Sharing Knowledge on Knowledge - The eXact Peripheral
Expertise Awareness System1
Markus Won
(Institute for Computer Science III, University of Bonn
won@cs.uni-bonn.de)
Volkmar Pipek
(Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI)
pipek@cs.uni-bonn.de)
Abstract: This paper presents an innovative approach to solve
the problem of missing transparency over competencies within virtual organizations.
We based our work on empirical studies on the problem to cope with the
problem of competence finding in such distributed organizations. Former
studies have shown that central storage of profiles is inappropriate due
to missing flexibility and high costs of maintenance. The focus of our
approach presented here is to support the peripheral awareness of competence-indicating
events. Those events can be collected, stored and interpreted by the system
without further work of the users. This idea is based on existing works
on the awareness in computer-supported cooperative work scenarios.
Keywords: Groupware, Knowledge Management, Expertise, Awareness
Category: H.5.3
1 Introduction
Many modern organizations can be seen as network organizations. Their
participants are individuals as well as organizations, who cooperate in
distributed teams. Especially in knowledge-intensive domains (service engineering,
consulting, etc.) project teams are made up of participants from different
disciplines and organizations to unite their special competencies and to
match project necessities. Problems occur when trying to establish a shared
knowledge management for those teams respectively for the participating
individuals and organizations.
An important challenge here is to give mutual orientation of the respective
competencies to every team member, as it is usually embedded in the cultural
practice of collocated work settings. Consequently, when thinking of computer
support for those settings, not only shared distributed knowledge databases
and appropriate retrieval systems have to be organized but also the missing
peripheral awareness which is essential for working within a team has to
be compensated electronically.
1A short
version of this article was presented at I-Know '03, (Graz, Austria, July
2-4, 2003).
Our approach concentrates on the demand that competencies within a network
or virtual organization [Picot et al. 98] have to
become more transparent. Members of "traditional" companies get
to know each other in a "natural way" through office sharing,
business lunches, periodical meetings, etc. Virtual organizations are characterized
by
- highly distributed work scenarios,
- mainly computer-based cooperation,
- highly (organizational as well as legal) independent partners, and
- temporally limited cooperation.
So, peripheral awareness on colleague's competencies becomes a much
harder problem. Some reasons that can be derived from the characteristics
of virtual organizations and the missing shared work practices and organizational
cultures are:
- Lowered motivation to present own competencies (because of temporal
cooperation)
- Difficulties in building a joint organizational culture (because of
the fragmented work settings)
- Lowered willingness to participate in group's activities and to do
work on the shared infrastructure
The intensive use of computer-based communication and cooperation can
be seen in two ways: On the one hand the expressiveness of communication
is lowered by media as email (in contrast to personal face-to-face communication),
on the other hand, one can try to use the information (and meta-information)
which are automatically generated by the use of computer-based cooperation.
So the idea presented in the following is to use the concept of awareness
systems [Sandor et al. 97] (known from the groupware
context [Johansen 88]), to capture competence-indicating
parts of the daily working processes and generate information based on
derived hypotheses on the competencies of group members.
In the next section we will give a short overview on existing works
which deal with the idea of supporting peripheral awareness within groupware
settings. Furthermore we will describe basic concepts in the field of knowledge
management, which have an influence on our work, and integrate both areas.
After that we will describe our view on virtual organizations and problems
regarding their knowledge management concepts in more detail. Here, empirical
findings taken from the project OlViO (Organizational Learning in Virtual
Organizations, see www.olvio.de) are discussed. Finally we present our
concept of Peripheral Expertise Awareness and a first prototypical implementation.
2 State of the art
In most virtual organizations collaboration is done via groupware systems.
Such systems provide for several communication techniques (email, video-conferencing,
shared workspaces, news groups, workflows, etc.). Some of them have integrated
awareness facilities [Mark et al. 97]. Awareness
services generate information about other users' working and using behavior.
