retrieval across platforms and interoperability,
standardization is essential. Dodds (2006), says that using
Resource Description Framework (RDF), as the underlying model
for RSS could help in the standardization effort.
Security issues like cross-site scripting, insecure randomness,
etc. crops up due to emergent technologies, especially in the
quest to design the AJAX based applications (Twynham, 2006).
With respect to maintenance and scalability, although Web 2.0
applications are built mainly using Open Source software, lack of
documentation and support leads to a need for in-house
expertise (Patrick and Dotsika, 2007).
45
Figure 15 Gartner Hype Cycle, (Source: Gartner, 2009)
Despite all the issues, the general opinion is that Web 2.0 as
a technology is at a level of maturity that it can be used. (EIU,
2009; Bughin, et al., 2009; Chui, et al., 2009) Young workers
who come from a world exposed to such tools would expect the
same within the workspace as well (Levy, 2009) and if not
present, they can switch to the publicly accessible networks.
(Payne, 2008) According to Tapscott and Williams (2006, cited in
Adams, 2008), adoption of mass collaboration is not a luxury but
a strategic imperative. This has been validated by the Gartner
Hype Cycle for the technology trends of year 2009 which

46
predicts that Web 2.0 will be transformational, with an adoption
time-window of 0 to 2 years. (MacManus, 2009 citing Gartner,
2009).
Thus a prudent option would be to embrace the Web 2.0
methodologies. Best practices for such an adoption are examined
in the next section.
2.5.8 Web 2.0: Suggestions & Best Practices for usage
To get the best out of Web 2.0, changes have to be made
to address the aspects of structure, culture and technology.
Adams identified four steps as the Enterprise 2.0 best practices
(2008).
The first step is to ‗create a receptive culture to prepare the
way for new practices‘. Essentially, this involves creating a more
bottom-up culture and increasing the level of trust between
employees. Ellonen, et al. (2008) define organizational trust as
composed of two parts. One aspect is the horizontal trust
involving ‗positive expectations individuals have about the
competence, reliability and benevolence of organizational
members‘. The other aspect is the lateral trust, or the
‗institutional trust‘ which is the trust in the organizational
processes and policies. Trust needs to exist on both dimensions.
47
Web 2.0 works best in a bottom-up culture and with senior
executives acting as the role models and leading through informal
channels. (Chui, et al., 2009)
The next step is to ‗create a common platform to allow for a
collaboration infrastructure‘. From a technology perspective, it is
better to start the initiative with Open source tools which are
themselves a form of collaborative outsourcing (Tapscott and
Williams, 2005). The products themselves are not central or core
to business models and peer produced software generally fits
such needs. However, applications need to scale to all users and
Chui, et al. (2009) suggest management must actively encourage
products that start to show higher usage and promise. Dursan
and Suliman (2009) advise on a holistic platform that can be
accessed, searched and indexed so that the content becomes
easily accessible to all the users. In summary, it translates to
using open source tools and scaling those that work well, and
investing in a good search technology so that users can find the
information they are looking for.
The third suggestion is to use an ‗informal rollout approach as
opposed to a more formal procedural one‘. Snowden (2007) says
that the new paradigm is ‗not about selecting a tool based on
pre-determined criteria, [but] it is about allowing multiple tools to
co-evolve with each other, people and environments so that new

48
patterns of stable interaction form, and destabilize as needed to
reform in new and contextually appropriate ways‘‘ (cited in Levy,
2009; p128) This is termed as the perpetual beta (Levy, 2009).
Generally, the Web 2.0 initiative has succeeded whenever the
business unit has been given freedom to choose the tools. (Chui,
et al., 2009; Bughin, et al., 2009; Levy, 2008)
Participants can be encouraged by recognizing contributions,
bolstering reputation and acknowledging the usefulness of
contribution. These methods are more in-tune with the ethos of
web users. Allowing self-organization of communities through
meritocratic principles of organization provides for a better
participation (Chui, et al., 2009; Tapscott and Williams, 2005, p
67).
The final suggestion from Adams (2008) is to get ‗managerial
buy-in‘. The role of a leader in managing information and
knowledge is via two broad routes of technology and via the
social networks. Leaders can act as catalysts for the change
from a top-down to bottom up culture by acting as role-models.
They can prove as the champions of new initiatives by constantly
contributing and engaging with participants by networking, listening
and acting on the comments received from other employees.
They can trigger new modes of thought and influence
communities by actively questioning and challenging the members

