A Study on the Knowledge Community for Creating and Sharing Implicit Knowledge

Abstract

The ultimate goal of a knowledge-based society is to encourage the individuals to share and disseminate their knowledge spontaneously, so that the circulation of knowledge is accomplished. The structure of knowledge circulation consists of the following loop: preparation of explicit knowledge from implicit knowledge (externalization), sharing of the explicit knowledge, reproduction of implicit knowledge from shared explicit knowledge (internalization) and externalization of reproduced implicit knowledge. In addition, for the purpose of sharing knowledge, the market place should be established and offer a variety of incentives that induce people to willingly participate in the creation of knowledge. In this paper, we show a successful example of a knowledge community, the Global Network of Korean Scientists and Engineers (KOSEN, www.kosen21.org), focusing on its organization and operation. KOSEN was established in 1999 in order to share knowledge and information resources of Korean scientists and engineers all over the world. Among 4 knowledge management processes--knowledge creation and acquisition, knowledge organization and storage, knowledge distribution and knowledge utilization--KOSEN supports 3 processes (aside from the utilization of knowledge). Moreover, KOSEN seeks knowledge utilization by encouraging the formation of small groups within the community.