For example one gets to know if a document is replaced, an email is sent,
etc.
Research on electronic support of peripheral expertise is done for
more than a decade. It is derived from the idea that in work context
not only explicitly published information is relevant but also
implicitly ones are [Heath and Luff 92]. This
idea was integrated in the context of computer-supported cooperative
work where events relevant to the working context are stored and
distributed to the users [Dourish and Bellotti
92], [Rodden 96], [Benford and Fahlen 93].
There are two problems with these approaches: First, the privacy of
the users is tangled [Schultze and Vandenbosch 98],
[Bellotti and Sellen 93].
The second problem is that most of the information generated and distributed
by the system is irrelevant to most of the users [Hiltz
and Turoff 85], [Schultze and Vandenbosch 98].
Those problems are addressed by configurable awareness systems [Rauschenbach
96]. They have to be addressed individually whenever implementing an
awareness system into an organizational context.
The problem of making competencies transparent can be seen as part of
the more general problem of broadcasting meta-knowledge which was raised
by [von Krogh and Venzin 95]. They discussed five
main tasks that have to be performed by knowledge management. The technical
support of knowledge management within organizations was oriented mainly
by the idea of creating an organizational memory [Walsh
and Unger 91]. This resulted in the management of huge distributed
information bases (i.e. [Akscyn et al. 88]). This
approach has some shortcomings. For example [Bannon and
Kuuti 96] noted that these solutions isolate knowledge from working
processes in which it is needed.
Other approaches concentrated on the support of communication [Ackerman
and Malone 90] due to the fact that not all the knowledge can be made
explicit [Nonaka and Takeuchi 95]. In this context
the idea of virtual information and communication spheres that can be adapted
cooperatively was discussed [Shum 97].
Recent approaches take into account that not only information has to
be organized but information sources, that are human experts (i.e. [Ackerman
and McDonald 96], [Yimam and Kobsa 02]). In many
cases this is done automatically. Ontologies are used to characterize and
categorize experts. For example, [Groth and Bowers
01] argue that the expertise recommender approach [Ackerman
and McDonald 96] uses heuristics which work in one special field of
application and are not transferable into others. Instead it might be more
useful to use an awareness system that helps understanding a group's working
context. User actions then can be interpreted according to the user's competencies.
This finally is the main idea of our work.
3 Knowledge on available expertise in virtual organizations
There are mainly two different perspectives on the need to know about
the expertise of members of a virtual organization. On the one hand individual
needs are defined by persons who have a problem and are searching for an
expert which may help. On the other hand there are organizational needs.
Every organization or team leader has to know about existing competence.
They influence project work, team building, and have to be taken into account
when outlining the future perspective of the organization. Especially in
knowledge-intensive domains one has to take a careful look at developing
expertise over time.
In the OlViO project we investigated the work processes and the knowledge
management practice of two consulting companies. 22 members of those organizations
were interviewed. We identified several problem cases for a lack of transparency
of expertise within the organizations:
- Individual education: A person wants to ask an expert on a new
field of expertise.
- Project team building: A team leader has to find a new person
with certain competencies since the "usual experts" are working
in other projects.
- Ad-hoc-acquisition of follow-up projects: After finishing a
project the customer asks for another project with a slightly different
focus. Are the necessary competencies available?
- High probability of "doing the same job twice": Best
practices can be adapted and used in a new context, if they are mediated
by knowledgeable persons.
- Integration of new members: Competencies of new network members
have to be assessed, and new members have to familiarize with the expertise
available (to get help as well as to position themselves).
All these problems show that transparency on the expertise of cooperating
partners is needed in many ways. Usually organizations try to address this
problem through maintaining profile databases or similar information spaces.
In the network organizations we investigated, that these approaches failed
because of the decentralized structures and the autonomy of the network
members. We based our approach on communication means instead of data storage.
