Using wikis in knowledge management - Pros, cons and in-between

Web 2.0 services are being used in knowledge management systems (KMS) more and more as they gain popularity continuously. One of the most well known web 2.0 tools is the wiki. A wiki is a space (similar to a usual website) where people can contribute with their knowledge and experience freely, browse or search for entries made by others (just like in internet web pages through any internet browser software) and also they are provided with the ability to modify published content (Richardson, 2008). A lot of organizations are considering the usage of wikis as a KMS or as a part of their KMS and there are quite a few organizations that are already using wikis for knowledge management purposes effectively (Hasan and Pfaff, 2006).

The reasons that organizations chose to use wikis as knowledge repositories are clear. There are a lot of advantages such as abolishing the need of having a webmaster or a group of people updating the organizations intranet and/or knowledge repository by themselves or even eliminate the need of having an organization intranet by replacing it with a wiki. Also, a wiki does not require specialized training or knowledge to use and it is highly customizable (Andersen 2005, Blake 2001, Hasan and Pfaff 2006).

While the benefits of using wikis in knowledge management are more or less clear there are some problems that are frequently overlooked. As Hasan and Pfaff (2006) point out there are organizations that are quite skeptical on using a wiki as part of their KMS due to the disadvantages they might face by the usage of this tool. The major issues of incorporating a wiki are (Andersen 2005, Hasan and Pfaff 2006, Henriksson et al 2008, Wiki Advantages and Disadvantages 2009)

· improper usage

· track down user & organization benefit

· recognition of contributor

· eradicate traditional hierarchical organization structure

· quantity and quality issues

All the mentioned issues are of high importance and must be considered before deciding to go ahead and use a wiki as part of the organizations KMS but none of them should be considered as prohibitive. For example, a wiki manager or a wiki team can be appointed by the organization to monitor the wiki activity (but not to censor or control it as this would be strongly against the liberal nature of the wiki). By monitoring the wiki the content can be validated and if needed discussions with the author(s) can take place. Furthermore, the wiki team can be used to provide feedback to top level management such as amount of clicks in the wiki pages, amount of articles contributed, active users, etc to provide some kind of measurement which can help the organization to make some estimation on the benefit of the wikis usage.

As far as the contributor’s recognition and even his/her reward is concerned, some people like Andersen (2005) suggest that members of the organization should be encouraged to contribute for the wikis but with moral rather than material rewards. I disagree with that statement. I believe that it is better to reward those who contribute with a tangible reward as this way they feel that their contribution got them something more than just a pat on the back.

The most serious obstacle in initiating wiki usage in an organization is overcoming the strict hierarchical structure that a lot of organizations are built up on (Hasan and Pfaf, 2006). As it was mentioned, the wiki is distinguished by its liberal nature. This liberal nature comes against strict hierarchical structures that carry barriers to the free flow of knowledge. It is hard to convince such organizations to use a wiki even though the benefits are clear since there is no remedy for this issue. The organization has to accept the idea of free knowledge flow and understand the potential payback of this ‘retreat’ or simply reject the wiki concept and retain their current strategies.

As a closing statement I think it is important to consider this. In a case study made in Finland (Henriksson et al, 2008) it is indicated that no one tried to sell them the idea of using wikis but it came up spontaneously from within the employees and all the companies who introduced the wikis in the organization has stick with them. This proves that people like wikis, use them systematically and certainly want them into their organizations.

References

Andersen, E. (2005). Using Wikis in a Corporate Context. http://www.espen.com/papers/Andersen-2005-corpwikis.pdf (accessed March 18, 2009).

Blake, J. WikiWikiweb. Computerworld, January 29, (2001). http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2001/0,4814,56996,00.html (accessed March 13, 2009).

Hasan, H. and Pfaff, C. C. (2006). The Wiki: Anvenvironment to revolutionize employees’ interaction withvcorporate knowledge. OZCHI 2006, November 20-24, Sydney Australia. New York: ACM Press, 377-380.

Henriksson, J., T. Mikkonen, T. Vadén. (2008). Experiences of Wiki use in Finnish companies. MindTrek. P. 150-153.

Richardson, W. (2008). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms Edition: 2, illustrated. Corwin Press.

Wiki Advantages and Disadvantages. (2009). http://www.wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/What_is_a_wiki/Advantages_and_disadvantages (accessed March 14, 2009).

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