Developing Strategies for Overcoming Barriers to Knowledge Sharing Based On

Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427

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Expert Systems with Applications

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Developing strategies for overcoming barriers to knowledge sharing based onconversational knowledge management: A case study of a financial company

Daegeun Hong a,⇑, Euiho Suh a, Choonghyo Koo b

aPOSMIT Lab., Dept. of Industrial & Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science & Technology, San 31, Hyoja-dong, Nam-gu, Pohang, Kyungbuk 790-784, Republic of Koreab KFTC Bundang Center, Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute, 10-3, Jeongja-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do 463-811, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o

Keywords:Knowledge sharingBarriers of knowledge sharingConversational knowledge managementCommunity of practiceWeb 2.0

0957-4174/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.eswa.2011.04.072

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 54 279 5920; faxE-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Hon

Suh), [email protected] (C. Koo).

a b s t r a c t

Knowledge management involves the systematic management of vital knowledge resources and theassociated processes of creating, gathering, organizing, diffusion, utilizing and exploiting information.A key challenge emerging for organizations is how to encourage knowledge sharing within an organiza-tion because knowledge is an organization’s intellectual capital and is of increasing importance in gaininga competitive business advantage. Isolated initiatives for promoting knowledge sharing and team collab-oration without taking into consideration the limitations and constraints of knowledge sharing can haltany further development in the KM culture of an operation. This article investigates knowledge sharingbottlenecks and proposes the use of conversational knowledge sharing as an effective instrument forknowledge sharing. And to develop strategies, this paper determines the causes and effects of knowledgebarriers and proposes solutions by using HOQ. The article introduces a financial company case study as abest practice example of conversational knowledge sharing. Then, the paper analyzes the case study toprovide evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

� 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Knowledge management involves a myriad of procedures andtechniques used to get the most from an organization’s explicitand tacit know-how (Teece, 2000). While defined in many differentways, knowledge management generally refers to how organiza-tions create, share, and retain knowledge (Argote, McEvily, &Reagans, 2003). A key challenge emerging for such organizationsis how to encourage knowledge sharing because knowledge isthe organization’s intellectual capital, and is of increasing impor-tance in establishing the competitive advantage of an organization.In order for such a model to exist, individual members of the orga-nization must make this knowledge available by sharing theirknowledge with co-workers.

Knowledge sharing is the most important critical success factorof all knowledge management strategies. Effective knowledgesharing practices allow individuals to reuse and regenerate knowl-edge at the individual and organizational level (Chaudhry, 2005).However, at the heart of knowledge sharing, two types of bottle-necks exist; individual and organizational barriers. Individual bar-riers include internal resistance (Barson, 2000), trust (Barson,Foster, Struck, Ratchev, & Pawar, 2000), motivation (Disterer,

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2001) and a gap in awareness and knowledge (Bureš, 2003). Orga-nizational barriers consist of language (Bureš, 2003), conflict avoid-ance (Bureš, 2003), bureaucracy (Disterer, 2001) and distance(Nonaka, 1991). Effective knowledge sharing occurs when appro-priate solutions are built into an organization.

Despite the wide agreement that knowledge sharing occurswithin a social context, current attempts at effective knowledgesharing continue to put a heavy emphasis on knowledge deliveryand technology (Hong, Koo, & Suh, 2009). However, knowledgesharing is basically about people’s interaction and its byproduct.This requires a change in focus from a technology-driven approachto a people-driven approach in the area of knowledge manage-ment. In other words, with the evolution of technology, the para-digm of knowledge management is shifting from a conventionalapproach to a conversational approach. With technology as themedium, new conversational based knowledge management ischaracterized by a combination of formal and informal knowledgesharing within a social context.

As the focus is put on human factors, the main limitations foreffective knowledge sharing such as collaboration are related tohuman nature and the lack of an adequate motivation policy (Honget al., 2009). In this context, conversational knowledge sharingappears to be an instrument which can overcome behavior con-straints and help to manifest the emergence of a new organiza-tional culture. For these reasons, we noticed not only the needfor causal connections and guidelines to overcome barriers to

14418 D. Hong et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427

knowledge sharing in organizations but also the need for improve-ment in conversational knowledge sharing approaches to over-come barriers to knowledge sharing in organizations. The mainobjective of this paper is to investigate knowledge sharing barriersand to propose the use of conversational knowledge sharing basedon CoP (community of practice) and Web 2.0 to remove barriers.The article demonstrates the opportunity for more effective knowl-edge sharing through the use of HOQ (house of quality). Also, thisstudy empirically analyzes an integrated operation and a mainte-nance community as a case study to provide evidence for the fea-sibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach. In order toprovide a deep understanding of conversational knowledge shar-ing, the means to breakdown the barriers to knowledge sharingwill be discussed in more detail via a case study.