It follows two lines of research:
- Integrating communication channels to experts into knowledge and
best practices bases: Several authors [Ackerman
and McDonald 96] deal with the concept to enhance knowledge bases or
case-based reasoning systems by communication channels which allow for
direct communication with experts. First it shows the need for knowing
about expertise, secondly observable communication seems to be a very important
way to share knowledge [Pipek and Won 02].
- Using notification services to provide peripheral awareness of expertise:
We explore offering a semi-automated observation of those of the other's
activities which might indicate (the gain of) expertise. The goal is not
to automatically "protocol" expertise in a database, but to enrich
every cooperators work context with up-to-date information for building
a mental model of available expertise.
4 Awareness Systems as Knowledge Management Tools - The eXact Idea
As described above peripheral awareness during the working process can
be helpful for learning about each others competencies. This is mainly
done by interpreting several pieces of information. For example one could
say, that people who are called very often and then always talk about Java,
J2EE, etc. seem to be experts in the field of object-oriented programming
in general and Java in particular. So an awareness system integrated into
a virtual organization's groupware could be very helpful for disclosing
expertise. After all much of the information (i.e. reading news groups,
answering mails with the topic "Java", c.f. figure 1) needed
can be generated by the system. Initial events are available in every groupware
system.
They can be enhanced by text retrieval techniques to provide for more
precise differentiation (i.e. if a user posts a message into a group not
only the event "posting a message" can be generated but it also
can be analyzed if this posting is a question or an answer). Those events
are needed to corroborate a hypothesis like "Java expert" as
described above. Our idea is to automate the corroboration of hypotheses.
Figure 1: Events, Hypotheses, and Specificators
Furthermore, every user of the system might use the hypotheses from
a different perspective. For instance, a programming novice might think
of an programming expert as someone who is interested in the Java Programming
Language for at least seven months. Programming experts would regard such
a person as advanced but not as an expert. So, the design and combination
of the specificators have to be done individually due to interests and
experiences.
The eXact system can be described as an enhanced awareness system. It
is depicted in figure 2. On the left side there are
several indicators which use event sources and their events (i.e. "Document
X was opened" or "Newsgroup Y was read") as indications.
Those indications can be the events themselves or accumulated events like
("User X reads Newsgroup A regularly"). The indicators are connected
to hypotheses objects which are used to define which meaning one or the
combination of several indications can have (i.e. "User G is an Expert
on topic C") . On the other hand users are able to modify incoming
indications by self-defined specificators. Those specificators are used
to redefine a hypothesis or to combine two or more hypotheses to a new
(stronger) one. For instance, there are two hypotheses which indicate that
someone is a good programmer and is interested in the Java Programming
Language. Both then could be combined to the hypothesis that if both hypotheses
are fulfilled that means that someone is a good Java programmer.
These two steps are the heart of the eXact idea. It is then integrated
into "traditional" awareness system where hypotheses events are
stored and distributed to other users. As we can see our model deals with
three filters: The privacy filter is needed to prevent users or user groups
from seeing all the hypotheses which are fulfilled. As in traditional awareness
systems it is not always wanted that all colleagues can get all the information
which belongs to one person.
Additionally, there is an organizational filter which filters indicators
according to the organizations' policy. On the other hand a user might
not be interested in special topics.
Figure 2: eXact awareness model
Events have to be chosen as well as indicators have to be defined individually
for each organization. They should be adaptable as interests as well as
working style (and therefore the need for changed indicators) emerge over
time.
The Peripheral Expertise (PEA) model was realized in a first prototype.
The indicators are connected to a news group system. So all information
can be scanned easily as it is text-based. As we can see in Figure
3a the Expertise Awareness Manager (EAMa) allows for adding,
removing or changing indicators as well as for describing hypotheses graphically.
As described above there is a continuous need for re-configuration which
should be done by the users themselves. They are the only ones who know
their domain and working behavior exactly. So the configuration of the
system has to be very easy.