49
and finally encourage participation by recognizing the contribution
and celebrating the success of communities. (Kouzes and Posner,
2002; Ritchie and Martin, 1999; Debowski, 2006; cited in Lopez,
et al., 2008; Chui, et al., 2009; Bughin, et al., 2009).
Figure 16 Web 2.0 Best Practices
Bughin, et al., (2009) and Chui, et al. (2009) have pointed
out that participation can be increased if Web 2.0 initiatives are
aligned with the existing processes. Due to its novelty, Web 2.0
initiatives could be considered as separate from the mainstream
50
work. If it is incorporated into the daily workflow, such initiatives
have a higher chance of success.
The best practices are summarized in figure 16.
2.6 India – National Culture
The focus of the research that this paper addresses is the IT
organizations based out of India. An exploration of the national
culture and the Knowledge Management and Web 2.0 trends
observed by various authors is examined in the following two
sections.
Hofstede (1980 & 1991) in his seminal work on exploration of
the national cultures had defined 4 parameters and ranked
various countries on a comparative scale on these four
parameters. The parameters and the relative position of India
compared to other national cultures is shown in Figure 17.
Uncertainty avoidance: India is rated to have moderate
uncertainty avoidance. However, Budhwar (2001) reported a
study by Kanungo and Mendonca (1994) that found Indians as
having ‗an unwillingness to accept organizational change or take
risk, reluctance to make important decisions in work-related
matters or lack of initiative in problem solving, a disinclination to
51
accept responsibility for job-related tasks and an indifference to
job feedback‘. (p80)
Power Distance: India has a high power distance derived from
the hierarchical nature of Hinduism, one of the primary religions
of India. Indian organizational structures are hierarchal with age
and seniority playing an important role in decisions about
promotions and pay. (Budhwar, 2001; p80-81)
Figure 17 Hofstede's classification of Indian National Culture (Source:
Budhwar, 2001)
Masculinity: India is rated as ‗low‘ in masculinity that is reflected
in a ‗paternalistic management style and preference of
personalized relationships rather than a more divorced
performance orientation‘ (Kanuango and Jaeger, 1990)
Individualism: Being rated low on ‗individualism‘, family and
group attainments are supposed to take precedence over work
outcomes for Indians. The purpose of work is thus a ‗means to
fulfill one‘s family and social obligations‘ and not to express or
fulfill one‘s self. (Budhwar, 2001, p83).
52
The research reported by Budhwar (2001) was primarily on
manufacturing sector and in the 90s when India was not
liberalized. In a study by Heuer (2006), India and US had similar
uncertainty avoidance scores (40 and 46) as well as in the
masculinity scores (56 and 62) respectively. However, power
distance remained significantly high (Kakar, et al., 2002). Heuer
also found that although both public and private sector
organizations were affected by globalization and liberalization, the
private sector synthesized the adjustments differently and the
Indian culture was termed to be in ‗transition‘. Tan and Khoo
(2002) identified that there was a mass adoption of western
technology, knowledge and management systems especially in
private sector.
In direct contradiction to Budhwar (2001), Deshpande, et al.,
(1999) too found that most successful Indian firms had an
‗entrepreneurial culture‘ (Quinn 1988; Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983)
and this was the most prevalent form of organizational culture in
India. Such a culture encourages risk taking and innovation.
Based on research on Indian companies, they could also find
evidence to an earlier hypothesis by Capon et al. (1991) that
high performance organizations have an organizational climate
that encourages ‗innovativeness, communication, participation,
decentralization, friendliness, and trust ‗ (p112).
53
On the leadership front, in the GLOBE research project,
Liddell (2005) reported that ‗transformational-charismatic‘ and
‗team-oriented‘ leaders were found to be effective in India. Such
leaders are ‗visionary, inspirational, decisive, performance-oriented,
and willing to make personal sacrifices‘. Leaders who are
diplomatic, collaborative and team builders are also highly valued.
(p6-7)
The adoption of a professional and meritocratic corporate
culture rather than a caste-based or hierarchical culture was seen
in the IT organizations. Heuer (2006) observed that ‗corporate
culture and business practices of India's IT firms are vastly
superior to the traditional business houses and is at the forefront
of improved corporate governance‘. Indian managers were also
found to be capable of handling sophisticated strategy planning
but bad at execution.
2.7 India – Knowledge Management & Web 2.0
There is a lack of published research on innovation and
knowledge management in emerging economies. (Anon, 2008; p
184). However, with its large English speaking professionals, and
large diaspora that has already achieved thought leadership in
knowledge intensive fields, Ghosh and Ghosh (2008) predict that
India will have a considerably big knowledge industry.
54
Based on a limited research Sanghani (2008) found that there
is a considerable association between KM and organization size,
measured in turnover as well as number of employees. (p14-15)
Big organizations were found to be more organized and
structured and the sheer size led to an investment in KM system
to manage the organizational knowledge. (p19) Chatzkel (2004)
published a case study of KM implementation at Wipro
technologies, a large Indian IT organization. One of the prime
drivers for a systematic KM implementation has been mentioned
as ‗huge growth‘. Wipro has implemented a top-down knowledge
management strategy and no special investment in technology,
except for Microsoft Sharepoint server. Emphasis has been
placed on ‗connecting people‘ via discussion forums and yellow
pages, with the understanding that tacit knowledge cannot be
easily encoded but, socializing can help in transfer of such
knowledge or skill.
On the other hand, smaller organizations were lagging behind
due to the scale of investment and lack of clarity in terms of
return on investment (Sanghani, 2008; p19). A potential area of
research that is unanswered is this: if the cost of investment
towards KM system were to reduce drastically by usage of Web
2.0, would such organization show more interest in investing
towards KM efforts.
55
Bughin, et al., (2009) examined the usage pattern of Web 2.0
technologies. India has a higher adoption rate for blogs, wikis
while North America had a slightly higher usage of Social
Networking tools compared to India (Figure 18). Kushan (2007)
has explored the trend of CEO blogging in India. Apart from
these articles, there is no authoritative data in terms of Web 2.0
and its usage in Indian organizations. There is a lack of
information on the usage and deployment of blogs and wikis in
India based organizations.
Figure 18 Web 2.0 in India and North America (Source: Bughin, et al.,
2009)
Summarizing the entire section, various authors have provided
a viewpoint on how an organization can manage learning, both
56
for its individuals as well as an organization itself. Knowledge
management as a discipline has been examined under various
disciplines and its implementation has seen varied levels of
satisfaction. The concept of Web 2.0 is quite promising due to
its emphasis on user-generated content through sharing and
collaboration. It has a potential to address the main ask of a KM
system – engaging the audience to contribute and collaborate.
Younger workforce is exposed to these technologies and expects
the same in organizations.
India has the advantage of a ―demographic dividend‖ (Murthy,
2009) – a rise of working age population, coupled with rapid
growth in the IT sector. These organizations, either Indian owned
or subsidiaries of foreign companies must be facing similar issues
with KM but, there is a lack of research. Same is the case with
Web 2.0 and its usage across the India based IT organizations.
This research aims to address the gaps discussed in the
discussion above. The research objectives, methodologies and
findings are part of the following sections.
57
3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research involved identifying the objectives followed by
designing and the questionnaires. This was followed by two semi-
structured interviews along with clarification emails to some of the
questionnaire participants. The research objectives, sampling
method, justification of the sampling method and research
methodology is detailed in the following sections.
3.1 Research Objectives
Knowledge management, as examined in the previous chapter
has faced a lot of challenges in implementation. Web 2.0 being
relatively new has its own set of gray areas. IT organizations
operating in India have not been researched in depth with
respect to the impact and issues faced in implementing a
Knowledge Management program and adoption of Web 2.0. The
purpose of this research is to initiate this examination and
propose a framework for implementing a Knowledge Management
program while adopting the best practices and philosophy of Web
2.0. Specifically, the research tries to answer the following
questions:
1. How is Web 2.0 being perceived and utilized by IT
organizations operating in India?
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2. What is the awareness and usage of Knowledge
Management programs in the organizations?
3. Highlight the pain points in implementation of successful
KM programs and Web 2.0 initiatives.
4. Understand if the Web 2.0 adoption was bottom-up or
strategically implemented as a top-down program.
5. Identify if Web 2.0 will:
a. Act as the new Knowledge Management system
b. Complement existing KM systems OR
c. Remain separate from existing KM systems
6. Propose a framework for implementing a Web 2.0 based
KM program.
3.2 Research Methodology
The research consisted of an online questionnaire for
employees from various organizations with follow-up clarification
email where necessary. This was followed by an in-depth semi-
structured interview with senior managers to gain the
management perspective.
3.3 Research Design
Earlier researchers have identified the generic trends in usage
of Web 2.0 tools (Bughin, et al, 2008; Chui, et al., 2009)
According to Tapscott and Williams (2006), the greatest impact of

59
new collaborative technologies has been in the production of
information goods, such as software, media and entertainment
products (p25). Hence, the focus of research is organizations
involved in software services or software product development.
The initial research done was to identify trends in usage and
understanding of Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management in such
IT organizations. Towards this purpose, an online survey was
initiated to employees of various organizations.
The respondents for the questionnaire were chosen from a
sample with two different set of experience levels. Employees
with 6 years or less of experience formed one set of participants
and those with more experience formed the second set. The first
group of respondents would have been exposed to nascent Web
2.0 initiatives either when they started the career or during their
college days. The second set of respondents would have seen
the evolution of Knowledge Management as well as the impact (if
any) by Web 2.0 on KM. The survey further classified the
respondents as employees into two categories:
1. Employees working for Indian IT companies: An Indian IT
company according to this research, is an organization that
has its core development/support office in India. The
customers of such a company could be globally located.
Typical examples of such companies are Infosys, Wipro,

60
TCS, Cognizant, HCL, etc. These companies generally
design and implement their KM strategy from India.
2. Employees working for multi-nationals that operate in India
but, could have a global spread. IBM, Accenture, Microsoft
are some examples of such companies. Such organizations
could import the Knowledge Management strategy that is
developed in US (or parent country) and customize it to
India. The research method is summarized in table below:
The questions within the survey were categorized into three
areas:
1. Questions on organizational structure and organizational
culture.
2. Prevalence of a Knowledge Management system and its
usage.
3. Web 2.0, its perception, usage and future plans.
The first set of questions was used to identify the type of a
leadership, the level of trust, and the level of openness that is
present in an organization. These set of questions were meant to
establish the organizational structure, organizational culture and
the type of leadership prevalent in IT organizations
The second set of questions was used for understanding the
existing Knowledge Management practices as seen by general

