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Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Telework
Abstract
We are witnessing the emergence of more distributed organizational structures, thanks to the advancement in information and communication technologies (or ICTs). The concept of telework in which people work away from the home office in various set-ups has received a great deal of attention in the business world, especially among knowledge workers. Given that knowledge has become the driving force of the new society, effective facilitation of knowledge creation and sharing among distributed entities could be instrumental for the success of a telework program and for improved teleworker productivity (Jarvenpaa and Ives, 1994). Despite the imperative, there has been a lack of attention on investigating knowledge management issues from the perspective of telework. The objective of this research was to conduct an exploratory investigation of factors that are expected to significantly affect the dynamics of knowledge creation and sharing among teleworkers. Draw on the SECI model (Nonaka, 1994) that theoretically explains the reproductive process of organizational knowledge, we analyzed how telework caused changes in the social and task relationships, accessibility of organizational knowledge, and the usage of electronic media as a knowledgesharing channel. For this, related data were gathered from teleworkers in Japan through interviews and a survey questionnaire. Empirical findings and their corresponding implications are discussed from the perspective of distributive knowledge creation and sharing.
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