Figure 3b shows the Expertise Awareness Monitor
(EAMo) which presents the actual expertise levels of several persons
according to a special topic. The design is taken from existing awareness
models [Mark et al. 97].
Using a news group system as communication medium and as basis for the
implementation of our indicators has several advantages:
- Available information: All information that is scanned is public.
So, in the first run no privacy issues have to be mentioned.
- Easy scanning and further processing: Source information are
in plain text. So, the indicators can be implemented using well-known text
analysis techniques.
- Public communication on expertise: Furthermore using news groups
in loosely coupled cooperation scenarios can have positive effects as private
discussions become public. Thus, peripheral expertise awareness is enhanced
simply by public availability of communication within the group.
In a second step we plan to integrate the EAMo into the forum
system. Then, awareness messages can be publicized automatically. Furthermore,
user's expertise can be visualized. This should be done in a personalized
way (every user has a different view on the colleagues according to the
hypotheses set in the EAMo).
Figure 3a: Expertise Awareness Manager
Figure 3b: Expertise Awareness Monitor
5 Validity of Hypotheses
With the Expertise Awareness System members of a group have the possibility
to visualize expertise and their sources within an organization. What remains
is the problem to decide whether the indicated information is valid. Here
only weak technical support can be given. There are two ways to get more
valid information.
From one's own perspective the choosing of indicators is the first step
not only to filter information that is not needed but also to disable indicators
that are based on hypotheses that might be weak. Here, the combination
of indicators done in the specificators can help also. Weak hypotheses
can be combined and then might be strong enough to indicate competence.
The second possibility is to use those individual validation techniques
by evaluating them. Here a heuristic approach is used to find strong hypotheses
by analyzing the individual configurations of the group members. For example,
if many users think of an indicator as very helpful, this hypothesis is
marked as strong. Furthermore, transitive relations can be introduced to
weight users and their competencies. If an experienced user marks an hypothesis
as strong this is interpreted as a more important piece of information
than if a beginner does so. This technique is used in many groupware systems.
For example, there is a community which tries to identify spam mails this
way. Here, spam mails are marked. The more trustful a user becomes the
more his decisions are weighted [SpamNet 03].
6 Conclusions
In modern organizations especially network or virtual organizations
problems occur when trying to establish a shared knowledge management for
the participating individuals and organizations. A striking point here
is the missing awareness of all members which leads to ignorance of the
competencies the organization has. One way to improve transparency over
the organization's activities are awareness systems which can be integrated
into groupware systems that are mainly used for cooperation needs. The
idea presented here is to use such an awareness system as part of a knowledge
management tool. The goal is to give mutual orientation of the respective
competencies to every team member. This is done by interpreting the events
that are generated by an awareness system as competence-indicating events.
A first prototype was integrated into a newsgroup system.
References
[Akscyn et al. 88] R.M. Akscyn, D.L. McCracken,
E.A. Yoder, KMS: A distributed Hypermedia system for managing Knowledge
in Organizations, Communications of the ACM, 31 (7), 1988, 820-835.
[Ackerman and Malone 90] M.S. Ackerman, T.W.
Malone, Answer Garden: A tool for growing Organizational Memory, Proc.
of the ACM Conference on Office Information Systems, 1990, 31-39.
[Ackerman and McDonald 96] M.S. Ackerman, D.W.
McDonald, Answer Garden 2: Merging Organizational Memory with Collaborative
Help, Proc. of the International Conference on CSCW'96, ACM Press, 1996,
97-105.
[Bannon and Kuutti 96] L. Bannon, K. Kuutti, Shifting
Perspectives on Organizational Memory: From Storage to Active Remembering,
Proceedings of HICSS-29, 1996, 156-167.
[Bellotti and Stellen, 1993] Bellotti, V.; Sellen,
A.: Design for Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing Environments. in 3rd European
Conf. on CSCW (ECSCW'93), Milan, Italy, Kluwer, pp. 77-92, 1993.