In order to seeking a solution to the problems of organizationalknowledge sharing, this paper makes the following argument. Sec-tion 2 gives an overview of knowledge sharing in organizationsincluding two types of knowledge sharing barrier and some of theprevious approaches taken to overcome knowledge sharing barri-ers. Then, Section 2 investigates the knowledge management para-digm in conversational knowledge sharing and examines ininvolvement of CoPs and Web 2.0. Section 3 proposes a methodol-ogy for overcoming the barriers to knowledge sharing based onconversational knowledge management in an organization. In orderto solve the problems mentioned in Section 3, we will attempt tofind the causes and effects of knowledge barriers by using HOQ.Section 4 explains the integrated operation and maintenance of aconversational knowledge management system as a case study.Section 5 discusses solutions to ease knowledge sharing bottle-necks. Also we will attempt to validate the strategies by applyingit to a sample company.

2. Literature review

2.1. Knowledge sharing in an organization

According to Nonaka and Takeouchi (1995), knowledge creationshould be viewed as a process whereby knowledge held by individ-uals is amplified and internalized as part of an organization’sknowledge base. From this point of view, a lot of organizationalknowledge is accumulated and managed at the individual level(Staples & Jarvenpaa, 2001). Members in the organization capture,store, use, and modify the knowledge that they use in their dailyactivities at work (Lam, 2000). Thus, knowledge is created andshared through interaction between individuals at various levelsin the organization. In other words, organizations cannot createknowledge without individuals and a group, and the knowledgeis likely to have a limited impact on organizational effectivenessunless individual knowledge is shared with other individuals andthe group.

Ackerman, Pipek, and Wulf (2003) considered the followingthree types of knowledge sharing within organizations; knowledgeretrieval, knowledge exchange and knowledge creation. Knowl-edge retrieval means that the main feature of knowledge sharingbetween organizations and individuals is the means to retrieveexisting organizational knowledge. Knowledge exchange explainsthat the purpose of knowledge sharing between individuals is toexchange existing personal knowledge. Finally, knowledge crea-tion explains that the main goal of knowledge sharing betweenindividuals is to generate new knowledge, resulting in new combi-nations of existing individual, shared or organizational knowledge.

Knowledge sharing is basically the act of making knowledgeavailable to others within the organization. Knowledge sharingbetween individuals is the process by which knowledge held byan individual is converted into a form that can be understood,

absorbed and used by other individuals. Knowledge flow is con-cerned with the development of channels or networks betweenknowledge providers and seekers (Shin, Holden, & Schmidt,2001). Knowledge flow in an organization is fundamentally drivenby communication processes and information flows.

Knowledge sharing between individuals is also a process thatcontributes to both individual and organizational learning (Nidum-olu, Subramani, & Aldirch, 2001). Huber (1991) identified four fur-ther knowledge concepts that contribute to organizationallearning; knowledge acquisition, information distribution, infor-mation interpretation and organizational memory. The concept ofknowledge sharing presented in this article is linked to bothknowledge distribution and knowledge acquisition. The voluntaryact of sharing knowledge by an individual contributes to knowl-edge distribution. The process of sharing may also result in knowl-edge acquisition by other individuals within the organization.Knowledge sharing between individuals thus results in individualslearning, which in turn may contribute to organizational learning.

2.2. Barriers to knowledge sharing in an organization

Knowledge management systems have become easier to use re-cently with higher productivity and effectiveness due to the sup-port of technology. However technology has often beenconfronted with a problem sometimes called the ‘‘cultural wall’’(McDermott & O’Dell, 2001) in an organization. Cultural factorsare considered to intrinsically inhibit knowledge transfer. Theyinclude a lack of trust, different cultures and vocabularies, a lackof time and meeting places, a lack of absorptive capacity fromrecipients and the belief that knowledge is the prerogative of par-ticular groups (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). The main problemscome from of cultural restrictions that can be divided into individ-ual and social barriers (Bureš, 2003).

