Knowledge Management and the Design of Distributed Cognition Systems

The society in which we live today is increasingly a knowledge society. Organizations are turning more and more to knowledge creation and management for the development of their competitive edge and organizational strategies. This must be taken into account when designing information technology to support organizational knowledge operations. Through the use of philosophy, we examine the role of knowledge management in the design of distributed cognition systems. The design principles proposed by Boland, et al. (1994), are modified with the addition of Habermas's theory of communicative action. The resulting design principles are proposed as a framework for the design of information technology that supports distributed cognition and knowledge management in organizations.