[Benford and Fahlen 93] S. Benford, L. Fahlen,
A Spatial Model of Interaction in Large Virtual Environments, Proc. of
the 3rd European Conf. on CSCW (ECSCW'93), Milan, Italy, Kluwer, 1993,
109-124.
[Dourish and Bellotti 92] P. Dourish, V. Bellotti,
Awareness and Coordination in Shared Workspaces, Proc. of the ACM Conference
on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'92), Toronto, Canada, ACM
Press, 1992, 107-114.
[Johansen 88] R. Johansen, Groupware: Computer Support
for Business Teams, Freepress, New York, 1988.
[Heath and Luff 1992] C. Heath, P. Luff, Collaboration
and Control: Crisis Management and Multimedia Technology in London Underground
Control Rooms, Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 1 (1-2),
1992.
[Hiltz and Turoff 85] S.R. Hiltz, M. Turoff,
Structuring computer-mediated communication systems to avoid information
overload, Communications of the ACM, 28 (7), 1985, 680-689.
[Groth and Bowers 01] K. Groth, J. Bowers, On
Finding things out: Situated organizational knowledge in CSCW, Proc. of
the 7th ECSCW, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2001, 279-298.
[von Krogh and Venzin 95] G. von Krogh, M. Venzin,
Anhaltende Wettbewerbsvorteile durch Wissensmanagement, Die Unternehmung,
49 (6), 1995, 417-436.
[Mark et al. 97] G. Mark, L. Fuchs, M. Sohlenkamp,
Supporting Groupware Conventions through Contextual Awareness, Proc. of
the European Conference on CSCW (ECSCW'97), W. Prinz, T. Rodden, H. Hughes,
K. Schmidt (eds.), Lancaster, UK, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.
[Nonaka and Takeuchi 95] I. Nonaka, H. Takeuchi,
The Knowledge-Creating Company, Oxford University Press, New York, USA,
1995.
[Picot et al. 98] A. Picot, R. Reichwald, R. Wigant,
Die grenzenlose Unternehmung - Information, Organisation und Management,
3. Aufl., Gabler, Wiesbaden, 1998.
[Pipek and Won 02] V. Pipek, M. Won, Communication-oriented
Computer Support for Knowledge Management, Informatik - Informatique, 1/2002,
2002, 39-43.
[Rauschenbach 96] U. Rauschenbach, Supporting
Awareness in Shared Workspaces Using Relevance-dependent Event Notifications
Workshop Collaborative Virtual Environments, Nottingham, UK, http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/events/CVE96/,
1996.
[Rodden 96] T. Rodden, Populating the Application:
A Model of Awareness for Cooperative Applications, Proc. of the ACM Conference
on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'96), Cambridge, MA, 1996,
87-96.
[Sandor et al. 97] O. Sandor, C. Bogdan, J. Bowers,
Aether: An Awareness Engine For CSCW, Proc. of the 5th European Conf. on
CSCW (ECSCW'97), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, 221-236.
[Schultze and Vandenbosch 98] U. Schultze, B.
Vandenbosch, Information Overload in a Groupware Environment: Now you see
it, now you don't, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce,
8 (2), 1998, 127-148.
[Shum 97] S.B. Shum, Negotiating the Construction
and Reconstruction of Organisational Memories, Journal of Universal Computer
Science (Special Issue on IT for Knowledge Management), 3 (8), 1997, 899-928.
[SpamNet 03] Cloudmark SpamNet, http://cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/,
08/19/03, 2003.
[Walsh and Unger 91] J.P. Walsh, G.R. Unger, Organizational
Memory. Academy of Management Review, 16 (1), 1991, 57-91.
[Yimam and Kobsa 02] D. Yimam, A. Kobsa, Expert
Finding Systems for Organizations: Problem and Domain Analysis and the
DEMOIR, Beyond Knowledge Management: Sharing Expertise, Ackerman, M.S.,
Pipek, V. and Wulf, V. (eds.) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003, 327-358.
|