EXPLORING PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

EXPLORING PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT WITH INTERNAL CORPORATE BLOG FOR MORE KNOWLEDGE WORKERS
Preliminary Study in Indonesian Company

MAHARANI KUSUMA NEGARA, S.Psi, MSM
Master of Science in Management (MSM) Program
School of Business and Management, Bandung Institute of Technology
Ganesha 10th Street, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, 40132 Phone: +62 22 2531923
E-mail: maharani.kn@gmail.com

JANN HIDAJAT TJAKRAATMADJA, Prof. Dr. MSIE
Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Research Group
School of Business and Management, Bandung Institute of Technology
Ganesha 10th Street, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, 40132 Phone: +62 22 2531923
E-mail: jannhidajat@sbm.itb.ac.id

This research has a challenge to form a representative framework of personal knowledge management (PKM) which captures the dynamic of blogging activity in PT CSI, one of the big players in Indonesia’s IT and network industry that has acquired 16 active corporate blogs. It involved 4 key informants who are experienced in (corporate) blogging and 12 ordinary informants who are actively blogging in PT CSI. The focus group, in-depth interviews, observations, and diverse literature reviews were completed from December 2007 to February 2009 for fulfilling research objectives. This qualitative empirical study summarized that many individual workers in PT CSI have perceived internal corporate blog as one of the technology options to maintain internal knowledge sharing, communication, collaboration, and mainly to accomplish several projects with online peers. Other findings directed the fact that at least the company entails four pivotal capitals to hold PKM activities with internal blogging i.e. matters, individual, peers, and technology. Moreover, this study confirmed the substance of corporate culture and worker’s behavior during blogging activities, yet proposed the logical thoughts of the importance of doing periodical measurements of those strategies and the considerations towards the lost knowledge that may happen.
Keywords: Case Study, Internal Corporate Blog, Knowledge Worker, Personal Knowledge Management, Qualitative Method
1. INTRODUCTION
Corporate blogs emerge to provide the opportunity for employees at all levels of an organization to communicate with each other and to form communities around products, projects, and similar interests. There are at least two different kinds of corporate blogs according to the structure, i.e. external blogs, which can be read by people outside the corporation; and internal blogs, which are only accessible by people within the company. External blogs can strengthen relationships with targeted customer groups and position CEOs and other employees as industry experts. Internally blogs are generally referred to as tools for collaboration and knowledge management, foster discussions among employees at all levels of the organization, and enable the quick exchange of knowledge and information (Carmichael & Helwig, 2006).
As the largest internet software provider in the world and successful in dominating the market in Indonesia (www.kompas.com on 24 April 2005), PT CSI has adopted 16 sanctioned blogs to fulfill their external and internal purposes. Each unit or employee looks to connect with the priorities relevant to their jobs. According to Horvath (2001), these employees are knowledge workers. They work for a living at the task of using or developing knowledge. They might be working at any of the tasks of planning, acquiring, searching, analyzing, organizing, storing, programming, distributing, marketing, or otherwise contributing to the transformation and commerce of information of those (often the same people) who work at using the knowledge so produced.
Entire staffs in PT CSI are listed in Communication Center of Excellence (CCoE) for internal objectives. CS citizens are legally blogging, vlogging , and virtualizing through social network tools that they have made themselves. PT CSI concerns in handling their knowledge effectively and efficiently. It surely would maintain their continuous growth and leadership in this industry. By using new technology, it could solve the problems in the relevant departments at the later stages in the business. This intention guides the idea to learn the core of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). While the traditional view of Knowledge Management is focused with managing organizational knowledge, including the knowledge that individuals accumulated in their heads through combination of technology and management processes, PKM is managing personal knowledge, whenever he/ she learns something new or search for and receive, or come across potentially useful information (Garfield, 2007). Efimova (2005) added that PKM then shifts responsibility for learning and knowledge sharing from the company to individuals, which is a challenge to both sides and in these sense companies must create the conditions for PKM to emerge among knowledge workers.
This interesting idea conveys this study to concentrate on the nucleus question, i.e. “How do knowledge workers employ internal corporate blog as Personal Knowledge Management tool in PT CSI?” The overall situation directed a piece of summary around these research objectives:
(1) To reveal the role of internal corporate blog regarding to the personal knowledge management experience which is executed by individual knowledge worker contextually in PT CSI.
(2) To display a contextual framework of personal knowledge management which recognize the way of workers managing their personal knowledge with internal corporate blog.
(3) To propose several strategies for building internal corporate blog as a feasible personal knowledge management technology for augmenting more knowledge workers.
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study has chosen a grounded research as the approach since it forms concept and in-depth theory. By attempting to capture as many variables as possible, it applied case studies. It identifies how a complex set of circumstances come together to produce a particular manifestation. It is a highly versatile research method and employs any methods of data collection from testing to interviewing. This research was conducted through focus group, in-depth interview, and observation (primary method); and several data from previous experimental studies, journal entries and self-reflection papers (secondary method). Choosing the informants is a significant path. Four key informants chosen based on their knowledge and experience in (corporate) blogging. The rest, 12 ordinary informants, selected because they are active bloggers and minimal one year running their corporate blog (see Table 1).
Table 1. List of Key and Ordinary Informants
No. Status Name Position Blogging Time
1. Key Informant KI 1 Lecturer, entrepreneur, and active blogger ± 6 years
2. Key Informant KI 2 IT Manager PT JAI Less than 2 years
3. Key Informant KI 3 Senior Online Research and IMC Consultant VC Corp. 5 years
4. Key Informant KI 4 Chief Technology Officer
PT CSI 4 years
5. Ordinary Informant OI 1 Staff in Network Software & System Technology Group in PT CSI ± 3 years
6. Ordinary Informant OI 2 Staff Network Software & System Technology Group in PT CSI ± 4 years
7. Ordinary Informant OI 3 Staff Network Software & System Technology Group in PT CSI ± 4 years
8. Ordinary Informant OI 4 Staff Network Software & System Technology Group in PT CSI Less than 3 years
9. Ordinary Informant OI 5 Staff in Corporate Marketing in PT CSI 2 years
10. Ordinary Informant OI 6 Staff in Technical Services in PT CSI 3 years
11. Ordinary Informant OI 7 Staff in Collaboration Software Group in PT CSI Less than 3 years
12. Ordinary Informant OI 8 Staff in Corporate Affairs in PT CSI 4 years
13. Ordinary Informant OI 9 Staff in Wireless and Security Technology Group in PT CSI 2 years
14. Ordinary Informant OI 10 Staff in Corporate Communication in PT CSI ± 3 years
15. Ordinary Informant OI 11 Staff in Datacenter, Switching, and Security Technology Group in PT CSI Less than 2 years
16. Ordinary Informant OI 12 Staff in Accounting in PT CSI 3 years

