Managing Knowledge through Social Technologies:

Social interaction or communication and systems cannot be underestimated both academically and professionally. This was proven by an exercise that we did in a knowledge cafe' set up. We as a class were to come up with three "must nots" for the advancement of an organization. There were four groups supposed to be working independently and coming up with their findings as to what are the three top causes for the demise of an organization. Although quite expected but shockingly enough having no communication or lack or no socialization in an organization was one of the most common reasons in all of the four groups effecting an organization along with inaffective systems. No system and lack of communication were the two most common determinants as the impedement for the realization of progress in any organization. Here is a snapshot of what each group feels the reason of a down turn for any organization.

Group 1

1. No communication

2. No expression of ideas

3. No documentation or procedures

Group 2

1. No internal & external communication

2. No documentation

3. No learning and development

Group3

1. No socialization & culture

2. No systems

3. No training & development

Group 4.

1. No Information

2. No improvement of performance

3. No systems or tools.

If we take into account the two of them i.e systems and socialization or communication it becomes quite evident that socialization/communication and technology reigns high as a factor in the development of any organization. This opens up another avenue of thinking which involves the technologies impacting the social onset of an organization. A lot of these technologies are being used targeting the social and communication advancement in an organization. I personally experienced the importance of these technologies working in a Business processing outsourcing and re engineering company involving employees working in different parts of the world achieving a common goal. In a conventional set up where employees see each other everyday; socialization is undermined or taken for granted, because of them having the privilege to see each other everyday, have meetings, water cooler discussions, and even interacting with each other on personal level. However having that kind of privilege in an organization where employees are located around the world and working on one project becomes very far fetched to have an interaction at a personal level. Most of the time working in groups over the phones and emails not only lacks the essence of an existence of a team it also can be frustrating at times because of the lack of one on one interactions and the absence of tangible emotions. This is the reality of the VOIP (voice over IP) era in the 21st century corporate world where we may not have any control over having Marketing department in the US, Accounts and Finance in Canada, Operations in Philippines and Customer Services in India or Pakistan. However we can try bridging these gaps between cross continental boundaries by introducing technologies geared towards socialization. Most of them like face book, link in, dig it to name a few are cyber-centric others rely on telephony like video conferencing and camferencing.

Please stay tuned in for the upcoming postings where we will be analyzing these technologies and their impact on socio-technical environment of an organization and provide us with your valueable insight on the topic which is always much appreciated.