Intranät - en kunskapskälla i arbetet?
FöretagsekonomiBusiness administration - informationBusiness administration - organizationKunskapKunskapsöverföringInformationssystem
The ambition with this study is to look into and create an understanding for
how an intranet can work as a support system in work processes in capacity as a
source of knowledge. We want to enhance the understanding for which kind of
knowledge that can be coded in and transmitted by an intranet, and which that
is lost in this process. We also want to clarify what it takes to get this
knowledge, in collaboration with the intranet, to support the work in an
organization.
It is a qualitative case study at a Swedish bank. It consisted of semi
standardized, half structured interviews with five people in one of the bank?s
local offices. We have an ideographic basic view on our case study, which means
that we are interested in the specific case and do not see it as a way of
contributing to general laws. The knowledge we do contribute with though, can
create an understanding for how intranet supports work processes in capacity as
a source of knowledge in organizations with systems similar to that of our case.
Our results were that to be able to acquire knowledge to be used when solving
complex problems at work trough the intranet employees also need to be able to
assimilate it. The assimilation has to do with the structure of the intranet,
whether it is user-friendly or not, the structure of the information presented
there, its relevance and up-to-dateness, and the information supply. Our
overall conclusion is that the intranet at the company we studied is mostly
used to acquire knowledge that is used when solving routine tasks since the
user-friendliness is very insufficient and the information supply is redundant.
Such information often has a simple structure, examples are current interest
rates and exchange rates, and does not demand a lot of the structure of the
intranet.