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Bridging Artifacts and Actors: Expertise Sharing in Organizational Ecosystems

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Abstract

We synthesize findings from longitudinal case studies examining work practices in three different organizations and propose analytical and methodological frameworks to guide the design and implementation of technologies for expertise and knowledge management. We appropriate the concept of ecosystem to argue that we can create active and useful solutions for knowledge management through a focus on interaction between two mutually intertwined elements of an ecosystem—artifacts and actors. We show that in expertise and knowledge sharing systems domain knowledge and technological knowledge are complementary and we present evidence that small solutions can have far reaching effects. Finally, we make a case for full integration of IT developers as an element of expertise sharing ecosystem.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information Systems, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Volkmar Pipek & Volker Wulf

  2. Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Aditya Johri

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  1. Volkmar Pipek
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  2. Volker Wulf
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  3. Aditya Johri
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Correspondence to Volkmar Pipek.

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Pipek, V., Wulf, V. & Johri, A. Bridging Artifacts and Actors: Expertise Sharing in Organizational Ecosystems. Comput Supported Coop Work 21, 261–282 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-011-9138-y

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