Knowledge conversion in organizational contexts: a framework and experiments

Knowledge is the capability to take action and the primary resource for all organizational transformations. It allows strategic decision making, the planning and control of organizational activities, the management of everyday business operations as well as our personal behaviour. Knowledge exists at various levels, not only at the personal level but also at group and organizational levels. Organizational knowledge is a special type of knowledge, 'collective understanding', that is valid in a specific organizational context. In this paper, we demonstrate an artificial (virtual, synthetic) environment for supporting organizational knowledge management and decision making. The purpose of the construction is to offer a context for complete knowledge creation. The proposed system is a complete 'artifact', a supportive environment in which knowledge accumulates and is shared, a system that is built to activate existing knowledge and to support the creation of valuable new knowledge in an organization.