Use of wikis in organizational knowledge management

Abstract

This article presents the mapping of wiki tool functions in the organizational processes of knowledge management. Mapping these functions and their individual weights in the overall process will identify opportunities for decision-making and the optimization of knowledge sharing, a recognized asset in differentiation and organizational competitiveness. This is an exploratorydescriptive case study based on data collected from a questionnaire applied to 80 IT workers employed at a multinational company in Brazil. The use of mixed methods in data analysis was complemented by content analysis of the research corpus created. A theoretical model is graphically developed following Nonaka and Takeuchi’s knowledge spiral model (1997), a conventional model in knowledge management. In addition, an indicator of the individual contribution of each step in the conversion process of tacit into explicit knowledge is introduced. This case study alone does not enable a generalization of the findings. Therefore, a replication of the process and especially multiple testing of the constructed indicator are indispensable to its validation. Validation of the use of the wiki tool functions will allow the future development of measurements that can be directly employed in the organizational decision-making process. Statistically, a theoretical model is qualitatively discussed, which enables the construction of an initial indicator of the weight of individual contribution of steps in the knowledge generation process using the knowledge spiral model.