This study started from December 2007 to February 2009. In the beginning, doing literature reviews, frameworks, and waiting the agreement with the company was taking time. However, face-to-face interviews and observation successfully conducted from August 2008 to January 2009 by reserving the informants’ time in Jakarta and Bandung area. In order to highlight the research objectives, this study applied several interview questions regarding the use of the structure, semi-structured, and unstructured questions (see Table 2) as explained by Greenhalg & Taylor (1997).

Table 2. Sample of Interview Questions
Type of Questions Potential Questions Ultimate Objectives
Structured Questions • What do you know about corporate blogging?
• What are factors driving the company to implement corporate blogging system? Collecting general understanding about corporate blogging and its driven-factors
Semi-structured Questions • Why did you start your weblog in this internal corporate blog system? What did motivate you?
• What other added values of blogging did you discover after starting it? Pinpointing workers’ motivations with joining the system and their responses after
Unstructured Question • What is the role of internal corporate blog regarding to personal knowledge management experience accomplished by knowledge worker in this company?
• How does the experience of worker operate PKM through the weblog?
• What kind policies that corporate underline by adopting the system? Proposing a prelude framework of PKM and certain strategy for augmenting more knowledge workers through weblog
3. INTERVIEW FINDINGS
It is interesting to discover a big picture of the findings. The anticipated constructs produced by every statement which addressing main research questions. In addition, the unanticipated constructs emerge during the interview and observation sessions.
Table 3. Anticipated and Unanticipated Constructs
Anticipated Constructs Unanticipated Constructs
1. Definitions of corporate blog
2. Company’s motivations on blogging
3. Characteristics of internal corporate blog
4. Weaknesses of internal corporate blog
5. Current policies for blogging internally
6. Added-values perceived by workers from internal corporate blogging
7. The role of internal corporate blog
8. Worker’s motivations on internal blogging
9. PKM activities through internal blogging
10. Proposed tool/ technology characteristics which suitable for PKM activities
11. Strategies for building internal corporate blog as feasible PKM tool for more knowledge workers 1. Characteristics of corporate blog
2. Position of internal corporate blog among the whole technologies exist in company
3. Contexts of internal corporate blog
4. Control system in internal corporate blog
5. Barriers in adopting internal corporate blog system
6. Company (worldwide) policies for Internet posting
7. Size of the worker’s room (small vs big)
8. Setting of workers’ room (open vs close)
9. The number of workers (small vs big)
10. Opportunity for workers to blog (small vs big)
11. Workers’ involvement in internal blogging (active vs inactive)
12. Individual learning process in doing PKM with blogging internally
13. Key success factors and focal enabler in company to do PKM with internal blogging
4. DISCUSSIONS: FINDINGS and ANALYSIS
4.1. The Role of Internal Corporate Blog
According to the individual knowledge workers experienced in internal blogging, all informants agreed that the role of internal corporate blog is an option to accomplish the company’s needs especially in maintaining the internal social networks, knowledge repositories, knowledge sharing, communication, collaboration, and thus accomplishing several projects with online peers.
Table 4. View Comparisons on Role of Internal Corporate Blog.
Components Sources of Knowledge
Key Informants
Ordinary Informants
Literature
(Efimova, 2005)
Purposes/ Advantages 1. Internal social networks
2. Internal knowledge repositories
3. Internal sharing knowledge 1. Internal communication
2. Internal collaboration
3. Internal sharing knowledge 1. Conversation
2. Collaboration
3. Knowledge sharing
Added-values 1. Internal communication and relations
2. Decision and assessment-made quality
3. Alert to innovation
4. Qualified learning experience
