Weblogs as a Panacea for Organizational Knowledge Sharing and Creation? : Identifying Contingency Factors by Comparing two Antithetic Cases of Product Development

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The use of weblogs as an information and communication technology (ICT) for knowledge sharing and creation is a novel social and organizational phenomenon. In this paper, we identify and explain contingency factors that influence the successful use of weblogs for knowledge sharing and creation in the context of product development. We start from the assumption that successful knowledge management requires the motivation of people to engage in knowledge-related communication. However, several studies indicate that ICTs do not always improve organizational knowledge sharing and creation as a result of a missing motivation to use ICTs. Thus, we discuss two antithetic cases, first an agglomeration of weblogs that deal with the development of commercial software and second the weblogs of the intranet of a European research institute. Based on a comparison of both cases we identify and discuss four contingency factors that directly influence the motivational impact of weblogs on organizational knowledge sharing and creation.