Workers Seek Information From People They Know

from the yet-another-vote-against-knowledge-management dept

Many knowledge management implementations over the years have failed. The main reason given is that people don't like to put their information into such systems either because it takes too much time out of their daily work, or because they feel more secure keeping their "knowledge" to themselves (less likely to be fired if your knowledge is in your head instead of on the computer). Now, here's a study with another reason why knowledge management systems probably fail. When looking for information, most people prefer to simply ask people they know, rather than search online or to ask those who they have no association with. The study suggests that companies should think about making sure their office environments are more social - so that more people get to know each other (there goes that trend towards telecommuting). Also interesting is that many engineers will also go outside the company to ask someone they know for information before asking people they don't know within the company.

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