A Knowledge Management System in a KnowledgeIntensive Business: An Exploratory Study in a GlobalICT Company

Sammanfattning: To increase competitive advantage, organizations are developing how they manage internalknowledge. This has been tackled by implementing various Knowledge Management Systems,which have been developed based on the needs of specific teams and/or latest trends. Suchapproach is problematic since it does not take into consideration what the users currentKnowledge Management practices are, nor if the system is relevant for a larger mass.The purpose of this thesis is to identify what requirements from users, regarding content andfeatures, are relevant to focus on when designing a Knowledge Management System, targetedtowards knowledge intensive businesses. To examine this, an exploratory research approachhas been applied on a global Information and Communication Technology (ICT) company.100 semi-structured interviews were conducted, with employees located at various globallocations and with varying job roles, in order to get a detailed picture of the user requirementson a Knowledge Management System. The interviews were later sorted and analysed by usingthe Technology Acceptance Model, and quantified by calculating the frequency count on thedifferent requirements. The findings were later reduced, based on their generalizability, inorder to facilitate a list of user requirements that are relevant to focus on, when constructing aknowledge management system for a knowledge intensive business.The results show that there are several aspects to consider in the creation of a KnowledgeManagement System, meant for a knowledge intensive business. The majority of these aspectsare related to increased findability of relevant & updated document and colleagues, receiveinformation about internal operations and lessons learnt from previous projects. Examples ofthese requirements are a semantic search engine, news feed and interconnected repositories.