5. High values for individual knowledge
a. Million ideas to create researches
b. Deepening best practices
c. Performance benchmarking 1. Strengthen internal relations
2. Decision and assessment-made quality
3. Alert to innovation
4. Qualified learning experience
5. Centralized knowledge sources
6. Effectiveness of knowledge worker
7. Robust collaboration
8. High values for individual knowledge
a. Million ideas to create research
b. Deepening best practices
c. Performance benchmarking 1. Improve individual’s knowledge and especially technology-related skills)
2. Sharing, evaluating and developing individual’s ideas
3. Amplified networking relation building
4. Finding people with same interests
5. New friends and community-forming
Company characteristics fits with internal corporate blog 1. Companies with an eagerness to be the experts in industry
2. Acquires high (level of) and many information or product knowledge need to be shared
3. Intends to exploit knowledge for works All companies have same opportunities to adopt the internal corporate blog as one of technology alternatives to enhance internal needs 1. Company that offers the freedom of communicate, time, and an Internet connection
2. Jobs that require trend-watching, collecting and aggregating information, making notes or other writing

While another study stated about company and job characteristics, which fits with internal corporate blog, a current study showed focused explanations on company characteristics that fits with this kind of technology. Those findings proved that this study has successfully given more contributions to explain the role of internal corporate blog as first research objectives compared with previous studies.
4.2. The Way of Workers Managing Personal Knowledge with Internal Corporate Blog
This study produced contextual framework based on the internal workers’ experience in internal blogging. There are most-frequent PKM activities emerge through inventing, documenting, convincing self and others, evaluating the information, organizing, transferring and sharing knowledge, discussion and coordinating, analyzing, improvising the ideas, presenting (new) information, focusing matters, valuing, and securing the knowledge.
Based on those findings, this study underlined four pivotal capitals to hold PKM activities with internal blogging (see Fig. 1):
(1) Matters. Subjects that will bring the individual to connect with self, jobs, and peers. It could embrace information or knowledge to gain, document, share, and value for professional purposes.
(2) Individual. The actor of PKM activities. It would be the individual knowledge worker in company.
(3) Peers. Several knowledge workers who are equal standing with others in group.
(4) Technology. The transmitter of each matter. For this context, it would be the internal corporate blog as one of the feasible choices.
While Gent (2007 in http://incredibully.blogspot.com) believed three types of knowledge workers—knowledge generators, knowledge consumers, and knowledge brokers—, the interviews on this study only showed the existence of knowledge consumers in this corporate. These people use the system to find information but have little to offer them. They ask questions, they search the repositories, and listen intently.
It forces the study to identify the organization members’ motivations for joining the internal blogosphere. It summarized the external and internal motivations. Some ordinary informants mentioned company rules play a significant role in pursuing them to join the blogosphere internally. PT CSI command the workers to write a blog minimal once in every two weeks. Even if it was hard to start, now they can initiate their intention to write a blog more frequently. Other reason rose when other ordinary informants agreed that persuasion from partners also deciding their way. Nevertheless, many individual workers in this company realized the internal motivations instead of the external. By considering many advantages and added-values offered by the internal corporate blog, kind of this individual worker recognized by himself about the positive points of the technology.




































Fig. 1. PKM Activities with Internal Corporate Blog.

