**6. Collaboration & knowledge management**

388 New Research on Knowledge Management Models and Methods

Each organization is an absolute manager (from conceptual and technical point of view) of its organizational knowledge. Coordinating different KN arises some problems that can be overcome from the technological point of view by adopting some knowledge-based portals with intelligent capabilities of communication at the level of the nodes. Starting from the technical architecture proposed by Firestone in 2001, 2002, 2003 for a knowledge-based portal, collaboration between KNs can be accomplished with some collaborative intelligent software agents that are integrated into the organizational portals (Muntean, 2005). These agents assist the members of a KN to formulate queries (requests of knowledge) to other

We support the strategy of a distributed KM approach based on two general principles: 1. Autonomy Principle – each node/organization manages its own knowledge; the enterprise portal will represent a unique access point to the knowledge meta-base, that

2. Coordination Principle – each node must permit exchange of knowledge with other nodes, without having to adopt a unique interpretative scheme at the level of collaborative network, but through a mapping mechanism of the context of the node queried to its own context, taking into consideration their own perspective on

As any distributed system, this one will also have to fulfill some requirements such as

This will be achieved with the help of some collaborative intelligent agents specially integrated, with this purpose, in the nodes' portals. In these last years, software agents

connecting users and resources, failure safety, scalability and standardization.

Fig. 8. Infrastructure based on portals sustaining a distributed KM

Fig. 7. Inter-connected knowledge nodes

nodes and they respond to queries that came from the other KNs.

stores a part of the organizational knowledge;

knowledge.

Collaboration facilities improve decisions, increase knowledge. They facilitate better distribution of knowledge, improve planning and development cycles and create more functional and productive relationships within teams. This in turn increases productivity and company understanding of internal and external environments. Overall, employees will begin to have a better view of corporate information and the power to make informed decisions more effectively.

A collaborative enterprise organization is a more agile organization. The ability of employees to quickly share their insights contributes to an organization's collective knowledge, and has a direct impact on its success. Successful companies continually seek and refine ways to make effective use of their employees' collective knowledge and experience. Information technologies that contribute to knowledge management solutions, such as enterprise portals, improve the enterprise's business intelligence and its collaboration capabilities. Collaboration is becoming an enterprise's business strategy sustained by IT technology. Integrating collaborative services with business functions allows companies to gain a significant competitive advantage. The benefits of collaboration within a portal are clear. It will continually facilitate and enrich the knowledge management process.

An interesting aspect of the increased globalization of the business world is the cultural diversity of the workforce involved in collaborative virtual work. As a result, the performance of a global virtual team may be contingent not only upon technology and task factors, but also upon a virtual group's cultural homogeneity or heterogeneity. A culturally heterogeneous group is expected to display types of behavior and interactions that are different from those displayed by a culturally homogeneous group. In a virtual setting, the impact of cultural heterogeneity on group performance might ultimately result in performance outcomes that are different from those generated by a culturally homogeneous group. Managers may reduce the influence of national cultures and cultural differences in collaborative enterprises by developing a strong organizational culture. Internalization of a strong organizational culture is done through training, suitable knowledge management approaches, developing appropriate information systems, using integrating practices such as enforcing quality, super ordinate goals, promoting linking between different cultural groups.

There are many different approaches toward knowledge management. Many concepts focus on social and cultural aspects only and ignore the role of technology. There are other approaches that are very technology-minded but provide no solutions to cultural challenges of knowledge management. Therefore, many companies have sophisticated concepts on how to manage knowledge, but have little understanding of how to implement and deploy them. The implementation of efficient knowledge management solution often proves to be very challenging.

Some Collaborative Systems Approaches in Knowledge-Based Environments 391

2. knowing the clients represents an important asset in all business. To remain competitive, organizations must collaborate with clients (or suppliers and even

4. For developing portals an agile framework is recommended; the desired functionalities, like content/document management, collaboration, personalization and business process modeling are obtained. By means of the facilities offered by the UML language the specifc models of these functionalities are built; the PIM and PSM model are consolidated. The developed portal will satisfy the requirements of the collaborative environment, being able to store the knowledge from certain area of expertise, concern

It is obvious that inside every collaborative environment, starting with small work-groups or practice communities (of interests, scope, action, etc.) and ending with the collaborative environment, there is a strong fundament based on knowledge and a powerful interdependence between collaboration and knowledge management. Collaborative communities represent organizational manifestation forms that wish to remain competitive in the competitive environment. Being entirely or partially transposed into the virtual environment, they have to adopt a malleable business strategy, to take fundamental decisions based on knowledge regarding consumers, suppliers, stockholders, investors or

Collaborative systems, tools and technologies sustain work teams, communities and collaborative enterprises, portal type IT platforms proving their efficiency as infrastructures





management at the level of each node and the communication between them;

competitors) in order to remix their capacities with the ones of possible partners. 3. At the level of network organizations, KM applies within each organizational entity, considered a knowledge node, as well as to sustain collaboration between these KNs. A portal based IT infrastructure, like the one presented in figure 7, is vital to sustaining

how, under the form of a knowledge base (meta-base).

management strategy of distributed knowledge.

and activity.

**8. Conclusions** 

even competitors.

of those environments:

distributed model;

knowledge nodes;

portal's level in order to satisfy its needs.

collaboration, developed at the collaborative environment level and which contributes decisively to the process of competitive knowledge pieces generating (Kim, 1993; Nonaka, Takeuchi, 1995; Malhotra, 1998; Flood, 1999; Bontis, 2002). At the collaborative organization level, creation of a knowledge capital is the main desideratum, organized under the form of organizational knowledge (best practices, expertise, learned lessons, competences), in the same time focusing on the best IT solutions, capable of incorporating as much as possible from the organization know-

#### **7. The place of our debate within the european research programs**

Organizations that promote collaboration within them and in their extended environment, that contains different actors from economic/business environment, are identified by the name of collaborative organizations, presenting the following specific features (Skyrme, 2003):


IT represents an indispensable sustainer of collaborative organizations, of collaborative environments in general [Harmon, Rosen, Guttman, 2001]. These represent (virtual) communities which, even if they are not subordinated to a business objective, adopt the collaboration and elaborate knowledge management principles.

Strategic demarches are scheduled in order to achieve this objective, at the level of different research networks specialized in setting up visionary studies – business models evolution collaborative enterprises related (Figure 9). The focus on collaborative business processes orientation dictates identification and configuration of the collaborative technologies capable of sustaining these processes.

Portal technology that permit building a fundament for a collaborative virtual environment based on knowledge was imposed, the presented approaches being an innovative scientific demarche of the IT perspective indicated in figure 9.


collaboration, developed at the collaborative environment level and which contributes decisively to the process of competitive knowledge pieces generating (Kim, 1993; Nonaka, Takeuchi, 1995; Malhotra, 1998; Flood, 1999; Bontis, 2002). At the collaborative organization level, creation of a knowledge capital is the main desideratum, organized under the form of organizational knowledge (best practices, expertise, learned lessons, competences), in the same time focusing on the best IT solutions, capable of incorporating as much as possible from the organization knowhow, under the form of a knowledge base (meta-base).

