The acceptance of corporate wiki use for knowledge diffusion purposes
| Pages | 642-659 |
| Date | 20 November 2017 |
| Published date | 20 November 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-04-2017-0088 |
| Author | Fayez Hussain Alqahtani |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
The acceptance of corporate
wiki use for knowledge
diffusion purposes
Fayez Hussain Alqahtani
Department of Computer science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Purpose –Scholars and practitioners alike view knowledge as a crucial organisational asset. Over the past
decade, severalknowledge management(KM) technologies have emerged, suchas wikis. A wiki is a web-based
hypertext application that supports a collaborative and conversational approach to KM. While wikis are
generally simple to use, their adoption for managing organisational knowledge sometimes meets resistance
from employees. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors affecting the user acceptance of
organisationalwikis as a means of knowledge creation and diffusion.
Design/methodology/approach –Building on the existing research on KM and information technology
adoption, this study identified the following factors: the relevance of top management support for and
complexity of enterprise wikis as well as technical support and knowledge-sharing self-efficacy.
A cross-sectional survey was employed to examine the influence of these factors on employees’acceptance
of corporate wikis. Overall, 102 employees participated in the online survey, and the data collected were
analysed using the partial least squares method.
Findings –The research model developed demonstrates that top management support, technical support
and knowledge-sharing self-efficacy have a positive significant effect on employees’willingness to use wikis
for knowledge-creation purposes within organisations.
Originality/value –The findings of this study contribute to the existing literature on the implementation of
wikis as a KM technology by developing a theoretical model explaining employees’acceptance of this
technology. Organisations could use this model to guide and facilitate wiki initiatives.
Keywords Wiki, Technology acceptance, Knowledge diffusion, SmartPLS, Knowledge creation,
Cross-sectional survey
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
According to Detienne and Jackson (2001), knowledge is considered a critical asset by many
organisations because it is a key to success in the digital economy. Organisations that make
effective use of this critical asset have a competitive advantage; this is why many have
developed an interest in knowledge management (KM) practices and are willing to spend
increasingamounts of money to implement KM systems and projects(Kakabadse et al., 2003).
Information technology (IT) plays a vital role in KM initiatives, but KM is not confined to
the realm of IT. A vast array of KM systems has emerged, such as expert systems and
knowledge repositories (Schultze, 2008). However, such conventional KM systems have
shortcomings; knowledge is managed in a limited manner by a small group of knowledge
workers who adopt a centralised approach (Levy, 2009). Collaborative and social KM
systems derived from Web 2.0 applications, on the other hand, are perceived to be
encouraging. Web 2.0 could be defined as a new generation of web applications that permit
people to connect, collaborate and share information (Dwivedi et al., 2011; Husin et al., 2016).
There are several types of web applications, such as wikis, blogs and social networking sites
(Alqahtani and Abunadi, 2016). Free of the limitations inherent in traditional systems, wikis
are viewed as next-generation KM systems (Hasan and Pfaff, 2006). Wikis decentralise the
work of managing knowledge and making use of intelligence among many people.
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 69 No. 6, 2017
pp. 642-659
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-04-2017-0088
Received 10 April 2017
Revised 8 May 2017
16 June 2017
Accepted 28 July 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
The author is thankful to the Deanship of Scientific Research, Community College Research Unit at
King Saud University for funding this research.
642
AJIM
69,6
Furthermore, wikis support the management of both implicit and explicit knowledge
(Alqahtani et al., 2010; Alqahtani et al., 2014b; Bolisani and Scarso, 2016).
Many organisations are eager to adopt wikis as an emerging KM technology because of
the competitive advantages they offer. Similarly, commentators have become more
enthusiastic in exploring the potential of wikis as a KM technology. However, the literature
still contains only a few empirical studies that examine the adoption of enterprise wikis for
the purposes of knowledge creation and diffusion (Iglesias-Pradas et al., 2015). The available
studies are somewhat limited: the research has examined the adoption of wikis in
non-organisational contexts (Liu, 2010); investigated employees’reasons for adopting
general social media platforms without considering the actual adoption of specific enterprise
wikis (Behringer and Sassenberg, 2015); or considered the adoption of enterprise wikis in
general terms, without examining its adoption for the purposes of knowledge creation and
diffusion (Bolisani and Scarso, 2016; Hester, 2014; Shu and Chuang, 2011). Few studies have
investigated the adoption of enterprise wikis for knowledge creation and diffusion; for
example, Iglesias-Pradas et al. (2015) focus on covering the social mechanisms of wiki
adoption, neglecting other factors like technology. Unlike Iglesias-Pradas et al. (2015), the
current study investigates the adoption of an enterprise wiki for knowledge creation and
diffusion purposes by using a holistic approach that considers the influence of technological,
personal and organisational factors. The current study aims to explore the factors
influencing employees’adoption and use of enterprise wikis as well as how such
factors affect knowledge creation and diffusion.
This paper is organised as follows: the Background section provides information on wiki
technology and KM and reviews a selection of existing works on topics related to those
examined inthis paper. The next section, Hypothesis development,presents and discussesthe
hypothesis examined in this work. Thereafter, the Research method section describes
the research methodology, including the data collection and data analysis as well as
the measurement and structural models. Thereafter, this paper discusses the results of the
current study and compares them with the findings in the literature. Finally, the concluding
section summarises this study’s contributions and implications for stakeholders.
Background
A variety of concepts are presented in this section. To begin with, the concept of a wiki is
introduced and its advantages as a collaborative technology are discussed. The discussion
moves on to illustrate KM and the supporting role played by IT. Finally, this section
appraises previous studies of the advantages of using, and the challenges involved in, the
implementation and use of wikis for KM.
The wiki concept
The internet offers many ways of manipulating and arranging information. To publish and
share information on the internet, Web 2.0-based social platforms that facilitate the creation
of user-generated content have recently become popular. A wiki is an example of such social
software: an online hypertext system that enables collaborative editing via monitoring
through a framework that maintains users’updates and/or contributions to the available
edited text (Wang and Wei, 2011; Jimoyiannis and Roussinos, 2017). Wiki technology is seen
as an effective, easy and quick way of developing text collaboratively. Hence, wiki
applications have been adopted by groups such as cyber teams and virtual communities.
Wiki applications have also been found useful in the creation, accumulation, distribution
and sharing of knowledge (Brichni et al., 2014; Cozzani, 2015; Wagner and Majchrzak, 2007).
The numerous inherent advantages of wikis as a collaborative web technology have
attracted the interest of experts (Wang and Wei, 2011). Their freeform nature, simple look
and feel, collaborative KM capability, search functionality and interactive features are the
643
Wiki use for
knowledge
diffusion
purposes
To continue reading
Request your trial