61
employees, rather than from the perspective of top management.
Identification of the technologies used commonly for
communicating and sharing knowledge was also an aim for this
section of questionnaire.
TABLE 3 Methodology for Questionnaire Research
Sampling technique Quota sampling (job
experience and organization
type)
Sampling Unit Employees from selected
subset
Sample size 33
Research Instrument Online questionnaire
Research paradigm Positivistic
The final set of questions was to help gauge the level of
exposure, understanding and usage of Web 2.0 technologies in
various organizations. Attempt was also made to identify of how
Web 2.0 enters the organization and the road ahead, as seen by
the employees.
The questionnaire responses was followed by semi-structured
interviews with senior managers who were either responsible or
62
have seen the evolution of the Knowledge Management and the
Web 2.0 systems in Indian IT organizations. Two such telephonic
interviews were held. Both the respondents have more than 10
years of experience in KM and have been working in India-based
IT organizations. Such a semi-structured interview and open
ended questions allow for responses to reflect the richness and
complexity of views (Denscombe, 2003). The purpose of these
interviews were to gather anecdotal evidence, best practices and
lessons learnt in the implementation of the KM and Web 2.0
systems with the Indian context.
Follow-up emails were used with both the interview
participants and a few of the questionnaire respondents as well.
63
TABLE 4 Methodology for Semi-structured Interviews
Sampling technique Purposive sampling (senior
managers who have
implemented or worked
supervised the
implementation efforts of
Web 2.0/KM systems)
Sampling Unit Employees from selected
subset
Sample size 2
Research Instrument Semi-structured interview
Research paradigm Exploratory
4 RESEARCH FINDINGS
An online survey was published and 33 participants were
identified based on the organization size and experience levels. A
sample questionnaire has been in included in Appendix B. Of
this, 20 usable responses were received (See table below).
17 of the respondents were from India-based IT
organizations while 3 of the participants were from multi-national
organizations that have an office in India. The organizations were
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split into 4 different categories based on the number of
employees:
Small organizations (0-499)
Mid-sized organization (1000-4999)
Large organization (5000 and above)
TABLE 5 Questionnaire response summary
Survey No of respondents
Total respondents 33
Partially complete 11
Total complete 22
Incomplete/unusable survey 2
Total useful surveys 20
There was a category for organizations with 500-999
employees, but no responses were received for this category.
(See Fig 19)
The research findings are split into 3 sections, regarding the
Organizational Research, Research on KM and Research on Web
2.0.
65
Figure 19 Respondent organization type and size
4.1 Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture
Based on the survey, all the respondents felt that their place
of work was ‗friendly‘, ‗personal‘ with and the organizational team
felt like a family. This finding is similar to the research by other
authors (Hofstede, 1980 & 1991; Budwar, 2001; Deshpande, et
al., 1999) who identified that a group orientation and low
masculinity are features of the Indian national culture. On the
question of leadership, ‗entrepreneurial‘ culture seems to be the
most prevalent followed by a coordinational form of leadership.
As the organization size grows, the primary leadership type
changed from being entrepreneurial to being more coordinational
and paternalistic. All three leadership patterns are similar to the
findings in by Liddell (2005).
66
Figure 20 Leadership types in Indian IT Organizations
Trust has been pointed out as an important factor for
organizations to have an effective Knowledge Management or a
Web 2.0 program (De Long and Fahey, 2000; Levy, 2009). Using
the Ellonen, et al. (2008) model, the survey asked respondents
whether they trusted their colleagues and superiors. In the small
and mid-sized organizations, all respondents trusted their
colleagues and superiors equally, and completely. However, in
larger organizations, employees tend to trust their colleagues
more than their superiors. There is a relatively less trust in
superiors despite a majority of respondents agreeing that there is
very good communication between senior management and staff.
This lack of horizontal and vertical trust, could act as a
challenge towards effective implementation of Knowledge
67
management or Web 2.0 efforts. The exact cause of this
reduction in trust, apart from organizational size is not clear.
Figure 21 Trust in organizations
90% of respondents (18 out of 20) felt that complete
ownership of their task. Being open to change and measurable
goals were seen to be important in all organizations. The
combination of these results goes against the findings of
Kanungo and Mendonca (1994) and Budhwar (2001) who had
concluded that Indians were generally not open to change and
did not like to take ownership of tasks. Finally, only 66% of the
respondents felt that their opinions mattered while 20 % were not
clear if their opinions mattered or not. Since 20% of respondents
did not agree that their opinions matter and another 20% are not
sure, one possibility could that a hierarchical and opaque
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decision making structure exists or that the management is not
communicating the contribution of individuals.
Figure 22 What holds organization together?
In summary, according to the survey, the broad picture of an
Indian IT organization is that of a place driven by commitment,
having a friendly and family-type atmosphere and a place where
individuals feel ownership for their own sphere of work and tend
to trust each other. Leadership role is that of an entrepreneur,
mentor or coordinator depending on size of organization.
Employees feel measured on performance by clear goals, but are
not completely sure if their opinions matter.
69
4.2 Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Management
In this section of questionnaire, the respondents were asked
question on how knowledge is created, captured, formatted,
shared and rewarded (Bhat, 2001). The first few questions were
to gauge the prevalence of basic systems for capture
organizational knowledge. Almost all the organizations seem to
have some form of a knowledge sharing system as well as a
discussion forum (See figure 23). Two of the small organizations
said they don‘t have an enterprise level knowledge sharing
system but, they did have standard templates for sharing
documents.
Figure 23 Existence of a Basic KM
70
The next question put to the survey audience was on the
clarity of Knowledge Management process in terms of knowledge
capture. The respondents were asked to rate their choice for the
5 parameters (Figure 24). Here, ‗hard‘ knowledge‘ is recording
information like the technical complexity, identifying best practices,
etc. ‗Soft‘ knowledge is information necessary for personal rapport
with the customer or the customer‘s preferences. For example,
this could the preference of emails for communication rather than
calls by a customer.
Figure 24 Effectiveness in 'capturing' knowledge
In one of the small organizations, the respondent indicated
that they had a clear process for problem solving but, were not
open to experimentation. The same respondent was not sure if
he/she was supposed to record the learning from project. In a
71
start-up, the employee indicated that they only record ‗soft‘
information but no other knowledge is captured. Finally, in
another small organization, knowledge seems to be recorded by
individuals but it is not shared. In most organizations, ‗soft‘
information seems to captured well but, ‗hard‘ information is not
being captured efficiently. A lot of responses were marked
‗Neither agree nor disagree‘ indicating the respondents were not
completely clear on the expectation from the organization.
The next two survey questions were on openness and
freedom in sharing information (see Appendix B, questions 24
and 25). The amount of freedom seems to reduce as the
organization size increases. The role of a designated gatekeeper
for information as well as the importance of a centralized team
responsible for facilitating sharing of knowledge increases with the
increase in organization size (figure 25). Similarly, the importance
of middle managers as decision-maker for sharing information
increased with increase in organization size.
72
Figure 25 Role of gatekeepers and Centralized KM team
The final set of questions in this section was on rewards
and recognition for those who contribute and share knowledge.
De Long and Fahey (2000) had hypothesized in their study that
the organizational culture itself can act as a motivator for
knowledge creation, sharing and use. As per the responses to
survey, this hypothesis appears correct. Rather than any other
recognition, a culture of sharing has been noted as the main
reason for sharing knowledge (41% overall). This is followed by
recognition emails, meetings and other non-financial rewards
(figure 26). In large organizations, CXO blogs were pointed out
by 20% respondents as an important medium for recognizing an
individual‘s contribution as well encouraging and motivating
employees for sharing knowledge.
73
Figure 26 Motivation to share knowledge
Summarizing this part of questionnaire responses, most
organizations seem to use some form of a portal/discussion
forum. There appears a bit of confusion in knowledge capture
and technical or process related learnings are not being
effectively captured. This particular step violates the definition of
‗learning organization‘ (Garvin, 1993) as well as the double-loop
learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978). Freedom to share knowledge
seems to reduce with organizational size. Organizations depend
on a ‗culture of sharing‘ as the prime motivator for knowledge
sharing rather than any specific motivation/rewards mechanism.
4.3 Web 2.0 – Perception and Usage
In the third and final section of the questionnaire, respondents
were asked about their understanding of Web 2.0, their
74
perception of how it is being used and how they see it
impacting their organization.
According to various researchers (EIU, 2007; Adams, 2008;
Levy, 2009), Web 2.0 suffers from a lack of clarity due to
multiplicity of definitions. The primary definition of Web 2.0 should
include ‗user generated content‘ followed by its utility of sharing
and collaboration. However, from the responses to the survey, it
appears that the although users are quite well-versed with the
