Together with that, we found support for the proposition that supervisor’s and co-workers’ support for participating in KM activities positively affects the relationship between use of web 2.0 technology for KM in an organization and perceived learning of the inpiduals working in that organization. The interviewees responded positively that in the web 2.0 based KM environment supervisor’s support for using web 2.0 based KM to learn new things could increase the perceived learning of the inpiduals.

The studied organizations are gradually relying more on the web 2.0 based training. As in the web 2.0 based training an inpidual has to take the initiative to use the web 2.0 based materials to learn new things, supervisor’s support, encouragement and recognition play positive role in an inpidual’s perceived learning. We found that a supervisor could effectively motivate an employee to learn new things through web 2.0 based KM. Moreover, recognition and appreciation from a supervisor for learning new things could positively affect the learning experience. For example, an interviewee from organization B stated,

We have these 1to 1 meetings with our managers. So when something new comes out. Managers say guys check this out (using web 2.0 based learning materials). So we get a 10 -day period of time to install and try those. …..….. ….. Managers appreciate when you learn those new tools and share your opinion.

Timothy et al. (2006) found that employees’ learning through training becomes more effective when employees recognize that they would have some accountability for learning with their supervisors. Our finding confirms the same effect of a supervisor’s support on employee learning when training is facilitated through web 2.0 -based KM. Hence, our finding essentially informs the management that the supervisors should take initiative in encouraging employees to learn new things using web 2.0-based KM and that will make this relatively new method of training employees more successful.

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IV. CONCLUSION

Web 2.0 has gained widespread popularity at the consumer level. However, it is still not well-understood how web 2.0 can be effectively used for KM by enterprises. Our research addresses one aspect of this gap in the literature by studying the effects of using web 2.0 for KM on tacit knowledge sharing and inpidual’s perceived learning.

Employee training is very important for the organization to sustain competitive advantage (Vemić, 2007). Our results informs the management that inpidual level web 2.0 based KM is a more effective substitute for traditional face-to -face training sessions and can positively affect inpidual’s perceived learning. We found that the studied organizations have successfully reduced the number of formal training sessions and increased the perceived learning of the employees through with the web 2.0 based trainings. Hence, we believe our result should persuade management to gradually rely more on the web 2.0 based KM for employee training to increase the perceived learning of inpiduals. Our result also shows that web 2.0 can be an effective KM tool to capture tacit knowledge which has always been a challenge for the organizations.

Together with this, our research also identifies the effects of KM context variables. This finding should help the organizations to create appropriate KM context where web 2.0 based KM could be more effective.

REFERENCES

Alavi, M., & Tiwana, A. (2002). Knowledge integration in virtual teams: The potential role of KMS. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 53, 1029-1037.