We can regard internal resistance, trust, motivation and a gap inawareness and knowledge as the main individual barriers. Passingon knowledge to colleagues or putting work results into a knowl-edge database may be felt and considered as a revelation, becauseit announces that this knowledge has a certain value and is uncom-mon. Also, trust is an influence on both the receipt and the propa-gation of knowledge. If an individual does not trust the informationor knowledge that they receive, they are clearly unlikely to makefull use of it (Barson et al., 2000). At the same time, some employ-ees do not anticipate reciprocal benefits from transferring theirknowledge since they do not accept these benefits or they do notexperience it (Disterer, 2001). In addition, some workers have lar-gely only an awareness of problems but they do not know anythingmore. It has an influence in that they do not want to listen to thingsagain that they already know (Bureš, 2003).

On the other hand, we can identify language, conflict avoidance,bureaucracy (Disterer, 2001) and distance as the main social barri-ers. Sometimes certain languages are used only in one section,department or division so it is unintelligible for others (Bureš,2003). The result is that in some companies the lack of a primarylanguage is a perceptible problem (Krogh, 1998). And sometimeswe can observe the effort people make to avoid change and tonot risk too much. This can influence knowledge and approachesthat have new ideas and innovative points of view can be lost(Bureš, 2003). Also, high levels of bureaucracy from organizationalinstitutions often result in the use of procedures and approachesthat have a negative effect on knowledge sharing. In addition geo-graphical separation may also result in the companies working indifferent cultural, legislative or linguistic environments. Face-to-face communication is the most efficient method of communi-cation, but the geographical location of the organizations maymean that this is not possible (Nonaka, 1991).

D. Hong et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427 14419

To overcome the knowledge sharing barriers that existed forindividuals and organizations in Table 1, several papers have sug-gested methods. McDermott and O’Dell (2001) identified culture asone of the key inhibitors of effective knowledge sharing. So he pro-poses a link between sharing knowledge and solving businessproblems; builds a framework on the existing networks peopleuse in their daily work. However, this approach just focuses onlinks and the collection of knowledge in a centralized repositoryand its accessibility.

On the topic of the transfer problems in knowledge manage-ment, Cantoni, Bello, and Frigerio (2001) focused on culture andlocalization. He argued that Web technologies and using a varietyof organizational structure systems can lower the barriers toknowledge transfer. However his research just focused on technol-ogy and did not explain the use of causal connections to overcomebarriers.

Rosen, Frust, and Blackburn (2007) did research on how as-signed constraints in building trusting relationships can be a bar-rier to knowledge sharing; e.g. technology constraints onknowledge sharing or failure to develop a memory system. As abest practice solution for overcoming barriers, he mentioned theneed to adapt technology to what a virtual team needs by buildinga memory system. Yet it is a notional approach and it just focuseson the collection of knowledge technology and does not focus onconversational knowledge management.

In research by Disterer (2001), he described various individualand social barriers that hinder people from sharing and transfer-ring their knowledge. From analysis he drew up some suggestionson how to overcome these impediments. He detailed how organi-zations need to strive for a culture of accepting mistakes and not topenalize errors and to develop a common set of patterns and valuesfor an organization to solve their trust problems. Informal andface-to-face communication reduces the distances between work-ers and executives. However this was just a conceptual approachand there is a need to explain the causal connection to overcomebarriers and apply the principals to a real case to figure out howto share and use knowledge between members of an organizationTable 1.

2.3. Paradigm shift from conventional KM to conversational KM

With the evolution of technology, the paradigm of knowledgemanagement is shifting from a conventional approach to a conver-sational approach. Traditional knowledge management focuses onthe collection of knowledge in a centralized repository and makingit accessible. In other words, a knowledge network in an organiza-tion is the key enabler for knowledge workers to communicate

Table 1Two types of barrier to knowledge sharing in an organization.

Type Barrier Description

Individualbarriers

Internal resistance Passing on knowledge to colleagues or putand considered as a revelation

Trust If an individual does not trust the knowled

Motivation Some employees do not anticipate recipro

A gap in Awarenessand knowledge

Some workers have largely only awareneswant to listen to things again that they alr

Organizationalbarriers

Language Certain languages are used only in one sec

Conflict avoidance The effort to avoid change and do not risk

Bureaucracy High level of bureaucracy often use proced

Distance Geographical separation may result in theface communication as the most efficient m

with each other (Stewart, 2001). An organization is capable of link-ing valuable knowledge that resides in business competencies intoa shared domain based using information and communicationtechnology. Also, Lan and Unhelkar (2005) explained that theknowledge sources of an organization should originate from bothintra and inter organizational sources.