basic tenet and the technologies that adhere to the concept of
Web 2.0, even though not everyone could identify the definition
accurately (figure 27). EIU (2007) had found that there was a
possibility of users getting stuck in the ‗trappings‘ of Web 2.0
while losing sight of the core concept of ‗network effect‘.
However, as per the results from this survey, users seem to
have gained clarity on this aspect since 85% of respondents
identified that ‗sharing and collaboration‘ is Web 2.0 proving they
are not stuck with the Web 2.0 technologies per se.
75
Figure 27 Survey Response: What is Web 2.0?
The next 2 questions were to identify the tools used by
respondents as compared to the tools used within the
organizations. Most users as well as organizations use Wikis,
Blogs and Web services (as well as RSS). Within organizations,
social networking and tagging is lagging by a larger percentage
when compared to individual use (figure 28). This could be due
to lack of proper software and integration effort for the products,
which was identified by a senior manager in a clarification email.
76
Figure 28 Web 2.0 – Which tools do you use?
Within the organizations, the use of Web 2.0 tools for
internal purpose is quite similar to the study by Bughin, et al.
(2008) 85% of the respondents felt that ―Managing Knowledge‖ is
the primary internal use of Web 2.0 followed by ―fostering
collaboration‖ and ―Training‖. Further, it was found that in 75% of
the cases, senior managers were leading or encouraging the
initiatives. Exposure to open source technologies, identified as a
reason for lack of adoption of Web 2.0 tools in EIU (2007) was
not seen as a challenge. 70% of pointed out their organization
had capability with Open Source platforms.
77
Figure 29 Why does your organization use Web 2.0?
According to various research (Bughin, et al., 2008; Chui, et
al., 2009; Levy, 2009 and EIU, 2007) Web 2.0 is generally a
bottom-up movement with the business units driving the adoption.
However, in this survey this observation was not clearly validated.
In most organizations, especially in small and mid-sized
organizations, it was the Senior Managers/IT Managers who
choose Web 2.0 tools. However, business units seem to exert
more influence as the organization size increases since
responses were split evenly in large organizations (Figure 30).
On the question of learning new technology, mid-sized
organizations were clear that they learnt Web 2.0 technologies
outside work and trained others. However, in larger organization,
the responses varied from ‗strongly agree‘ to ‗strongly disagree‘
with 40% being unable to decide. Using the external tools for
78
organizational work though, seems to be unfavorable with most
respondents.
Figure 30 How is Web 2.0 introduced?
In the organizations that used Web 2.0, peer to peer
communication has seen the greatest improvement (Figure 31).
All 5 respondents from small and medium sized organizations
agreed that Web 2.0 improved effectiveness in all three aspects:
knowledge sharing, peer communication and senior management
communication. In larger organization, 25% felt no change was
seen in senior management communication. On further email with
a respondent, it was seen that no improvement in senior
management communication was seen in those organizations
where senior managers were not playing a leadership role in
Web 2.0 initiative.
79
Figure 31 How has Web 2.0 impacted you?
On the question of barriers to Web 2.0, employees clearly
indicated that an organization‘s structure, its culture or the
leadership were not seen as an issue. However, lack of incentive
coupled and an unclear ROI were seen as barriers to the
success of Web 2.0 initiatives.
Figure 32 Barriers to Web 2.0
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On the whole, Web 2.0 seems to have made a positive
impact on most organizations. It was seen to improve
communication as well as knowledge sharing. Leadership was not
generally lacking on this effort and organizations seemed to be
technically equipped to work with the Web 2.0 tools. The
satisfaction was confirmed with the final response where 80%
agreed that their organization was planning to expand use of
Web 2.0.
4.4 Survey Summary
The Indian IT organization is seen as a place filled with a
family-type atmosphere, led by an entrepreneur/mentor minded
leadership. Performance goals seem to be relatively clear and
there is a sense of ownership. Organizations seem to be having
issues in capturing knowledge and generally depend on a culture
of sharing for contribution. There appears to be a lack of
encouragement to participants to motivate towards contributing
towards the knowledge management efforts. Finally, Web 2.0 is
seen as an enabler for better sharing and collaborating. It is not
seen as a technical challenge and employees are generally open
to use the tools.
However, there were a few unanswered questions from the
survey:
81
On the question of barriers to Web 2.0, 30% of
respondents were not sure if the incentives were sufficient.
With an experience of at least 6 years, this lack of clarity
needs investigation.
Even though senior management is involved in introducing
Web 2.0, it was not clear if the introduction was done as
a pilot or as a strategic launch across organization.
The tools used for Web 2.0 initiatives and Knowledge
Management program were not clear.
Employees are unclear if their contributions are seen
valuable. There is a perception that sufficient
encouragement is not being provided for contributing
towards knowledge sharing. If Senior Management is
committed to KM, this lack of encouragement is unclear.
To answer these questions and to gain a further clarity on
the actual process of KM/Web 2.0 implementation, two semi-
structured interviews were conducted. The findings from these
interviews are explained in the next section.
4.5 Web 2.0 and KM – Management Perspective
Apart from the survey, two semi-structured interviews were
conducted. The following is a summary of the interview findings.
These findings are based on the meeting notes (Ranganath,
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2009a; Ranganath 2009b). The complete contents of the meeting
notes could not added to the appendix due to the corporate
policies of the organizations.
4.5.1 About KM – Current state and challenges
According to one senior manager, KM has been around in
most organizations in one form or another. KM implementation
generally starts with simple project repositories and evolves into a
combination of tools including expertise databases, training
portals, workspaces and discussion forums. However, there are
three main challenges seen in the existing KM systems:
Objective: In many organizations, it was difficult to
motivate people to contribute. One of the primary reasons
is the very objective of KM. According to the manager,
employees perceive KM systems as a knowledge repository
that hordes knowledge so that the organizations did not
suffer when the employees quit. Since KM systems
perceived as productivity enhancement applications, their
usage was low.
Participation: Participation on KM systems is generally
very low. Encouraging experts to document their knowledge
is generally difficult. In typical KM systems, usage has
been observed to be very low and this low usage further
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discourages experts to contribute. Discussion forums are
the only platforms where the participation has been
generally better.
Alignment: Aligning the goals of KM and the business has
generally been challenging. Without sufficient time from
Senior Managers, getting the right alignment is seen to be
difficult. Over the past few years, however, senior business
managers have taken responsibility of KM and this has
helped in better alignment.
Rapid growth: As per one senior manager, their
organization was witnessing a rapid growth and effective
KM systems are necessary to quickly assimilate the new
employees.
Indian culture: The Indian national culture too plays a part
in hampering the sharing of knowledge. Three aspects of
the culture act as barriers to KM:
o Indians typically face a lot of competition during
education. Due to extreme competition, they generally
don‘t like to trust or share knowledge.
o Indians have a tendency for using information without
providing feedback. Contributors are thus discouraged
since they don‘t get an opinion on the acceptance of
their work.
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o Finally, hierarchy in organizations prevents an open
communication and feedback.
However, Indians are generally open to a paternalistic
leadership and respond well to mentoring.
KM In Small Organizations
In smaller organizations, ‗everyone knows everyone‘. In such a
situation, people tend to walk to other person‘s desk or send an
email for specific information. Enterprise KM systems are
generally not used, nor is it effective. However, a small system
with simple information regarding corporate policies would be
useful in ramping up new employees. A full-fledged KM system
is seen useful when:
Organizations are spread across multiple geographies/offices
The organization is undergoing a rapid growth and needs
to assimilate new employees faster.
4.5.2 Where does Web 2.0 fit in?
When asked the question, ―Does Web 2.0 fit into the
philosophy and concepts of KM?‖, both the senior managers
answered in affirmative.
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Web 2.0 is seen as a mechanism that elevates the practice
of KM through better participation and usage by employees.
Through its philosophy of being ―open, public and transparent‖
(Ranganath, 2009b), it builds more trust and adoption increases.
The relatively young population of IT employees means that they
are familiar with the tools and are willing to share and
collaborate (Ranganath, 2009a). The new technology is thus seen
to help in creation of virtual relationships by the means of ―weak
ties‖ relationships (Granovetter, 1973). This hypothesis says that it
is possible to reach people outside the group of known people
(―strong ties‖) and generally it is these people who have novel or
innovative solutions.
Web 2.0 is also seen as a better mechanism to tap into the
‗wisdom of the crowds‘ (Surowiecki, 2004). This is seen through
the ability to engage the audience via blogs or freedom to edit
Wiki pages or the ability to add meaning through tagging and
making this available to everyone. Prior to Web 2.0, only
discussion forums managed to tap the knowledge held by
experts.
Web 2.0 is also seen as an effective tool for capturing the
―know-who‖ along with the ―know-how‖ (Ranganath, 2009a).
Traditional KM stressed on capturing knowledge but did not
effectively cater to the question of identifying an expertise with a

