HiKMas: Cultural Behavioural and ontology based approach towards a Holistic Knowledge Management System Design

This paper discusses the Holistic Knowledge Management System design which is based on culture, behavioural and ontology approach that addresses the need to support a better management of the tacit and explicit knowledge, learning processes, knowledge creation, sharing and transfer; and continuous learning. The Cultural Behaviour concept models some characteristics of users interacting with a knowledge management system and acknowledges the behaviour of users in the system that can be associated with incentives so that users are willing to share their knowledge and be active in the system. The framework designed focuses on three features, i.e. the cultural behaviour of people in the organization, incentives system and technical system. Detailed analysis was conducted on the cultural behavioural perspectives of users based on existing cultural practiced in the organization and factors that can motivate staff to share knowledge through the KM system was also looked at. Based on the analysis performed, it was discovered that the behaviour of KM users may be influenced by the technical system. From the technical system, the behaviour of users can be identified and the system rewards a form of incentive to staff that share knowledge. The methodology in developing this system involves identifying KM initiatives towards developing methodologies to convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge that can be codified, captured, stored, transmitted, used and be acted on by others. The knowledge system architecture proposed gives emphasis on the three main components namely the people, process and technology. The architecture designed had focused on the interaction between employees in the organisation through the use of the platform provided in the Internal Generated Repository (IGR), and the User Profile Editor; knowledge warehouse (External Knowledge Acquisition and Environmental Scanning) that enables access to internal and external repositories, infrastructure provided and the enabling environment (Knowledge Maintenance subsystem and Knowledge Manipulation)