In contrast, conversational knowledge management focuses onthe knowledge network infrastructure and collaboration forknowledge creation among knowledge workers. Wagner (2006)identified knowledge acquisition bottlenecks and proposed theuse of collaborative conversational knowledge management to re-move them. Iverson and Mcphee (2002) described the new ap-proach to knowledge management as a ‘‘community of practice(CoP)’’. A CoP is a group of people who have worked together overa period of time and through extensive communication have devel-oped a common sense of purpose and a desire to share work-re-lated knowledge and experience. Members of a CoP may not stayin the same geographical location, share the same time zone oruse the same operating systems but should be on the same knowl-edge network (Lee & Lan, 2007). The knowledge network is a pow-erful driver for knowledge sharing between the members of anorganization. Furthermore, CoP has been identified as effective locifor the creation and sharing of knowledge (Lave & Wenger, 1991).CoP pursues the idea of a human based conversational approach. Itis presented in Table 2.

However, CoP has limitations. One of the problems is the fadingback or withdrawing of individuals, traditionally known as beingabsent (Haythornthwaite, Kazmer, Robins, & Shoemaker, 2000).LeBaron, Pulkkinen, and Scollin (2000) point out that culturaldifference among individual participants can act as barriers tocommunication. Different cultures can hinder the ‘‘cultural’’ deve-lopment of the community of practice itself (Wenger & Snyder,2000). Also Oliver and Herrington (2000) note that content of asyn-chronous discussion can become poor and superficial withoutcoaching and scaffolding. Furthermore Oliver, Omari, and Herring-ton (1998) found that collaboration was richer among participantswho knew each other.

In order to overcome CoP’s limitation, it needs to dynamic andevolving knowledge within a real-time process (Sharratt & Usoro,2003). And communication tool, creation of social networks,shared organizational goals and objectives, learning entities, createa knowledge structure for the organization, incubators for thestimulation of innovation, ensure collaboration across geographi-cal boundaries are strongly needed. The CoP along with the Inter-net and Web connectivity has greatly increased the popularity ofthese conversational technologies in recent years. Major types oftechnology now facilitate the sharing of conversational knowledge

Author

ting working results into a knowledge database may be felt to be Barson et al.(2000)

ge that they receive they are clearly unlikely to make full use of it Barson et al.(2000)

cal benefits from transferring their knowledge Disterer(2001)

s of problems, but they do not know anything more They do noteady know

Bureš(2003)

tion, department or division, so it is unintelligible for others Bureš(2003)

too much Bureš(2003)

ures and approaches that result in worse knowledge sharing Disterer(2001)

companies working in different cultural environments Face-to-ethod of communication

Nonaka(1991)

Table 2Community of practice characteristics.

Author CoP characteristic

Gherardi and Nicolini (2000) – The sum of this community knowledge is greater than sum of individual participant knowledgeWenger and Snyder (2000) – Learning communities produce artifacts and histories that aid in the transfer of knowledge and the increase of understandingBielaczyc and Collins (1999) – Knowledge is expanded through discussionPowers and Guan (2000) – Self-motivating factors and enabling self direction of participants is essentialBielaczyc and Collins (1999) – Peer interaction enables negotiation and co-construction of the community of practiceSoden and Halliday (2000) – Expert-to-apprentice relationships are a key concept in communities of practiceGrisham, Bergeron, and Brink (1999) – Safety and trust within a community of practice are important

Fig. 1. Framework of the methodology.

14420 D. Hong et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427

through knowledge networks include discussion forums and in-stant messenger clients.

From the available state-of-the-art KM techniques, Web 2.0 hasemerged as the key to enable more advanced technological supportfor a user’s knowledge work (Wagner, 2004). The term was offi-cially coined in 2004 by Dale Dougherty, a vice-president ofO’Reilly Media during an internal team discussion while planninga future Web conference. Following its conception by O’Reilly Med-ia, Web 2.0 has taken on an important roll in the KM field. Web 2.0utilizes the idea of an open source environment and its aim is toshare goals, share the work and share the results (Goetz, 2003).So Web 2.0 opens the possibility of a two-way interactive methodto enable knowledge providers to contribute knowledge content toa shared domain. Moreover, knowledge content can be edited andfine tuned to maintain its up-to-date status at any time (Lee & Lan,2007). Also Web 2.0 applications can maximize the enormous col-lective intelligence of a user community while also providing abenefit to each individual user (Hoegg, Martignoni, Meckel, & Stan-oevska-Slabeva, 2006).

In addition Web 2.0 has resulted in a paradigm shift from theWeb as a submissive information resource to the Web as a plat-form for the delivery of attractive services and experiences (Kelly,2006). A summary of Web 2.0 technology is presented in Table 3.But, due to Web 2.0’s openness and ease of use it can be problem-atic to gauge the reliability and accuracy in organization (Boulos,Maramba, & Wheeler, 2006). And Web 2.0 has been observedmainly in the use of the Internet by consumers, the trend of utiliz-ing the Web 2.0 technology in-house are recently emerging amongprivate enterprises (Yukihiro, 2007).

