Social knowledge management

Social media are not only transforming private communication & interaction, they also will transform how people work. With social media knowledge work in organizations can be optimized extremely: like a better distribution/sharing and access to knowledge. This will be more and more important, as in today's business world, speed and complexity increase dramatically, while work environments change constantly . Social knowledge management is one of the application areas of social media in a business context next to others like sentiment analysis, social learning or social collaboration.

Definition

Social knowledge management can be defined as applying social media in the knowledge management context to identify, share, document, transfer, develop, use or evaluate knowledge. Another Definition of social Knowledge Management is the management of social knowledge - where the aim is then more economic development - not only individual competitive advantage by companies (based on authors like Lazlo & Lazlo).

Benefits of social Knowledge Management

Benefits are higher user-productivity & performance, when e.g. users can solve problems better & faster. Through crowdsourcing of user generated content organizations can better leverage the collective and hidden knowledge of the organizations stakeholders - and increase organizational learning. On the other hand the Millennials/ Generation Y uses social media as their natural communication & working tools the tools - so to attract & retain talented young employees it is also important to use social media. In regards to knowledge management, social media put the focus on the individual, empowering the user e.g. to search, create & share user generated content easily and thus creates a new momentum for Knowledge Management.

Application scenarios of social Knowledge Management

• Increase knowledge quantity through leveraging user generated content
• Use social review methods like ratings, comments to increate the quality of knowledge
• Integration of social media tools and applications into organizations business context to improve knowledge access and sharing - and leverage the benefits of social media in all relevant work contexts
• Leverage social media concepts to increase motivation to share knowledge, e.g. gamification, communities of practice
• Use advanced, self-learning search providing context relevant results
• Help to learn on demand and informally using social learning tools

Social Knowledge Management can be applied in many organizational processes, like in customer service, employee-supplier collaboration, or in people development & education.

Examples of Social KM solutions

• Knowledge Plaza, European solution which combines social tagging, bookmarking and networking paradigms to address internal information management purposes.
• Sciomino, a tool for Social Knowledge Management. ()

Further reading

• Gurteen, David, 2012. Leading Issues in Social Knowledge Management. A collection of important Social Knowledge Management papers. Published by Academic Publishing International. ISBN 978-1-908272-38-6.
• Laszlo, K. C., & Laszlo, A. (2002). Evolving knowledge for development: The role of knowledge management in a changing world. Journal of Knowledge Management, 6(4), 400-412.
• Von Krogh, G., Ishijo, K., & Nonaka, I. (2000). Enabling knowledge creation: How to unlock the mystery of tacit knowledge and release the power of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195126167
• Charles Camic, Neil Gross, and Michèle Lamont (2011). Social Knowledge in the Making. ISBN 978-0226092096
• Kenneth E Russell, Renee La Londe, and Fred Walters (2014). Social Knowledge: Organizational Currencies in the New Knowledge Economy. ISBN 978-0692284780

External links

• Social Breathes New Life Into Knowledge Management For Customer Service. (Blog, Retrieved 12/18/2012 - social Knowledge Management for customer service)
• Social Knowledge Management Practice. (iTalent Social Knowledge Management)