2016-02-10 research seminar, second part

1. Establishing Learning Goals as
Boundary Objects for
Knowledge Organization
Systems
Participatory Design Research
JÖRGEN JAANUS

2. Problem – Dysfunctional Knowledge
Management Platforms
• Knowledge Management platforms are taken as „nice to have“: They
fall between controlled work processes and endeavor for professional
growth and thus do not contribute to business targets.
• Knowledge Management platforms fall between ongoing and
automatic peer communication and reluctance to contribute to the
abstract knowledge base beyond community and geographical
location.
• Out of box software solutions – insufficient focus on cultural and
business aspects

3. Selected comments and expectations on Knowledge
Management platform from case studies:
• Systems have to be more user friendly
• Knowledge Management is too complex
• We need to have context based search
• We want to have usable tool
• We need to get people to understand the system completely
• Information to be delivered just in time packed as snippets
• New (next generation) document management with collaboration
space
• Clear expectations on KM roles and responsibilities within corporation
• LESS IS MORE

4. Case Study Background
• The professional services company operating in five European countries
has gained several industry awards. Knowledge management has been
the key part of their strategy and several KM platforms have been
implemented. Those are: knowledge management module in CRM;
automated documents; assignment library; lessons learned as a section
in intranet.
• Case study on knowledge organization systems from integrated
perspective comprising personal, organizational and industry-wide
perspectives is well positioned in the company where the focus on
knowledge management and related practices are relatively advanced. It
enables to shift the focus from dispersed technological agenda to more
integrated organizational issues.

5. Knowledge processes in case study
• The Knowledge Processes represent a range of different ways of
making knowledge. They are forms of action, or things you do in
order to know.
• Based on tens of interviews, document analysis and application
software tests we have established the following knowledge
processes:
1) establishing context for the individual documents in assignment library for
learning and re-use;
2) creating personal learning goals based on the types of assignment and roles
withing assignment;
3) connecting internal and external knowledge bases for seamless performance
support by presenting integrated information snippets.

6. Commodification of knowledge
• In a knowledge-based society, particular emphasis is placed on the
utility of knowledge for commercial purposes.
• Commodification of knowledge, is defined not through what it is, but
through what it can do (Gilbert 2013) and it pursues to capture the
transformation of knowledge embedded in working practices into
abstract systems of knowledge. (Hellström, Raman, 2001).
• The process of knowledge reuse and knowledge creation needs to be
balanced by integration of routine and structured information
processing, non-routine, and unstructured learning at collective level
in the same business model, and according to Ford et al (2013) KM
efforts represent attempts to formalize these processes.
• Turning KM budget from cost to revenue budget

7. Current Progress - Publications
• Dynamic and Stabilizing Forces in Knowledge Organization Systems for
Business Ecosystems (with Prof. Tobias Ley)
• Knowledge Organization Systems
• Knowledge Maturing
• Digital Ecosystems
• Aligning Knowledge Development between Innovation-Driven Context
and Knowledge Organization Systems (with Prof. Tobias Ley)
• Social Semantic Technologies
• Business Rules
• Concept compounding
• Knowledge alignment
• Managing Requirements Knowledge in Business Networks: A Case Study
(with Prof. Tobias Ley and Maria Sihver)
• Requirements Knowledge
• Business Networks
• Cross-organizational Requirements Engineering
• Process Development

8. Research Questions
• Finding ways on how to integrate business and cultural aspects in KOS
design;
• Investigating alternatives on how to integrate personal and collective
perspective in establishing learning goals;
• How we could make corporate metadata more effective for
accommodating learning perspective.

9. Road Ahead - Conceptual Layers
Business Layer Products; processes
Embedded KOS
Term lists; taxonomies;
glossaries; ontologies
Participatory Design
Direct participation of users
and other stakeholders in
system analysis and design
work

10. Road Ahead - Conceptual Layers
Business Layer Products; processes Knowledge organization systems (such as glossaries,
taxonomies etc.) connect services, organizational
designations, roles and types of information.
Embedded KOS Term lists; taxonomies;
glossaries; ontologies
Knowledge management in inherently interwoven with
learning at collective level which integrates both the personal
and cross-organizational perspective, represented by KOS.
The inability to integrate those perspectives hinders the
business value of knowledge management systems.
Participatory Design Direct participation of users
and other stakeholders in
system analysis and design
work
Working with communities to compose digital
representations of themselves. Participatory design is
described as a highly dynamic process. Therefore, it is
something that also includes linear co-design processes and
consensus building.
Boundary object as a tool in design process
Case Studies
Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 ....... Case 4 Case 5
Theoretical Framework Connectivism learning theory
Digital anthropology
Activity theory
Enterprise architecture

11. Proposed Solution
• Ontology as shared conceptualization - connecting products;
processes and tasks.
• Postmodern view on the business value of knowledge
• Lingua franca
• Game theory
• Learning goals as boundary objects
• Participatory design which considers dynamic and stabilizing forces

12. Boundary Objects – real life examples
Risk materialized Risk management
(Customer) payment overdue Account management
Receivables management Legal
Cash flow management Financial management
Collateral Treasury management
Scoring process
Significant event
audit
Overtime Department management
Shift planning Operations management
Additonal salary Accounting
Regulated working hours Employment administration
Identified unique skills Training department
Service level target

13. Concept of Boundary Objects
• Boundary objects are plastic, interpreted differently across
communities but with enough immutable content to maintain
integrity.
• The role of the boundary object is not the by-product of organizing
knowledge but it is essential to consider KOS as artifacts becoming
mediators of distributed cognition as described by Wallace and Ross.
• This perspective has broadened the value of KOS from solely
standardization and findability to coordination and sense-making,
consequently fueling the efforts to advance towards the higher end of
semantic spectrum.

14. Process view on cases
Knowledge
Organization
(Taxonomy or
glossary)
Collaboration
spaces
Connecting
knowledge to
people and
processes
Questions
Comments
Proposals
Extended
knowledge base
Performance
support
Innovation
management
Learning goals

15. Preliminary conclusions
• Applying participatory design in developing Knowledge Management
platforms shifts the focus from software to business and cultural
aspects.
• Participatory design leads to connecting of private level KOS and
collective level KOS and consequent learning effort.
• Boundary objects supplement corporate metadata and create
learning oriented architecture.

16. Jörgen Jaanus
jorgen.jaanus@hotmail.com
Thank you!