3. Research methodology

3.1. Methodology overview

The overall framework of this research is shown in Fig. 1 and theframework consists of six phases. In this study, the house of quality(HOQ) is used to find the solutions to overcome the barriers toknowledge sharing outlined in Phase 1 to Phase 3. As with ordinaryHOQ processes, the ‘‘What’’ and ‘‘How’’ variables are established inPhase 1 and Phase 2, respectively. The relationship between the‘‘What’’ and ‘‘How’’ variables is identified in Phase 3. Based onthe result of HOQ, applicable strategies to yield participation,

Table 3Web 2.0 technologies.

Technology Description

AJAX – IT stands for ‘‘Asynchronous JavaScript and XML’’ and it is a group ofapplication

RSS – IT stands for ‘‘Really Simple Syndication’’. RSS is currently being widefeeds to users

Wikis – A Wiki is a software program that allows users to collaboratively creaBlogs – IT is a ‘‘Web journal’’ or ‘‘Web log’’, which is a specialized Web service

and personal insights with online audiencesRIA – IT stands for ‘‘Rich Internet Application’’, where a more responsive, i

sharing and openness between employees will be developed inPhase 4. In Phase 5, the strategies developed in Phase 4 will beapplied to a company ‘‘K’’ which has an existing KMS. In Phase 6,to validate the usefulness of the strategies developed in this study,a user-survey is performed.

3.2. Phase #1: list of customer requirements

The basic concept of QFD is to translate the desires of customersinto product design or engineering characteristics, and subse-quently into characteristic parts, process plans and productionrequirements. Each translation uses a matrix, called the HOQ, foridentifying customer requirements (CRs) and establishing the pri-orities of design requirements (DRs) to satisfy the CRs (Hauser &Clausing, 1988). The HOQ offers casual connection between cus-tomer’s requirements and engineering characteristics.

So in this study, the typical HOQ processes used in variousapplications are customized to solve the problems of knowledgesharing. The barriers to knowledge sharing can be the problemsthat individuals or organizations need to solve and both the KMtool and the technologies based on conversational knowledge

inter-related web development techniques used for creating interactive web

ly used in media companies on a subscription-basis to deliver real-time news as

te, edit, link, and organize the content of a website, usually for reference materialthat allows an individual or group of individuals to share a running log of events

nteractive and richer user experience is enabled by using a thick client

Fig. 2. Application of HOQ.

Table 4Use of KM tools or technical terms to apply HOQ.

Author Description

Tan, Xie, and Chia (1998) – Use of graphics, Integrate links into text– Provide download information with links– Adequate and updated links– Decrease size of page to increase loadingspeed– Speed of computer and communication

Alavi (1999) – Integrated databases, Intelligent agents– Larger bandwidth, Global IT infrastructure– Consistent suite of email and web products– Fast retrieval , Security of data

Chen, Yang, Lin, and Yeh(2007)

– Real-time communication, videoconference– Bulletin board system, e-learning system– Discussion forum, e-mail, e-paper

D. Hong et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427 14421

sharing can be considered as engineering characteristics. The pro-posed application of HOQ is to examine the choices of KM tools andtechniques against the requirements and objectives of Knowledgesharing. The attempted approach is to select the appropriate KMtools and technologies and then propose the type of KMS for theparticular case. Fig. 2 represents the elements of HOQ for thisapplication.

There are methods which evaluate each choice of Knowledgesharing approach to help choose the appropriate KM tools or tech-nologies. The requirements and objectives of knowledge sharingadoption are considered to be input parameters; whereas the pri-oritized KM approaches are considered as output parameters. Thisapplication highlights the consideration of different approaches tosee which are best suited to each diverse organization. The differ-ent contexts and knowledge sharing objectives of each organiza-tion requires a customized application of KM. By using HOQ inthis application, the organization needs to consider the actualobjectives and requirements of KM and then, match the best suitedKM approach.

As mentioned above, barriers to knowledge sharing, which areanalogous to customer requirements are set to be the ‘‘what’’ vari-ables. The variables relating to barriers against knowledge sharingare Internal resistance, trust, motivation, a gap in awareness andknowledge, language, conflict avoidance, bureaucracy and distancewhich are as shown in our literature review.

