ABSTRACT
Modern work teams face challenges that make the use of technology to manage information and knowledge particularly attractive. Geographic dispersion (O’Leary & Cummings, 2007), dramatic membership changes (Lewis, Belliveau, Herndon, & Keller, 2007), and the use of contract and part-time workers (Kalleberg, 2000) each present challenges to nonmediated knowledge management. Knowledge management systems (KMSs), or “a class of information systems applied to managing organization knowledge” (Alavi & Leidner, 2001, p. 114), are one solution used to manage these new work complexities. While knowledge flows are important throughout the knowledge life cycle (Nissen, 2002; Nonaka, 1994), knowledge management systems have been primarily developed to enable the organization, formalization, and distribution of information. The purpose of this chapter is to set forth a network model of knowledge flows among agents in a work team that accounts for both trends in KMSs and work teams. Work teams, for the purposes of this chapter, will be defined broadly as individuals working together to achieve a common goal. The chapter focuses primarily on the organization, formalization, and distribution of information, and embraces the information-processing approach to knowledge management (see Chapter 10 in this volume for a relational approach). First, this chapter reviews the current communication theory and research that examines knowledge sharing among work teams, then it suggests that new models of organizing and modern KMSs require a shift in research trajectory and proposes several networks likely to influence the use of such systems.
