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>> INTRODUCTION
In Chapter 3 we considered how ICTs do not, in and of themselves, change the
way work is done on a daily basis, nor the knowledge that is processed across an
organization. Unfortunately, as we will see in this chapter, many organizations
assume that ICT does drive organizational change and assume that introducing
some type of ICT will more or less automatically improve Knowledge Man-
agement processes. Thus, organizations interested in improving the manage-
ment and flow of knowledge focus typically on two types of ICT: Knowledge
Management Systems (KMS) and Enterprise Systems. KMS are the dominant
type of ‘KM’ initiative and are used to capture, store, search, connect, transfer
and, so, reuse information and knowledge across individuals, for example using
intranets or e-mail (Alavi and Tiwana, 2003). Enterprise Systems are a differ-
ent type of ICT but are still important in relation to understanding the role of
ICT in knowledge work. The case study in Chapter 3 provided an introductory
example of this kind of technology. Thus, Enterprise Systems are used to sup-
port (and control) all types of work, being designed to ensure that standardized
and integrated work processes are used across a distributed organization. The
idea is that Enterprise Systems embed knowledge about ‘best practice’ in a soft-
ware package, so that when an organization adopts an Enterprise System they
are also adopting the industry ‘best practices’ in relation to how best to organize
work (Wagner et al., 2006). Below we will explore these technologies, and their
historical roots, and also identify their constraining and facilitating impact on
knowledge work and knowledge workers and more generally, their effectiveness
in supporting Knowledge Management processes.
The deployment of both types of technology is usually based very much on
what was described in Chapter 1 as an ‘epistemology of possession’ approach
and are structural in nature – knowledge is viewed as a cognitive resource, a pos-
session, that can be captured and transferred across people using ICT (Schultze
and Leidner, 2002). KMS/Enterprise Systems try, then, to transfer knowledge,
assuming that it is an entity that can be captured and moved fairly easily across
people, places and time. Thus, organizations rely on codifying knowledge that
can either be transferred to the particular individual(s) who needs it – typically
using e-mail – or put into a repository of some kind – an intranet, for example –
where it can be stored and searched, and hopefully found, by those who will
find it useful. Or they may rely on embedding knowledge in an Enterprise
Systems package that then dictates how work shall be completed to ensure
maximum efficiency. Much effort, therefore, goes into codifying knowledge
(converting tacit to explicit knowledge, for example) that can be used in dis-
tributed locations (transferring it from the individual to the collective), rather
than relying on personal networks and collaborative practices (discussed more
fully in Chapter 8).
The dominance of these structural KMS/Enterprise Systems approaches
is perhaps not surprising, given that many organizations today are very large
and/or geographically distributed. As we saw in Chapter 3, new organizational

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