3.3. Phase #2: list of technical terms

Phase 2 is a step which derives the engineering characteristicsto overcome the barriers to knowledge sharing. The engineeringcharacteristic of this problem is the conversational knowledgesharing approach. To derive engineering characteristics, previousliterature reviews about improving KMS through the used ofHOQ were extensively searched. The engineering characteristicsfound in the literature are set as the ‘‘how’’ variables. The ‘How’variables are further modified to include the characteristics ofCoP and Web 2.0 technology in order to find a KM tool that sharesconversational knowledge. Previous literature reviews about theapplication of KM tools or technical terms in HOQ are presentedin Table 4. Integration, link, speed, bandwidth, security, real-timecommunication, video conference, bulletin board, e-learning, dis-cussion forum and e-paper are also mentioned in the literaturereview.

Variables relating to CoP and Web 2.0 will be established fromthe results of the literature review and presented in Section 2.4.The characteristics of CoP are informal space, interaction, bestpractice, self motivation and learning. These CoP characteristicsare used as variables. The characteristics of Web 2.0 technologiesare AJAX, RSS, Wikis and Blogs. These characteristics of Web 2.0are set as ‘how’ variables. The results of step 1 and step 2 are pre-sented in Fig. 3.

3.4. Phase #3: developing the relationship

Phase 3 is a step which establishes the cause and effect relation-ship for the variables found in Phase 1 and Phase 2. To find the rela-tionship, the importance and customer satisfaction of barriers toknowledge sharing are surveyed from users of KMS in a 5 point lik-ert-scale. Then, by using an interview and meetings with a knowl-edge management operator, and KMS developer, the correlationbetween barriers, KM tools, and techniques is examined. The pur-pose of the interview and meeting is to examine the existing appli-cable technologies for KMS. A strong correlation, semi-strongcorrelation, weak correlation and no correlation are assigned tothe scare as 9, 3, 1, and 0 points, respectively.

The next step is to have a meeting with a KMS developer andknowledge management manager to reflect the first correlationfound in the survey. The purpose of this meeting is to examinetime, human resources, development difficulty and company con-ditions and include these in the correlation matrix. Based on theHOQ calculation results, the priorities of required technologies,actual existing barriers to the success of knowledge sharing andparts that need improvements in KMS are analyzed.

3.5. Phase #4: developing strategies

Phase 4 is a step to develop strategies to facilitate an employee’sparticipation, in a shared and open way, based the derived correla-tion and data analysis from Phase 3. To develop the strategies thefollowing requirements must be embraced. First, a new communi-cation channel which uses KM tools and techniques to induce easyand convenient knowledge sharing among employees should beconstructed. Second, the existing KMS system should be upgradedto reduce knowledge sharing barriers among employees. A surveyshould be performed to examine the employee’s satisfaction on the

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new channel, and on the new upgraded KMS system to validatehow much the developed strategies has contributed to the reduc-tion of knowledge sharing barriers.

4. Case study

Company K is an institution in charge of operating diversifiedeasy-to-use payment services for member banks and customersthrough the establishment of a payment system serving as the coreinfrastructure for the Korean financial industry. It was establishedin 1986, and it has about 800 employees. A knowledge manage-ment project in company K started in 2001. The knowledge man-agement system for company K was constructed in 2002 andconverted into a portal service system in 2004. Recently the coreknowledge management of the company was carried out basedon the CoPs activities. The CoPs activities were launched in 2006.It consists of job practice CoPs, project CoPs, learning & researchCoPs and special interest groups. To illustrate the applicability ofthis research, a survey was conducted on company K’s KMS basedon this research methodology.

4.1. Developing the relationship

For steps 1 and 2, as explained earlier, two stages are alreadydefined for the survey in Sections 3.2 and 3.3. For the step 3 activ-ities, we composed a questionnaire based on an activity check listas specified in Fig. 3. The survey for this study consists of 26 ques-tions asking the relative importance of each measure based onFig. 3 and 8 questions asking about customer satisfaction. Relativeimportance was asked for on a 9 point likert-Scale, and customersatisfaction was asked for on a 5 point likert-scale. The surveyquestionnaires were distributed to the employees of company Kwho actually used KMS between Oct. 12, 2009 and Oct. 16, 2009through e-mails and interviews. Forty out of the total of 60 distrib-uted surveys were collected and analyzed. The 8 factors about bar-riers to knowledge sharing were analyzed to find the relativeimportance of each factor by using the AHP parallelism comparisontechnique. For parallel comparison, the Consistency Index waschecked using the Expert 2000 software. Nine datasets with a con-fidence index greater than 0.2 were excluded from the analysis.Customer satisfaction about the existing KMS’s barriers to knowl-edge sharing was analyzed in a 5 point Scale. The score was calcu-lated by using the arithmetic mean of each factor as shown in Table

Fig. 3. Results of s

5. Scores for customer importance and satisfaction are presented inTable 5.

The analysis results indicate that motivation, internal resistanceand bureaucracy exhibit a high relative importance to overcomebarriers to knowledge sharing. The result also implies that conflictavoidance, bureaucracy and language factors in the existing systemneeds to be improved in the existing system.

