Tong-Ming Lim
email: tongmingl@sunway.edu.my

Angela Siew

-Hoong Lee

Angela Lee

Siew Hoong

Using "Yams" for Enterprise Knowledge Sharing among Knowledge Workers from the Perspective of a Task Categorisation-Knowledge Sharing Systems Fit

Keywords: Knowledge sharing, task categorization, knowledge sharing systems, text mining, Web 2.0

des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

The use of social computing systems for knowledge creation and sharing has shown a sharp increase according to Alexa (alexa.com) in the last two decades. Many social computing platforms such as Facebook and Xanga have been used extensively for both personal and commercial reasons to publish leisure, lifestyle, technical and engineering related journals. Recent studies also show that Weblogs have been adopted for teaching and learning, knowledge creation and sharing, customer satisfaction and retention exercises by many companies worldwide. One of the most recent developments is the adoption of weblogs as the most preferred knowledge management system due to its ease-of-use and social phenomenon [START_REF] Yang | A social network-based system for supporting interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer network[END_REF]. In the last five years, researchers have started to shift their focus from people-centred or motivational-centred research to technological features-centre research work in their quest for a more manageable and measurable knowledge creation and sharing goal.

The discovery of hidden knowledge in social media systems such as Facebook and Twitter has become an important source of knowledge for companies and non-profit organizations. Research conducted in the last few years has shown that design of new products and launching of marketing campaigns were crafted and based on feedback and comments mined from unstructured data posted by customers. Understanding customers' needs and critiques before investing into commercial activities saves a large amount of money and the outcomes harvested from the investment are more encouraging. However, mining text information is not an easy task. Text data is illstructured and hence proper tools are required. In addition, the amount of data produced by Web 2.0 systems are usually dynamic and this makes text mining a challenging task indeed. In this research, an enterprise microblogging system, Yammer, is chosen and implemented for a shared services company. An enterprise microblogging system runs behind the firewall. Compared to Twitter, which is a public microblogging system exposing the 'twitts' to their followers openly, an enterprise microblogging system requires that the participant belongs to a specific company domain. This research identified the usage pattern and communication topics from the posts by employees of a case study company.

The participating company in this research uses Yammer to contribute and share knowledge; topics of discussion among participants were mined and the tasks category-knowledge sharing system fit was studied. Based on the microblog entries, topics of discussion and communication behaviour were investigated too. The concept map that links between topics allows the researchers to draw a more accurate and interesting picture of knowledge contributed and shared among participants. Based on the analysis, the text mining tool also shows the fit between features of an enterprise microblogging system to different categories of task carried out by the participants when they communicate and share knowledge.

Even though most of these companies realize the need to be strategically competitive in a globalized commercial environment, tacit knowledge is one of the important assets to retain. However, many companies have even understood and adopted the process of conversion between tacit and explicit knowledge [START_REF] Du | Learning with Weblogs: An Empirical Investigation[END_REF]. In view of the need to properly understand the challenges faced by these companies and the adoption of Web 2.0 platforms such as Weblogs, this research intends to investigate the features and functions of Web 2.0 used to carry out participants' tasks, while their posts provide evidence of enterprise knowledge sharing activity. These outcomes allow a better understanding of the fit between different categories of task and Web 2.0 functions toward the exchange activity of knowledge among participants. Alejandro et al. [START_REF] Alejandro | Knowledge Construction Through ICT's: Social Networks[END_REF] pointed out that technologies are facilitators within collaborative learning spaces for learners. In addition, Kaiser et al. [START_REF] Kaiser | Weblog-Technology as a Trigger to Elicit Passion for Knowledge[END_REF] also highlighted those technological features of weblogs such as blogrolls, permalinks and trackbacks which essentially are the keys promoters for successful knowledge creation and sharing by quoting the Open Source Software (OSS) case in his study. The research objectives of this project are: to explore whether collaboration and communication promote strong engagement; whether knowledge can be mined from posts; and whether Web 2.0 functions and task categories fit facilitates better than knowledge activities.

Web Technologies

Social computing systems such as Facebook and Twitter are new technology enablers for many young and technical savvy users. Since Coakes et al. [START_REF] Coakes | Storing and sharing knowledge, supporting the management of knowledge made explicit in transnational organizations[END_REF] and Bausch et al. [START_REF] Bausch | We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs[END_REF] coined the term 'web' and 'log' or 'weblog' in December 1997, weblog technology has evolved from a first generation which features first-person dairies. Second generation weblog technology features weblog community features such as "permalinks" with improved word processing features. Third generation weblogs would consists of Bulletin, commentary, individual profiles, Eprops, Permalink, Skins, Syndication, Blogring, Chatterbox and Archival elements. Comparisons between all these weblogs are shown in Table 1.

