Global social knowledge management - Understanding barriers for global workers utilizing social software

Henri Pirkkalainen, Jan M. Pawlowski

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    55 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Utilizing social software as a part of a global knowledge management strategy has raised increasing interest in enterprises as well as in the educational domain. Rather than being proactive, organizations tend to face barriers related to knowledge management after the problems occur. When dealing with social technologies in a distributed setting, organizations and individuals face a variety of barriers currently unrecognized in knowledge management literature. Within the study, we analyze knowledge management literature extending the body of knowledge with barrier analysis regarding global challenges as well as social software. Our focus is especially on knowledge exchange and globally distributed collaboration activities in organizations. We argue for contextualized understanding of the barriers, recognizing the challenges studied in similar activities. The paper concludes with a synthesis of these interrelated components, proposing a Global Social Knowledge Management-barrier framework that demonstrates the wide spectrum of possible challenges in globally distributed, social software supported knowledge management activities.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)637-647
    Number of pages11
    JournalComputers in Human Behavior
    Volume30
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jan 2014
    Publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Keywords

    • Barriers
    • Global collaboration
    • Knowledge management
    • Knowledge sharing
    • Social software

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
    • Human-Computer Interaction
    • General Psychology

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