Moria Levy authored the article Web 2.0 implications on knowledge management to determine how Web 2.0’s concepts and success can be applied to knowledge management. In this post I will be reviewing this article.
Levy divided her article to three parts: Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and Knowledge Management (KM) 2.0. The author does not provide her own definition of Web 2.0 but instead offers definitions from various authors. She then explains eight principals of a Web 2.0 as set out by O’Reilly. She provides a summary of each principle and also shows how websites can be classified in different levels of Web 2.0 based on how they follow Web 2.0 principals. Finally she provides a good definition of what Web 2.0 applications are.
She then moves onto the concept of Enterprise 2.0. She states the usage of Web 2.0 by organisations needs to be analysed in the technology adoption type and user orientation dimensions. She provides a helpful chart showing how Enterprise 2.0 can be roughly divided into segments in relation to KM.
The final part of the article deals with how KM can become KM 2.0 with the use of Web 2.0 tools and applications. The author compares the four aspects of KM with Web 2.0. She concludes that Web 2.0 and KM 2.0 have much in common and KM can benefit from these tools by incrementally introducing the tools, perhaps starting by adding Blogs and Wikis to their Web 2.0 toolkit. There are also two tables in this article one comparing KM principals and tools to the attributes of Web 2.0.
The strength of this article lies in its ambition to bring concepts of Enterprise 2.0 and KM together with Web 2.0. This article would be an ideal read for a KM professional who wants to know how Web 2.0 can be best utilised for their work. Levy provides an excellent summary of Web 2.0 applications such as blogs and wikis. The two comparative tables she created would be important tools for KM professionals who are familiar with KM concepts and wish to learn about Web 2.0.
The author sets out an ambitious target of talking about implications of Web 2.0 on KM but other than the two tables there isn’t much original information in the article. Levy seems to be content with quoting others’ research and definitions rather than contributing new knowledge or analysis. The part of Web 2.0 is almost an exact paraphrasing of the 2005 article of O’Reilly ‘What is Web 2.0’ At the Web 2.0 section of the paper, Levy talks about four levels of Web 2.0 websites which is again taken directly from an O’Reilly Radar blog entry (O'Reilly, 2006).
The author’s representation of non-academic sources as facts or principals is another shortcoming of this article. She quotes O’Reilly’s ‘levels of Web 2.0 applications’ in the paper as if it was generally accepted information by many. However as the author of a Web 2.0 applications should know, blogs are usually personal opinions, not necessarily principles accepted by researchers, to be precise. The author not only depends on personal blogs for information, she also cites Wikipedia to back up her claims. Wikipedia articles should not be directly cited for academic research as the author should know that it is an open-source encyclopaedia which anyone can edit. According to the Chronicle of Higher education even the creator of Wikipedia discourages people from using Wikipedia for their research (Young, 2006).
Not all the information in this article is accurate which reduces the credibility of the author. When she is explaining the four levels of Web 2.0 applications she paraphrases incorrectly. For example she writes that Flickr can operate offline but gains advantages from going online. Flickr is an application that could theoretically exist offline, but it actually does not. Levy also writes that O’Reilly was the person that coined the term Web 2.0 when in fact Dale Dougherty, a vice president of O’Reilly Media Inc, had first used the term (Anderson, 2007).
This article was difficult to read as it was riddled with grammatical, formatting and factual errors. Levy does a good job bringing together different ideas, opinions, and theories about Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, KM 2.0. She, however, fails to provide her own analysis or research into these concepts and she is too content to rely on quotes and paraphrases of others analysis and research.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Monia Levy is the CEO of ROM Knowledgeware, Reut, Israel.
Her personal blog was recently published as a book titled “21ST Century Management: A personal blog.”
Her twitter account can be followed at: http://twitter.com/moria_levy
REFERENCES
Anderson, P. (2007). `All That Glisters Is Not Gold' -- Web 2.0 And The Librarian. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 39(4), 195-198.
Levy, M. (2009). WEB 2.0 implications on knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13 (1), 120 - 134. doi: 10.1108/13673270910931215
O'Reilly, T. (2006). The hierarchy of Web 2.0 applications. Retrieved from http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/07/levels-of-the-game-the-hierarc.html
Young, J. (2006). Citing Wikipedia. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(42), A39-A39.
