Facilitating Knowledge Creation with Groupware: A Case Study of a Knowledge Intensive Firm

Managing knowledge is a value creating process in most organisations and is particularly important in knowledge-intensive firms. This paper asks the question: how can GroupWare specifically facilitate processes of knowledge creation within knowledge intensive firms? Based on an analysis of an expert consultancy where e-mail is used successfully for information and knowledge search, and Lotus Notes is used with mixed results in project working, it is argued that the complexity of articulating the knowledge creation process can be reduced by using e-mail. Furthermore e-mail when considered in context is potentially a rich medium for the development of collective knowledge over time. It is also concluded that, although distributed Lotus Notes databases can alleviate temporal and spatial complexity, this media lacks the richness required for complex processes of knowledge creation. Thus where temporal and spatial constraints do not exist, there will be substantial barriers for using GroupWare to support the knowledge creation process, in this type of knowledge-intensive firm.