After conducting a survey of KMS users, interviews and meet-ings with KMS operators and developers were held in order to findthe correlation between conversational knowledge sharing basedKM tools and technologies. The result of the first interview andmeeting is shown in Fig. 4.

Then, as shown in the Phase 3 methodology, a second set ofmeetings and interviews with KM managers and operators washeld to identify the practical and applicable KM tools and technol-ogy which reflect the company’s current conditions. Using the cal-culation method from Phases 3 and 4, the HOQ was constructed.The finalized HOQ is as shown in Fig. 5.

4.2. Developing strategies

Based on the HOQ analysis result, strategies to facilitate the par-ticipation of employees in a shared and open knowledge manage-ment system can be developed. First, an online communication siteis constructed as one of the strategies. The online communicationsite will provide an informal space through a Q&A board and freediscussion board which allows anonymity and reply functions.

Moreover, in a change to normal procedure, an innovation mindchannel is created to spread the organization’s vision and strate-gies to organization members more effectively and to provide aplace for employees and administrative managers to communicatewith each other. A complimentary channel is also created to en-hance the employees’ connectivity to each other. The constructionof online communication sites not only provides a new functionbut also provides improvements to the existing system throughthis upgrade. In comparison to the current existing system, thisKMS helps members of company K to more easily access theKMS system and to participate and share knowledge through thesystem. The KMS also improves the pop-up functions and adds apersonal knowledge management system, and embraces a flexibleknowledge management function.

The system also enhances the privacy and security of individualsby allowing users to set the sharing range of their knowledge. All of

teps 1 and 2.

Fig. 4. Developing the relationship.

Fig. 5. Developing the relationship – final version.

Fig. 6. Online communication channel.

D. Hong et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427 14423

the features in the KMS increases the flexibility of knowledge shar-ing and provides opportunities to members to access the broadknowledge available in KMS. At the same time, the KMS would havea best quality knowledge marking function which helps users to

identify high quality knowledge more easily in the knowledge bankand would have a Wiki function that allows users to edit their ownmessages more conveniently and to manage knowledge moreefficiently.

Fig. 8. Open-management discussion channel.

Fig. 7. Open-management discussion channel.

Table 5Relative importance and customer satisfaction.

Barriers of knowledge sharing Relativeimportance

Customersatisfaction

Type Barrier

Individualbarriers

Internal resistance 0.152 2.903Trust 0.117 3.161Motivation 0.194 3.097A gap in awareness andknowledge

0.120 3.032

Organizationalbarriers

Language 0.103 2.452Conflict avoidance 0.108 2.774Bureaucracy 0.133 2.452Distance 0.072 3.645

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4.3. Implementation of conversational knowledge sharing

4.3.1. On-line communication channelThe on-line communication channel has sub-menus which im-

prove the accessibility of the site. The sub-menus include open-management discussion, a change-innovation mind channel, acompliment channel and Q&A. The new online communicationchannel is shown in Fig. 6.

Open-management discussion is shown in Fig. 7. One can sug-gest new discussion topics in an open-management discussion. Ifthe suggested topic is selected, the provider of a topic will berewarded with KM points and gift certificates to facilitate themotivation of open-management discussion.

Also as shown in Fig. 8, anonymity in discussions is guaranteedto induce more members to participate in discussions. The systemalso offers real time feedback on the original messages or replays.Also the system adds the recommendation function for the postedreply. If the reply receives multiple recommendations from KMSusers, the author of the reply and original post receives km pointsor gift certificates.

A compliment channel is shown in Fig. 9. Through the compli-ment channel, an exemplary team or employee can be praised. Acompliment article can be written by any employee of the com-pany. Every operation division selects and rewards the best mem-ber of their team who contributes to the growth and developmentof company culture every quarter.

A Q&A channel is shown in Fig. 10. In the Q&A channel, partic-ipants can pose questions and get answers about business relatedtopics as well as non-business related topics. Participants in a Q&Achannel will be rewarded with knowledge mileage. To improve thequality of questions and answers in Q&A, a satisfaction indicator isused to mark ‘‘good knowledge’’.

