Implications to IS-Design from a Social Learning Perspective

IS-development efforts targeted for capturing and supporting knowledge sharing and learning processes within the social context of the work practice are in still their advent and lack proper theoretical foundation. These processes are vital to an organization as they are the sources of its innovative power and strategic survival. What an organization knows is embedded within the people constituting that very same organization. How this knowledge is generated, shared and applied in problem solving situations of an organization’s daily work is rooted within the social context of the practice. There do exist examples of work done in this direction in formulating guiding principles for IS-design of support systems, but we find that they are not adequately addressing the social dimensions of practice. Here we try to remedy this by drawing upon social theory of learning in looking how it may contribute to the IS-design process. This theory has shown great explanatory power for processes of knowledge sharing and learning within the social context of the work practice. In this regard, we use it to reflect upon the lessons learned from a development project