Functional model of a sense‐emerging assistant for knowledge construction and management

This paper aims at presenting the functional model of a “sense‐emerging assistant knowledge management system” (SEA‐KMS) intended to assist the emergence of sense in activities supporting the user in the attribution of full sense to what he is doing.

The design of this KMS is based on the theoretic background of narrative/passion semiotics and the concept of sense as oriented meaning of actions. SEA‐KMS is designed to provide user‐supportive functions to help the user in understanding the value of his activity: contextualise the user in his activity in relation to the overall activities as well as give him personalised assistance from the theoretical and practical aspects of the activity in order to mitigate working situations possibly felt as alienating.

Assisting the user in attributing full sense to the value of his activity fosters his further knowledge construction, which will eventually result in a more effective and satisfactory accomplishment of the task. This assistance policy can prove to be particularly effective if knowledge from user‐monitoring is exploited to select and provide the user with the opportune knowledge in a contextualized way.

The major expected practical implication is the global benefit as a result of increased individual awareness in the activity and in the overall organizational processes.

The system tries to make sense emerge in an individual, by punctually acting to mitigate passion‐related behaviours which often emerge as an individual sense‐path as a reaction to alienating working situations.