86
person. By using the tagging functionality and identifying topics
generally blogged or wiki edits by a person, experts can be
identified. This mechanism helps in building a ‗yellow-page‘ of
experts through the contribution of users, rather than through a
centralized classification exercise. This concept is similar to the
meritocracy in open source software development described by
Tapscott and Williams (2006).
According to the interviews, the state of Web 2.0 tool
adoption is shown in the table below.
TABLE 6 Web 2.0 Technologies in Use
Web 2.0 technology Status

Blogs, Wikis, Tagging, Discussion forums,
Shared workspaces In use
1-3
RSS, Social Networking, Podcasts years
4.5.3 Challenges in Web 2.0 adoption
Management buy-in
Web 2.0 being ‗inherently disruptive‘ (Chui, et al., 2009) has
its own challenges from a management perspective. Web 2.0 is
seen to turn the concept of KM upside down. In the traditional
KM, senior management is control and gaining the adoption and
buy-in of participants is difficult. On the other hand, Web 2.0
being bottom-up and participative, is easier to adopt by users. To
87
ensure the participation, Web 2.0 initiatives cannot have rigorous
procedures. Management feels a loss of control due to openness
and getting their buy-in is challenging.
A Senior Manager who is already aware of Web 2.0 and who
can lead by example in Web 2.0 adoption is seen to be
effective in gaining the buy-in from management as well as
encouraging better participation. This is similar to the observation
―transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top‖.
(Chui, et al., 2009, p5)
Participation, Recognition and Education
To ensure people adopt and participate, encouragement is
necessary. (Chui, et al., 2009) Rather than just financial rewards,
recognition through newsletters and corporate occasions have
been effective (Ranganath, 2009b).
To gain a better adoption, training, awareness campaigns and
‗unconferences‘ (Monahan, 2007) have been found to be very
useful. Addressing these issues is covered in the case study in
the next section.
Metrics and ROI
Metrics are generally a pain in the KM industry (Ranganath,
2009a). However, a starting point would to be measure the two

88
aspects of Web 2.0 – the contribution and consumption. For
example, with respect to blogs, it could be number of unique
contributors, number of blog posts, average number of blog views
and comments (Adams, 2008). Such primary metrics provide
information on the usage and adoption of the tools.
Secondary metrics are not standardized and depends on the
business objective being met. For example, one organization used
the metric ‗effort saved‘ to measure the effectiveness of the
discussion forum. It compared the time taken to solve a problem
via discussion forum as against time it would have taken without
the forum.
Products Used
The latest version of Sharepoint by Microsoft has been seen
to address multiple KM requirements by one manager. Since
most organizations already use Microsoft products, adopting
Sharepoint is seen to be easier.
Other technologies that are generally used for KM and Web
2.0 initiative are summarized in table below.
89
TABLE 7 Web 2.0 / KM Products in Use
KM / Web 2.0 Requirement Product Used
Blogging Sharepoint / Wordpress /
Enterprise version of Wordpress
Wiki Confluence
Search Sharepoint search, Apache
SOLR
Social bookmarking / tagging Custom built
Reporting / metrics Custom built / Product provided
4.5.4 Web 2.0 and unanticipated benefits
Web 2.0 implementation has led to benefits that were not
planned and were quite completely unanticipated (Ranganath,
2009a). Some of them are:
‘Stronger employee engagement’: In larger organizations,
newcomers may not feel appreciated. Through participation
and contribution to web 2.0 initiatives like blogs, discussion
forums and social bookmarking, such employees can feel a
stronger affiliation and a sense of recognition. Similarly, the
author observed talent groups like photography group,