4.3.2. KMS system upgradeBy upgrading the existing KM system, conversational knowl-

edge sharing has been improved. First, a tagging function wasadded. The tagging function allows users to search for messageswritten by themselves and other knowledge more easily. Alsousers can put a tag on their favorite knowledge or the most use-ful knowledge. Second, a user can set the sharing range of data

Fig. 9. Compliment channel.

Fig. 10. Q&A channel.

Table 6Relative importance and customer satisfaction.

Barriers of knowledge sharing Customersatisfaction

Type Barrier Before After

Individual barriers Internal resistance 2.903 3.484Trust 3.161 3.839Motivation 3.097 4.000

D. Hong et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427 14425

and selectively share knowledge with selected members. Third,an alarm function for newly registered articles or knowledge isadded. The user can send an alarm pop-up about new knowl-edge to selected users. Forth, from the KMS upgrade, non-mem-bers can request to access permission to member-onlyknowledge. If the permission is granted, a non-member can getaccess to knowledge. Fifth, KMS enhances the individual knowl-edge management function. The user can extensively managetheir personal accounts and messages. Also users can searchfor data based on community title, author or tag. Sixth, data inthe sharing board can be moved when needed. It allows moreefficient knowledge sharing with other users. The user can alsoimprove the efficiency the data moving operation by using apop-up function. Seventh, the best knowledge mark as deter-mined by recommendations by the CoP manager is introducedto the KMS. The knowledge is stored in a knowledge bank andis open to every member of company K once the knowledge isselected as a best knowledge entry. Lastly, a Wiki function isadded so that the author of a post and others can easily editand update messages.

A gap in Awareness andknowledge

3.032 3.710

Organizationalbarriers

Language 2.452 3.161Conflict avoidance 2.774 3.677Bureaucracy 2.452 3.452Distance 3.645 3.839

5. Validation

To validate the effectiveness of the strategies proposed in thisresearch, this paper used a questionnaire. The validation survey

scrutinized how strategies affect customer satisfaction to over-come the barriers to knowledge sharing. The survey used a 5 pointlikert-scale model. To compare the before and after results, thesame respondents performed the survey twice. The survey was dis-tributed between Nov. 10, 2009 to Nov. 13, 2009 through e-mailand interviews. The survey results are presented in Table 6.

To visualize this result, Fig. 11 shows the result of the ques-tionnaire in a radiated diagram. The survey result indicates thatthe developed strategies significantly reduce the problems of

Fig. 11. Questionnaire results.

14426 D. Hong et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 14417–14427

bureaucracy and conflict avoidance. The HOQ result implies thatcompany K’s most urgent problem, i.e. informal space, could besolved by the proposed strategies. However, the result indicatesshows only slight improvement for the distance factor. Becausethe existing KMS system is hosted on the Web, the distance fac-tor is not heavily affected by the upgrade process.

6. Conclusions and future works

The knowledge management theoretical and practical literaturereview emphasized the need to overcome barriers to knowledgesharing as a major factor for the potential success of KM withinan organization. Individual and social barriers often prevent effec-tive knowledge sharing. It is therefore necessary to identify andeliminate or minimize as many of these barriers as possible.

To combat the individual and social barriers we proposed theuse of conversational knowledge sharing to address the problems.Furthermore, we identified that knowledge management shiftedfrom a conventional approach to conversational approach. So weexamined the characteristics and limitations of CoP and Web 2.0,which are parts of a people-driven approach to knowledgemanagement.

Based on a case study, and by using HOQ, we identified thecause and effect relationship for knowledge barriers and developedstrategies to overcome them. Then, the developed strategies wereapplied to Company K and the effectiveness of the strategies wasvalidated by a survey.

With respect to all of the above information, this paper contrib-utes as follows. Firstly, the developed strategies eliminated theknowledge sharing barriers based on the use of conversationalknowledge sharing. As a result of the employee’s participation, ina sharing and open manner, efficient and effective knowledge shar-ing became possible.

Secondly, this research provided a causal connection to over-come the barriers to knowledge sharing in an organization. Also,the study matched Knowledge barriers with methods to overcomeeach matched barrier.

Lastly, the research provided guidelines and methodology forsuccessful conversational knowledge sharing. Based on this re-search’s guidelines and methodology, other industry and organiza-tion’s knowledge sharing problems can be solved.

However, the strategy of this study was only implemented forone financial company, so it is difficult to generalize to other indus-try and organizations. Thus, further study is needed to develop

detail strategies in another industry and organization based on thispaper’s guidelines and methodology.

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