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5 CONCLUSIONS
Resuming the case study committed and presented in
this paper and relating it to our former work
(Borchardt, 2011a); (Borchardt, 2011b) on KMS in
SME several points were confirmed.
Once more we could see that a proven systematic
approach to introduce KM in SME is still missing,
whereas the question for the monetary benefits to be
gained from such a solution remains the strongest
point while introducing innovations. Moreover, we
could see that the attitude for an active KM in SME
still has to be improved, especially with regards to
the organization culture allowing time to be used for
KM purposes. Here reference values and a reliable
framework could help to build up a good point of
orientation and illustrate the success of such
activities, especially if these were free from
advertisement and a summarizing subjective
illustration.
With regard to social media we found that the
solutions from SNS are known, while others, older
solutions from the field of CSCW like e.g. instant
messenger and discussion forums are almost
forgotten. The benefits of those can hardly be
estimated, especially not in monetary units. The
younger the employees the more involved they are
in social media and able to use it. However, the
mixture with private use also holds the risk of
privacy issues and distraction. Yet, the possibilities
for pure content provision within the company were
not realized as social media is strongly associated
with SNS. But there is a strong interest in content
provision by more than a single employee s well as a
constant exchange This seems from employees side
the possibility to influence the organizations fortune.
However this needs altering the ways of acting and
working in the companies, seeing the KM tasks not
as an extra but as an essential part of the work.
It is (by far) not sufficient to chose the social
media instrument – social media usage requires re-
thinking the question of corporate knowledge
possession, as every new KMS needs motivating the
employees and providing them with as detailed
information as it is necessary to get acquainted with
the technology. A change in operation includes
changing the corporate culture, use activation and
usage instruction (training as well as the
establishment of solutions as a standard). In picking
out Social Media instruments, an organization must
recall that it can use a bunch of ready and well
working Internet applications like Facebook, Twitter
or XING, that are somehow restricted to the use of
the organization or it can adopt applications that are
just designed for the use within its business
processes.
Further work on this case can include a revisit of
the organizations to collect feedback from customers
and CEO to verify the solutions. Maybe within a
year another questionnaire should be conducted to
see how the solutions are working and what results
they delivered by then. This certainly should not be
limited to monetary benefits but could follow the
KM Success model as introduced by Jennex/Olfman
(Jennex, 2008) to also gain an impression on the
perceived benefits the used social media offered the
employees. With the help of these perceived benefits
social media can also be a part of a value-oriented
framework for KMS in SME as suggested in
(Borchardt, 2011a), which is supposed to close the
gap of missing references for SME in the field of
KM. This is certainly still a strong issue since the
implementation and usage of social media for KM
seems to happen by chance instead of being
systematically planned including its possible
benefits.
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