90
trekking communities and open source evangelists
participating, blogging and engaging with each other which
further bolstered the belonging and ‗family‘ environment.
CSR Initiatives: In one of the organizations, a community
of employees was formed on the blog platform, working
towards giving back to community. Such an effective usage
of the platform was well-received and was provided with
funding and adoption as the corporate CSR program.
4.5.5 Summary of Interviews
Two main objectives of the interviews were to gain a management
perspective on KM and Web 2.0, and trying to get answers to the
questions resulted from the questionnaire analysis. Most of the
questions were answered in the interviews:
According the interviews Senior Managers are aware of the
contribution-consumption problem. They also seem to be aware
of the underlying concern of employees - KM making them
redundant. The latter is being addressed through educating and
proving the value of using KM and Web 2.0 as productivity tools.
Web 2.0 has been also been used successfully to surmount the
passive consumption through the usage of blogs for more active
participation. By regularly communicating the importance of the
contributions via senior management blogs and
91
communications, organizations have started to address the
motivational needs of employees.
Within the organizations, Web 2.0 is being introduced as a pilot
and with a strategic intent. In most cases, clear objectives and
policies exist for the introduction of Web 2.0 applications.
However, the underlying framework is kept flexible to introduce
new tools. The focus seems to be on leveraging the tags and
linking it to search technology to provide more relevant results to
the users.
Finally, KM managers see Web 2.0 as an enabler in the
process of Knowledge management. Some of the tools fit into
the process of capturing knowledge and helping in sharing.
However, Knowledge Management is seen as a much bigger
than just the Web 2.0 philosophy of user-generated content and
collaboration. It is seen as alignment of knowledge activities
towards satisfying the business goals.
4.6 Putting it all together – a case study
Following is the case study of an effective KM implementation
that leverages the Web 2.0 technologies and concepts to derive
a better usage and robust sharing of knowledge. The case is
representative of an IT services organization that has a very
large development center presence in India.
92
Case Study : Implementation of Web 2.0 based KM
System
About Cognizant
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation provides
information technology (IT) consulting and technology
services, as well as outsourcing services in North
America, Europe, and Asia. It has over 64,000 full-time
employees (Yahoo, 2009). Cognizant is global company
with significant presence in markets like North America
and Europe and development centers in India and China.
(Cognizant, 2009)
The problem
Cognizant has over 64,000 people and growing
rapidly. KM was essential to ensure quicker assimilation
of newcomers apart from “getting knowledge to
consultants when they need it” (Akshay, 2009a).
According to the Chief Knowledge Office, Sukumar
Rajagopal, Knowledge Management has two aspects –
contribution and consumption. In the traditional model,
„1% rule applied‟ since the focus was on contribution.
93
According to this rule, “if you get a group of 100
people online then one will create content, 10 will
"interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements)
and the other 89 will just view it”. (Arthur, 2006) Due
to low consumption as well as difficulty in documenting
expert knowledge, the effectiveness of traditional portal
based KM systems was low. Such systems catered only
to the “know-how” need of KM and could not satisfy
the “know-who” requirement necessary in a large
organization.
The solution
Increase participation
Instead of addressing the contribution problem,
Cognizant started by addressing the consumption aspect.
Web 2.0 was introduced to build a culture of
participation. Blogs were introduced with a single
corporate policy that essentially asked users not to write
anything that could harm or hurt the organization or
individuals. Bloggers started to contribute with topics
ranging from technological trends to sharing their
hobbies. With average age of employees being mid-20s,
94
the adoption was easier due to their exposure to the
technologies.
Contributors and consumers were constantly
encouraged through non-financial rewards ranging from
special recognition on the Senior Management‟s blogs as
well as redeemable points, similar to „frequent flier‟
programs. The points could be exchanged for Cognizant
branded goodies. Frequent training, awareness weeks and
unconferences were held to connect people face-to-face
to increase awareness and usage.(Monahan, 2007)
Web 2.0 was adopted as a combination of top-down
and grassroots approach. However, the overall adoption
for the organization was a strategic decision.
Router Model of KM
The Router Model of KM is “based on a distributed
architecture where knowledge is not necessarily in one
central knowledge repository”. Instead of having a
centralized repository, search technology is used to
connect the various data sources. A single centralized
repository is difficult to manage (Dusun and Suliman,
95
2009). A federated system, based on loose integration
would be successful, if the data dictionaries are kept
up-to-date. (p143). Towards this end, the search
indexing occurs daily at Cognizant to keep the data
dictionaries updated.
Thus, with a combination of various technologies, user
generated content and external content is made
available, either as a „pull‟ like search or as a „push‟
via RSS feeds to the employees.
To ensure better searchability, Cognizant is working
on building a controlled vocabulary that can be used for
tagging. However, flexibility is provided to users who
can request for new words to be added. Such requests
are vetted and approved by a centralized team to
maintain integrity of the vocabulary.
Measuring RoI
According to Cognizant, KM has an unlimited RoI.
However, to measure the success of a tool deployment,
two relatively simple metrics have been used – reach
and frequency. The reach metric is a measure of how
96
many employees are reading the contribution while the
frequency metric is a measure of how many people are
contributing to the tools. These metrics are used to
ensure that the performance is better than the 1% rule.
According to internal reports, the 1% rule has been
broken almost since the inception of the program and
usage has been quite high and proved very effective.
The next section examines the best practices based on the
research.
97
4.7 Best Practices based on Research
Some of the best practices that were observed in
organizations with an effective Web 2.0 based KM programs are:
Piloting an implementation: Rather than launch a Web 2.0
initiative at organizational level, pilot a solution or tool and
measure participation. Social tools need participation.
Focus on addressing the consumption problem: Rather than
solving the 1% problem, try to get more participation by
encouraging users to start by reading. The increased
audience acts as a motivation for contributors leading to
higher contribution and a virtuous cycle is setup.
Build a flexible IT architecture which is capable of
integrating various tools and applications.
Make everything searchable so that instead of just
knowledge documents, search returns relevant information
regarding employees, work projects and tags.
Do not allow anonymity in access. This should prevent any
potential misuse. This simple step generally assuages the
management concern of losing control since user activity
can be audited and tracked, in case of any misuse.
Have a simple policy of usage. Essentially, it should
mention that writing anything that is defamatory against an
98
individual or organization is unacceptable. When information
is taken from another source, the source should be
mentioned clearly. Apart from this, users should have
freedom of usage.
Lead by example: Indians generally respond well to
mentoring and entrepreneurial leaders. Hence, leading by
example and participating by blogging regularly or
commenting acts as a great motivator.
Encourage participants: Identify early leaders and adopters
of new technology and leverage their reach to further
increase participation. For example, ‗blog memes‘ (Anon,
2009) were used effectively to introduce new ideas and
spread awareness in one of the researched organizations.
Chui, et al., (2009) suggest a similar approach of
leveraging the early adopters for driving the self-sustaining
effort of Web 2.0 adoption and usage.
4.8 Web 2.0 based KM system - Implementation
framework
Based on the theory and the above research, it is clear that
trust in the organization, the superiors and the colleagues in the
bedrock on which knowledge sharing can occur. Without building
such a framework of trust, knowledge management effort is
bound to fail in meeting the expectations.