During the interviews, this study found several tool or technology characteristics to support individual worker’s activities in PKM. Many workers confirmed that they require the accessible, informal, easy to use tool as well as technology that fit with their job characteristics and various needs, and encourage their contribution. Behind the ease offered, workers would like to opt the tool, which shows the individual’s visibility and gets rid of spontaneous. Some ordinary informants also revealed the internal blog they accessed could be one of tools that possess those criterions.
While other studies failed to show the main key success factor in managing PKM with internal blogging, this study has lucratively address the issue by highlighting the human factor. It includes the internal commitment to share, the emerging champions who actively sharing within, the role of CEO to encourage the individual workers and create trust element among the workers. Findings in Table 5 showed that this study, again, has productively addressed one of research objectives.
Table 5. View Comparisons on the Way of Workers Managing Personal Knowledge with Internal Corporate Blog
Components Sources of Knowledge
Key Informants Ordinary Informants Literature
(Efimova, 2005)
Enablers to build PKM through internal blogging 1. Knowledge workers
2. Peers
3. Matters
4. Technology 1. Individual
2. Communities and networks
3. Ideas
Main key success factor for managing personal knowledge with internal corporate blog Human factor (individual) Human factor
(knowledge worker) (unidentified)
Common PKM activities arise in internal blog
(PKM characteristics) 1. Writing new ideas
2. Seeking for current information or knowledge
3. Saving relevant knowledge
4. Discussion with bloggers
5. Analyzing knowledge
6. Improvising knowledge
7. Using knowledge for accomplishing one project 1. Inventing the information
2. Documenting the information
3. Convincing self and others
4. Evaluating the information
5. Organizing the information
6. Transferring and sharing knowledge
7. Discussion and coordinating
8. Analyzing the information
9. Improvising the ideas
10. Presenting the (new) information
11. Focusing matters
12. Valuing the knowledge
13. Securing the knowledge 1. Finding information
2. Interpreting and connecting relevant pieces of information
3. Negotiation meanings
4. Eliciting knowledge in conversations with others
5. Creating new ideas and using them to come up with a final product
Individual learning process based on PKM activities in internal corporate blog 1. Expected learning
2. Unexpected learning 1. Cross culture project
2. Various styles of working
3. Human factor
4. Corporate culture 1. Formal learning
2. Informal and incidental learning

4.3. Strategies for Building Internal Corporate Blog as Feasible PKM Tool for More Knowledge Workers
Strategies for building internal corporate blogs as feasible PKM tool for more knowledge workers are needed to boost the workers and company’s performances. Most (ordinary) informants in this study noticed next challenges might be faced by individual workers and the company. This study categorized the strategy into several types according to the interview results from key and ordinary informants. The interviews with key informants stated the general strategies, prior versus in-process strategies, and strategies for the company versus strategies for workers. In addition, a group of ordinary informants produced some proposed strategies for the company and for each worker. Overall, there are corporate culture and worker’s behaviors as its profound contributions based on the entire findings from several interview sessions. This third sum up addressed the last research objective about the strategies for building internal corporate blog as feasible PKM tool for more knowledge workers.
Table 6. View Comparisons on Strategies.
Component Sources of Knowledge
Key Informants Ordinary Informants Literature
(Efimova, 2005)
Strategies • General strategies
1. Human resources (willing to share and proper acknowledgement)
2. Strong internal commitment
3. Expand champion workers for story telling
4. Updated entries with remarkable topics
5. Provide a bridge to align the corporate culture and the technology in order to shape the worker’s habits
6. Encouragement for workers to commonly blog
• Prior vs in-process strategies
Pre-building process
1. Understand the climate of blogosphere
2. Consider the barriers and problems
3. Draw on an honest and friendly language
In process (make it succeed)
1. Maintain the materials
2. Insert the humane elements
3. Highlight the unique personality of blog
• Strategies for the company vs strategies for workers
Over the company
1. Trust to share and receive the knowledge
2. Innovative environment
Over the workers
1. Encourage workers to frequently interact with technology
2. Deploy more best practices
3. Respect the worker’s rights in blogging • For company
1. High trust needed
2. Bottom-up approach
3. From formal to informal work domain
4. Create innovative environment (reward bloggers and encourage them to trial and error)
5. Rules/ policies for blogging
• For workers
1. Interact regularly or be up date
2. Self-initiated
3. Technological savvy
4. Focus on matters
5. Respect worker’s rights
1. Trust and shared understanding
2. Filtering vast amounts of information and connecting it with others for new ideas
3. Unique personal contributions for enabling relations between participants
4. Awareness through exposure and lurking activities
5. Workplaces rewarding
6. Increasing taken-responsibility for work and learning
7. Developing personal KM knowledge and skills

