Designing a Knowledge Management System: A Sensemaking Perspective

Knowledge management (KM) aims to provide a foundation to support an organizations sustained competitive advantage by building and sustaining the value and uniqueness of organizational knowledge resources and processes. From an inductive theory-building case study of an organization struggling with the design of its knowledge management system (KMS), a conceptualization of KM as a sensemaking system emerged. This takes place in a sensecrafting environment whose principal components are contexts, triggers, knowledge actors, and dynamic tensions.A key finding is the central role played by knowledge actors in crafting sense and driving change in KMS initiatives. They were active players in designing their own shape and trajectory. Multiple organizational contexts were found to be of particular importance to sensemaking around knowledge management. Change in the KMS was found to be driven from two different sides. First, triggers for KMS change originate in organizations strategic actions and reactions to events in external environment. Additionally, this study uncovered the action of proximate triggersclose-at-hand triggers into which effects of more distant triggers are funneled and that initiate change processes within the KMS. Second, dynamic tensionsnaturally-occurring organizational paradoxes never fully and finally resolvable, yet which must be addressed in designing any systeminterface between organization and KMS and serve as levers for an ongoing process of sensemaking around organizational knowledge. Movement and interplay among these components leads organizational participants to greater understanding of the role knowledge and information resources play in contributing to the organizations sustained competitive advantage.The sensecrafting environment comprises the core of an organizations KMSthe knowledge management pyramid. This pyramid has three layers; KM as a sensemaking systemthe focus of this studyoccupies the middle layer. It is the workings of the corethe sensecrafting environmentthat allows an organization to move from utilizing KM to enhance operational effectiveness and efficiency at the foundational information processing layer through utilizing KM to make sense of knowledges value to the organization to utilizing KM to transform the organization itself. Implications for further theory development are addressed. Key concepts in the model suggest design parameters for organizations building KM systems.