Website development and use in CBOs:A knowledge management perspective

Effective Knowledge Management (KM) has been known to offer identifiable benefts to organisations, though improved efficiencies and competitive advantage. As part of a project examining the phases of KM as they apply to information technology projects, Urwin and Burgess (2009) proposed a conceptual model that documented the stages of knowledge management from conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge, storage of this knowledge, its subsequent retrieval and absorption by recipients and their eventual application of the knowledge in (practical) action. Preliminary results from a study of project managers suggested that knowledge management often 'fell at the first hurdle' through ineffective storage and subsequent ability to access especially complex knowledge. This paper examines concepts related to knowledge management and how they can be applied to community based organisations (CBOs), specifically in relation to how they set up and maintain their websites. This occurs by applying the KM conceptual model to all phases of the use of websites by small Community Based Organisations (CBOs), which are non proft, non government organisations that serve local community needs. As with many similar sized organisations, many small CBOs are restricted by a lack of resources and relevant expertise when setting up their websites. Interviews with small CBOs in Australia, New Zealand and the UK suggested that even the most basic knowledge related to website operations is being lost in the organisations and that the cause of this is the failure of the CBOs to store the knowledge effectively. The paper also examines the reasons for these losses and the strategies adopted by the CBOs to overcome these problems.