99
The next step is to build a culture of participation. KM
succeeds through the virtuous cycle of consumption encouraging
more content contribution. Without this self-sustaining loop,
contributions will either be forced or seen as an effort apart from
regular work.
The third step in the process is to pilot a tool and measure
the participation. Piloting will provide an idea of whether a
particular tool will ‗fit‘ the organization. For example, introducing
blogs to a small organization may be effective as the ‗long tail‘
phenomenon of engaging with micro-audience does not exist
(Anderson, 2005). However collaborating by using Wiki could
provide much more value. As there is no one right solution,
organizations should pilot a tool and decide if it meets the
organizational strategy along with requisite interest and
participation. Once it meets these requirements, the tools can be
rolled out to the organization.
100
Figure 33 Implementation strategy: Web 2.0 aided KM
Any implementation or tool roll out must ensure that it
exposes an interface to the search application as well as
includes the tool in existing processes. If contributing to the Web
2.0 system is seen as an effort apart from work, it may not be
used effectively (Chui, et al, 2009).
Interfacing with search platform is necessary to ensure that
the information created on the new tool is also available to users
via search. Anderson (2005) points out on the secret of meeting
‗long tail‘ requirement is a two step process: ―1. Make everything
available and 2. Help me find it‖.
5 CONCLUSIONS
According to this research, Web 2.0 is seen as a complement
to Knowledge management as well as an effective mechanism to
101
increase user participation and interest. The trend seems to point
out that the usage of Web 2.0 technology will grow further, for
integrating social networking and tagging feature. Conclusions from
this research are:
Both employees and management feel that knowledge
sharing can be made better. The cause for less sharing is
due to lack of motivation (as seen by employees).
Management understands this problem and is also aware
of the underlying suspicion of employees towards KM.
The challenge in encouraging experts to contribute is being
addressed through better encouragement and ownership of
communities in Web 2.0 forums like blogs. Active
participation by Senior Managers and encouragement in the
form of 'walking the talk' is seen to motivate more
employees. Indian national culture too points towards
mentoring as a favored way of change management.
Web 2.0 is seen as an enabler in improving the
contribution by users. The Web 2.0 tools are seen as an
aid to the Knowledge Management process. However, the
field of Knowledge Management is considered bigger than
just Web 2.0.
102
Technology is not seen as a challenge to introduction of
Web 2.0 tools. This is due to the technical nature of
business in most of the surveyed organizations.
Web 2.0 is generally picked up by employees either outside the
organizations or after it is introduced within organizations. The
exact nature of learning was not clear in this survey.
Web 2.0 initiatives are sometimes run as pilots. However,
these initiatives are introduced to the organization after a
strategic decision making process. It is a combination of
top-down and bottom-up approach. The bottom-up adoption
and suggestions during pilot and post implementation is
used to further refine the systems.
The research was not able to conclusive answer the
question on how employees learn the Web 2.0
technologies.
On the whole, the research was able to answer almost all the
objectives. Web 2.0 is generally perceived as a positive
development both for fostering better collaboration and
participation. Web 2.0 thus is seen as aiding in Knowledge
Management from the perspective of Indian IT organizations.
103
6 RESEARCH LIMITATIONS
The research was carried out for the scholarly purpose. The
limitations of this research were:
The sample size was limited due to the resources
available for analyzing the responses. A larger sample size
spread across more organizations would have been
appropriate.
Most of the participating organizations have been in
existence for 10 or more years and most of the
participants have 6 or more years of experience.
Perspective from a younger audience or a younger
organization could be different. This needs to be examined
since they are the generation more exposed to the Web
2.0 technologies. Patterns of sharing and collaboration may
differ with such an audience.
Organizations that were dissatisfied with Web 2.0 or
organizations not planning to use Web 2.0 were not
explored. Concerns and implementation difficulties in such
organizations could help identify pain points and issues that
have not been addressed in this research.
104
All the organizations examined were from the IT services
sector. Other organizations needs to be examined for a
holistic picture on Web 2.0 and KM adoption in India.
7 FURTHER RESEARCH
The importance of search technology was not initially observed
by the author. However, during the research, it became apparent
that Web 2.0 and KM will tend to be a combination of multiple
tools. A scalable search platform is gaining in importance. The
importance of search technologies and its impact on Web 2.0
based KM is an area for further exploration. Search technologies
could also leverage the tagging functionality. Impact of such
tagging based KM is another area for future research.
India has been undergoing a rapid growth. The growth of
offshore-development centers and R&D facilities of many IT
companies have exposed Indian workforce to other work cultures.
Such employees may not be aligned to the traditional national
culture of India. An impact such a change and trends of culture
across less-developed and more-developed parts of India could
be undertaken.
105
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9 APPENDIX
9.1 Semi-structured Interview Questionnaire
1. You have had extensive experience with Knowledge

Management. From your opinion, what were the pain points
with a KM strategy and implementation, if any?
2. What were the systems used for managing knowledge prior
to the introduction of Web 2.0?
3. In your opinion, do the Web 2.0 philosophy and technology
fit into the KM practice? Do they even mesh or are they
complete separate things?
4. Web 2.0 is supposed to be about ‗wisdom of crowds‘ and
tapping the ‗collective intelligence‘. Do you believe that KM
systems earlier did not fulfill this role?
5. How did Web 2.0 enter into your organization? Was it
introduced as a strategy in a top-down manner or was it
adopted in some units and then expanded to broader
audience?
6. Web 2.0 is generally considered to be a mixture of
following. Which do you think will play a role in KM
strategy in the near future (1-3 years):
a. Blogs
b. Wikis
c. RSS
d. Social Networking
e. Podcasts
f. Tagging / Social bookmarking
g. Shared workspaces
h. Web services
7. With respect to Indians and the Indian culture, do you see
anything specific that:
a. Helps in knowledge management?
b. Hampers in knowledge management?
8. For a small IT organization in India, investing in KM may
not appeal. In the typical cost/benefit analysis, short term
could win over the long term KM efforts.
a. How would you justify the RoI for a KM program?
117
b. Does Web 2.0 tools (being free) help in this analysis
in any way?
c. How would you define RoI for Web 2.0 programs?
9. What are the typical risks & challenges in using Web 2.0
at an organizational level? What according to you could
help in mitigating these risks?
10. What do you feel should be the focus of top management
while introducing Web 2.0 as a knowledge sharing system?
11. Cognizant 2.0 and ChannelOne – please can you tell the
story of how they were planned and introduced?
12. The challenges with these systems – especially moving
towards an open system where people could write
potentially write anything.
118
9.2 Sample Questionnaire
Section 1: Organizational Culture
Objective
These questions relate to what your operation is like. Each of these items
contains four descriptions of organizations. Please distribute 100 points among
the four descriptions depending on how similar the description is to your
business. None of the descriptions is any better than any other; they are just
different. For each question, please use all 100 points. You may divide the
points in any way you wish. Most businesses will be some mixture of those
described.
Kind of organization (please distribute 100 points) Score

My organization is a very personal place. It is like an extended
A family. People seem to share a lot of themselves.
My organization is a very dynamic and entrepreneurial place.
B People are willing to stick their necks out an take risks.
My organization is a very formalized and structural place.
C Established procedures generally govern what people do.
My organization is very product oriented. A major concern is
D with getting the ob done, without much personal involvement.
Tota
l 0
Leadership (please distribute 100 points) Score

The head of my organization is generally considered to be a
A mentor, sage or father/mother figure.
The head of my organization is generally considered to be an
B entrepreneur, and innovator, or a risk taker
C coordinator, an organizer, or an administrator
D producer, a technical, or a hard-driver.
Tota
l 0
What holds the organization together (Please distribute 100

points) Score
The glue that holds my organization together is loyalty and
A tradition. Commitment to this firm runs high.
The glue that holds my organization together is commitment
to innovation and development. There is emphasis on being
B first.
The glue that holds my organization together is formal rules
and policies. Maintaining a smooth-running institution is
C important here.
The glue that holds my organization together is the emphasis
D on tasks and goal accomplishment. A production orientation
119
is commonly shared.
Tota
l 0
What is important? (Please distribute 100 points) Score

My organization emphasizes human resources. High
A cohesion and morale in the firm are important.
My organization emphasizes growth and acquiring new
B resources. Readiness to meet new challenges is important.
My organization emphasizes permanence and stability.
C Efficient, smooth operations are important.
My organization emphasizes competitive actions and
D achievement. Measurable goals are important.
Tota
l 0
Neither
Strongl Agree
y Nor Strong
Disagr Disagr Disagr Agre ly
Question ee ee ee e Agree
1 2 3 4 5
In our organization, there is
excellent communication between
line manager and staff people
People trust each other in this
organization
Decision making in our organization
is participative
A friendly atmosphere prevails
among people in our organization
In our organization, people feel they
are their own bosses in most
matters
Section 2: Knowledge Management
Objective
To understand how the existing knowledge, know-how and information exchange
takes place
Question Response
Is there is a single source/portal through which all documents related to
project, process, different teams, policies, business proposals, etc can
be accessed?
Does your organization have a Enterprise level knowledge
sharing/management system?
120
Do you know how and when the project/process related document
needs to be updated?
Are there standard templates for creating the documents?
If yes, who creates the standard? Is it arrived by experience as a best
practice or is it decided by management?
Do you have discussion forum/community pages where specific
questions to experts can be raised?
Question (please distribute 100 points)

