[Project] A Knowledge Management Approach to Modeling Business Information Services in E-Commerce (I) (II)

Project No.：NSC 91-2413-H-002-022；NSC 92-2413-H-002-013
Period：2002.7-2004.7

Project Introduction

There are 2 sub-projects included: 1)A Knowledge Management Approach; 2)An Investigation of E-mails Usage and Business-focused Taxonomies.

At the first stage, based on an empirical case study of a well-known E-Commerce company, explores the practical issues of knowledge management from an information behavior research perspective. Using a questionnaire listed with open questions, a semi-structured in-depth interview and the documents analysis method, this study investigated the organizational information behavior of the company’s employees, particularly the managers.

The research questions for the case study include: what are the employees’ needs for
information to work efficiently? What information resources and channels they use
in the work environment? How do they seek out information and knowledge they need?
How do members in the organization deliver information and knowledge among them?
The principles of designing a knowledge-based business information service model are suggested on the basis of these findings.

At the second stage, the purpose is to systematically study the digital contents in
the managers’ emails and electronic resources of an E-Commerce organization, exploring the implications of the finding for designing better classification schemes
as part of knowledge management applications.

We adopts a case study approach and employs multiple methods, including literature analysis, email content analysis, in-depth interview and related existing tools survey. The potential contributions are two fold: 1. to identify important contents and their organization schemes for information providers; and to establish a knowledge taxonomy that is business-focused and industry-specific.


Relevant Papers

Chang, S.-J. L. & Hung, H-S. (2003). “An information behavior approach to knowledge management: From research to practice” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 44(3-4), 208-220. In English.
Abstract
In recent years, the concept of knowledge management (KM) has been promoted by business sectors. This article, based on an empirical case study, explores the practical issues of knowledge management from an information behavior research perspective. It is action research in nature and impacts teaching and business practice. Findings reveal why and what type of information and/or knowledge is considered important for daily work, as well as what and how different information resources are used. Suggestions for improving information services to achieve KM goals conclude the paper.  Fulltext...