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However, and fourth, deciding the 25 per cent of processes that can differ-
entiate an organization is extremely problematic, especially because the software
companies and consultants who sell Enterprise System technologies have a vested
interest in trying to ignore this aspect of an Enterprise System adoption because
their main selling point is that all ‘best practice’ knowledge is embedded in the
software.
All of this suggests that the notion of ‘best practice’ knowledge that under-
pins Enterprise, and other Knowledge Management, Systems is more about con-
venient rhetoric than about actual practice. Despite this, it is important that we
recognize both the constraining and facilitating influences of Enterprise System
on knowledge work and workers. Enterprise System do constrict the way knowl-
edge workers carry out their daily work tasks (as with the example of Blackboard
given above) but they also potentially assist such workers by providing them
with information on what is happening across an organization that feeds into
their decision-making processes. For example, before the advent of Enterprise
System it was very difficult for a senior manager of a large company to be able to
compare business units because each business unit collected data in a different
format. Today, with the integrated database, it is easier for managers to compare
business units and to draw distinctions about which is doing relatively better or
worse. This ability to draw distinctions is a core feature of what it means to have
knowledge – as seen in our definition of knowledge in Chapter 1. However, we
also need to recognize that the system in itself does not automatically draw these
distinctions – these rely on the managers’ prior experience and interpretation of
the context. In this sense, Enterprise System do not, in effect, constitute KM
systems, despite claims to the contrary. They are actually information systems
(Galliers and Newell, 2003) – the individual uses knowledge of the context and
processes to make sense of the information that is provided by the Enterprise
System.
Nevertheless, Enterprise Systems are often marketed as systems that can sup-
port Knowledge Management – they are sold as systems which embed knowledge
of ‘best practice’ and as systems which facilitate the production of knowledge.
We have discussed the fallacy of such an idea. These limitations are also relevant
to the second group of technologies that we will look at in this chapter which
are actually often described as ‘Knowledge Management Systems’ – that is they
are systems that are specifically designed to transfer information and knowledge
across an organization. We turn to look at these KMS next.

>> THE POSSESSION VIEW AND KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AS REPOSITORY
Like Enterprise Systems, KMS also assume a possession/structural view – valuable
knowledge, located inside people’s heads (i.e. the input) can be identified,
captured and processed via the use of ICT tools so that it can be applied in
new contexts (i.e. the output) (Tseng, 2007). The aim is thus to make the
knowledge inside people’s heads or knowledge embedded in successful routines

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