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Overall, this study has successfully responded the research question and accomplished three objectives set with several anticipated and unanticipated constructs produced by 16 informants. The use of focus group, in-depth interviews, and observations has fruitfully performed. It generally summarizes: (1) Interview results from key informants, (2) Interview results from ordinary informants, and (3) Observation results.
Both key and ordinary informants agreed that internal corporate blog is a technology alternative to execute the company needs. Matters, individual, peers, and technology are the big four enablers in activating PKM with internal corporate blog. The importance of human factor guided this study to highlight the endeavors to maintain the internal commitment to share, the emerging champions who actively sharing within, the role of CEO to emerge the individual workers and create trust element among workers. However, the company still needs certain strategies to realize this dream. In doing so, corporate culture and worker’s behaviors are significant points to be noticed together.
6. RECOMMENDATIONS
6.1. Recommendations for Further Studies
Nothing is perfect in this world, neither is this study. It may contain misinterpretation and lacks of other nature. However, through this study, the researcher proposes numerous ideas for further studies:
(1) Several constructs included PKM Framework from this study captured internal blogging in PT CSI hence it is so contextual and limit the generalization for other conditions in other companies. There is a need to retest these findings to other companies has internal blogging experience. The results might extend the research contributions for school of Knowledge Management and for industries in Indonesia.
(2) This study only has interviewed 4 key informants and 12 ordinary informants. There is a need to add the amount of informants as long as researcher convinces that the increment of it will give more constructs that are significant.
(3) Quantitative or even mix-method methodologies are possible to encourage more constructs for understanding PKM through the internal corporate blogging. It would give more generalization justifications for each findings specifically.
(4) In some cases, the researcher needs to explain the objectives of this study and mention that the informant’s rights would be protected so the informant eager to contribute voluntarily.
(5) Many ideas direct new studies on PKM, Internal Corporate Blog, and Knowledge Worker themes such as
a. How do the Indonesian companies cope with barriers in facing the internal corporate blog?
b. How can the effectiveness of internal corporate blog for PKM be measure?
c. How is the relationship among the corporate culture, worker’s behavior during blogging, and knowledge works?
d. How has the individual worker’s information been transmitted into knowledge phase so it could leverage more individual’s productivity for the company?
e. How can this personal learning phase be expanded into the organizational one that could increase, again, the whole productivity?



6.2. Recommendations for PT CSI
This study also reveals recommendations carefully for research object that is PT CSI. Here are several of them that can be pointed out:
(1) Since individual workers in this company have different level of technological savvy and English proficiency, there should be some kind of periodical moments to assess and increase their competencies on that. It will accelerate them to learn new technologies and decrease different interpretations on information displayed in English.
(2) Several workers in PT CSI must pass the prior process to blog with pressures from the company rules. It could be eliminated by the appropriate approaches which company can do when introducing emerging technology by focusing its advantages and other benefits. Besides, company also could encourage their workers with providing rewards.
(3) Moulton (2005) stated that recent years there are have changed i.e. our awareness of the value of knowledge (both tacit and explicit), our understanding that intangibles have a large impact on future cash flows, our ability to leverage and share knowledge resources, the environment in which business is conducted, and the recognition that knowledge may be the only form of sustainable competitive advantage. Knowledge lost may happen in this company as others did. However as explained by Infosys Research (2006), many organizations are attempting a number of techniques to prevent knowledge lost, including mentoring, social networking and action learning teams. Effective (personal) knowledge management requires a comprehensive approach involving a series of enterprise-wide initiatives bringing together business strategy, processes and technology. Moreover, Infosys (2006) revealed the following points need consideration when initiating a new (personal) knowledge management system:
a. Focus on harnessing and fostering existing knowledge.
b. Align technological implementation with business goals.
c. Plan and coordinate initiatives to deploy (personal) knowledge management across all business dimensions i.e. from organization to process and technology.
d. Active sponsorship of the initiative by key business stakeholders.
(4) According to the Balance Scorecard Collaborative (Evans, 2002), four barriers to strategic implementation i.e. vision, people, resource, and management barrier can affect changes within the organization such as process, culture, organization, and IT changes. The proposed strategies for companies with similar awareness on the use of internal corporate blog as a PKM Tool direct the needs to do periodical measurements on the strategy, especially noticing the part of learning and growth perspectives within since PT CSI is the big company concerning to the innovativeness of knowledge product as well.


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www.kompas.com (Online edition 24 April 2005) Clicked 8 February 2008.
www.wikipedia.org Clicked 12 February 2008 and 30 December 2008.