Project information is generally shared between teams via (please
distribute 100 points) Score
Emails
Portal
Project related repositories/ shared workspace
CMS/Document management system like Sharepoint
Total 0
Who decides what information should be shared and who should

receive the information? (Please distribute 100 points)
Senior management
Middle managers
Team leads / Immediate managers
All employees
Total 0
With regards to sharing project knowledge or experience, what is

the role of team members? Score
Complete freedom on content and context of how and to whom
information/knowledge needs to be shared
Prepare a document/PPT and share it with team and publish it to
intranet system
Prepare a draft and send it to centralized team that handles distribution
of knowledge to all teams
No role. Decision on knowledge aspects rests with specified managers /
gatekeepers
Total 0
How are employees motivated to contribute towards knowledge

sharing? (Please distribute 100 points) Score
Financial rewards - bonus/perks
Loyalty points / gifts
Recognition and special privileges (eg: distribution list moderators)
Nothing special as such
Total 0
How is corporate information/objectives/goals communicated

across the company? Score
Company-all emails
CEO/Senior Management corner on Intranet
121
Senior managers communicate in meetings
Total 0
For the following

question, please To a To a
rate each aspect very Somewhat very
on a scale of 1 to large to a large small
5 extent extent Somewhat To a small extent extent
Rate your
organization on
each aspect
related to how it
handles
innovation and
sharing of
knowledge 1 2 3 4 5
A. We have a very
well-defined
approach to
identify problem
and solving it. We
have a process
that clearly
explains how a
new project starts
and how it
progresses.
B. Experimentation
(20 % time on
internal projects),
Proof of Concepts
and Specialist
teams. We ensure
that experiments
are avenues for
learning and failure
is not penalized.
C. We record
information like
issues faced,
design of new
product, issues
with software like
platform, etc.
D. We record 'soft'
information like
'this customer
prefers calls as
opposed to emails'
or the customer's
preferred time to
call, etc. so that
122
the interaction is
more fruitful.
E. Once we learn
something useful,
it is shared and
readily available
for use within the
company. We
ensure that others
know by publishing
white papers, best
practice guide and
expert-list
database.
Section 3: Web 2.0
Objective
To identify the usage (if any) of Web 2.0 and tools, and to analyze how it is being
deployed
Question Option
Is your company using the following Web 2.0 tools for internal
use?
Web services
Blogs
Wikis
Podcasts
Social networking
Tagging / Social bookmarking
Peer-to-peer
Mashups
Are there leaders/senior managers who lead the initiative and

encourage participation?
Does your organization have experience in Open Source tools /

systems?
If Web 2.0 is used internally, where is it used? Please choose all

that apply.
Managing Knowledge
Fostering collaboration across company
Enhancing company culture
Training
Developing products or services
Internal recruiting
123
Other internal
Neither
agree
Strong Somewhat nor Strongly
Question agree agree disagree Disagree disagree
How is Web 2.0 tools
generally adopted in
your company? 1 2 3 4 5
Senior managers and IT
department identifies
new technologies and
introduces it
Business identifies new
technologies and asks
IT department to
implement it
Team members use it
outside work and
introduce it to their
teams
Team starts to use
external tools for
corporate use and
management decides to
bring the technology in-
house (eg: Blogger,
Facebook, Twitter)
Corporate level
discussions take place
and Web 2.0 is
introduced with a very
well-defined strategy
Web 2.0 gets introduced
at team levels and then
consolidated for better
use across company
Neither
Has Web 2.0 changed agree
the way company Strong Somewhat nor Strongly
operates? agree agree disagree Disagree disagree
It has changed the way
senior management
communicates with the
employees
124
we share knowledge.
Instead of older
systems, we use new
tools like blogs and
wikis.
teams communicate,(eg:
less reliance on emails,
usage of wikis, usage of
chat/instant messaging)
Neither
agree
Strongly Somewhat nor Strongly
Barriers for Web 2.0 agree agree disagree Disagree disagree
My company's not clear
on the ROI provided by
using Web 2.0 tools
My company's culture
doesn't encourage use
of Web 2.0 technologies
No incentives to adopt
or experiment with Web
2.0 technologies
My company's
organizational structure
is too hierarchical
My company doesn't
have the technical skills
to implement Web 2.0
technologies
My company's
leadership doesn't
encourage Web 2.0
technologies
Legal/HR risks of Web
2.0 is perceived to be
higher than its benefits
Neither
agree
Strongly Somewhat nor Strongly
Future of Web 2.0 agree agree disagree Disagree disagree
My organization plans to
expand use of Web 2.0
My organization is
planning to integrate
Web 2.0 into existing
processes like
Knowledge
Management
My organization is
planning to replace
125
existing systems like
Document management
system with Web 2.0
systems
My organization is
planning to upgrade
search functionality to
use tags and social
bookmarks
126

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IS WEB 2.

Dissertation submitted to Oxford Brookes University for the partial

fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF

This dissertation is a product of my work and is the result of

nothing done in collaboration.

I consent to University‘s free use of the whole or any part of

item of this Dissertation, to include online or electronic

reproduction and adaptation for teaching and education activities.

I agree that this dissertation may be available for reference and

photocopying at the discretion of the University.

Word Length: 16,153 words.

I‘d like to thank my supervisor Dr. Hassall for the multiple

reviews and the invaluable comments that he provided. He was

always present to help me and in ensuring that I tried my best.

their time and thoughts.

Finally, I‘d like to thank my wife for being so

understanding and my family for providing me the encouragement

and support while working on the dissertation.

Knowledge management as a discipline has met with

varying levels of success and failure. Web 2.0 is a disruptive

new concept. With its emphasis on sharing and collaboration and

foundation on 'user generated content', it promises to promote a

bottom-up culture of knowledge sharing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if Web 2.0 is

aiding in the process of Knowledge Management, from the

perspective of India based organizations. Not much of published

research is available on KM or on Web 2.0 in India despite

Indian being a preferred destination for IT. The purpose of

research is to address the question of whether using Web 2.0

concepts, tools and technologies is improving the Knowledge

Management effort in the India-based IT organizations.

Perhaps a limitation of the research is the smaller research

group identified due to resources. A larger employee base in

organizations would have provided a much wider opinion on the

perception and use of the Web 2.0 technologies.

2. Literature Review .......................................................................... 4

2.1 Knowledge and ‗knowledge creating company‘ ................... 4

2.2 The Learning Organization .................................................... 6

2.2.1 Individual and organizational learning ............................ 9

2.2.2 Types of organizational learning .................................... 9

2.2.3 From Organization Learning to Knowledge

2.3 Knowledge Management ...................................................... 13

2.3.1 Structure, Culture & Technology in KM ...................... 14

2.5 Collaboration, participation and Web 2.0 ........................... 26

2.5.1 What is Web 2.0? ......................................................... 26

2.5.2 Principles and Characteristics of Web 2.0 .................. 27

2.5.3 Organizational Structure & Culture and Web 2.0 ...... 30

2.5.4 Technology and Web 2.0 ............................................. 33

2.5.5 Current Usage of Web 2.0........................................... 36

2.5.6 Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management ....................... 40

2.5.7 Challenges with Web 2.0.............................................. 43

2.6 India – National Culture ...................................................... 51

2.7 India – Knowledge Management & Web 2.0 .................... 54

3 Research Methodology ............................................................... 58

3.1 Research Objectives............................................................. 58

3.2 Research Methodology ......................................................... 59

3.3 Research Design .................................................................. 59

4.1 Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture......... 66

4.2 Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Management ............ 70

4.3 Web 2.0 – Perception and Usage ..................................... 74

4.4 Survey Summary .................................................................. 81

4.5 Web 2.0 and KM – Management Perspective.................. 82

4.5.1 About KM – Current state and challenges ................. 83

4.5.2 Where does Web 2.0 fit in? ........................................ 85