The Social-Technical View of Knowledge Management in Services Industries

Problem statement: This study investigated the social-technical view of knowledge management that supported a close social and technology relationship on automotive industry in Australia. It also examined the impacts of legacy EDI groupware technology as a mean to support knowledge management in providing value creation for an automotive company. The industry viewed legacy EDI groupware as an agent in converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. Approach: It was a descriptive study. In this study, an undertaking explored the implementation of this groupware application, its organizational impact, success factors and success indicators and this using the framework and analysis of legacy EDI groupware, which incorporated the objectives, strategies, success indicators and success factors. The study presented the finding of a case study of an automotive company, who contracted an external website design consultant to implement legacy EDI groupware system on their sites. The report explored the website design consultant company in order to gain an alternate perspective of topics and issues raised by the study. Results: In this study, legacy EDI groupware technology had successfully offered infrastructure to the automotive industry, which supported the acquisition of knowledge and enhanced the environment that supported the creation and management of knowledge artifacts. Conclusion: The choice and use of the legacy EDI groupware project as a means of supporting knowledge management in providing value creation for automotive industry, was because of the belief that this technology was able to provide a strategy for managing and exploiting knowledge. This project also served to help automotive industry in understanding its knowledge asset, i.e., the value of its knowledge and in assessing that the successful application of its knowledge.