Related Works

Related works on knowledge sharing, text mining, knowledge sharing on Web 2.0 sites and task-technology fit are reviewed and discussed.

Text mining

Zhong et al. [START_REF] Zhong | Effective Pattern Discovery for Text Mining[END_REF] found that modern computational technology approaches such as the Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique are used to mine the meaning behind text documents so that they are easily understandable. This approach allows the text mining engine to discover relationships and patterns that exist in text files. Microsoft is one of the companies that use text mining to conduct their analysis for their online reporting application, NetScan. According to Mailvaganam [START_REF] Mailvaganam | Evolution of Analysis -Microsoft's NetScan and Project Aura[END_REF], the NetScan software uses a combination of reporting, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and Data Mining applications to analyze the posts from Usenet. Microsoft uses NetScan to analyze their Usenet posts, frequencies, e-mail addresses of posters, trend analysis, values of the messages posted and eventual creation of a better search engine for the company. NetScan analyzes the posts to obtain meaningful information. In order for NetScan to perform this, it uses text mining features to achieve its objective. This feature allows NetScan to classify and cluster the Usenet posts and generate a predictive model using a decision tree technique to evaluate the posts that are useful. Hence, it is apparent that text mining can be used to determine the usefulness of the content of a system with proper analysis.

Knowledge sharing

A range of studies have been carried out by researchers by considering people factors [14, 15, and 16] in the quest for more effective and successful knowledge creation and sharing in an organizational environment. However, recent research [8, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 3] also find that social computing systems such as weblog have been very successful in improving knowledge creation and sharing among bloggers.

Task-technology fit

IP, Fun and Wagner [START_REF] Ip | Weblogging: A study of social computing and its impact on organizations[END_REF] looked at social networking systems as a medium for young people and organizations, interviewing 33 young bloggers using a fit model to evaluate their needs and the technology features offered by weblogs. There is clear evidence which shows that social computing is shifting away from traditional technologies such as email. The latest social computing development such as Web 2.0 has shown progressive impact on organizational computing. Commercial organizations intend to take advantage of the webloggers' social computing skill to address their customers' as well as organizational information processing and knowledge management needs. The author suggested grouping the users into four categories based on their usage intensity. The author found that different groups of users would use a different set of weblog's features. The author used Task-Technology and Needs-Technology Fit models to explain the relationship between different groups of users and their needs using these two models. With this, the author attempted to relate to the organizational needs of users for knowledge creation and sharing. Other Task-Technology Fit studies reviewed include Zigurs et al. [START_REF] Zigurs | A Theory of Task/Technology Fit and Group Support Systems Effectiveness[END_REF], Maruping et al. [START_REF] Maruping | Managing Team Interpersonal Processes Through Technology: A Task-Technology Fit Perspective[END_REF] and Goodhue et al. [START_REF] Goodhue | Development and Measurement Validity of a Task-Technology Fit Instrument for User Evaluations of Information System[END_REF].

Knowledge sharing on Web 2.0 sites

Yang and Chen [START_REF] Yang | A social network-based system for supporting interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer network[END_REF] found four contingency factors based on two cases: Microsoft Longhorn Blogosphere (Case A) and the European Research Institute (Case B), using weblogs as the social networking tool to study knowledge creation and sharing activities for organizations as a novel social and organizational phenomenon. The authors also strongly believed that creation and sharing of knowledge in organizations is more of a social phenomenon rather than an individual and cognitive process. The four contingency factors are: process of implementation (CF1); the rule of membership (CF2); the type of work supported by ICT (CF3); and the distribution of knowledge (CF4).

Figure 1 shows that considering intrinsic and extrinsic motivational stimuli with the two cases studied, information obtained can be used to explain the four contingency factors. The results in Figure 1 concluded that successful weblog implementation can be achieved in a corporate setting for the purpose of knowledge creation and sharing through a set of stimuli strategies with the application of the contingency factors in a technology-mediated environment.

Alejandro et al. [START_REF] Alejandro | Knowledge Construction Through ICT's: Social Networks[END_REF] compared several information technological tools that offered the most efficient way of knowledge construction in the education world. Construction of knowledge through social interaction helps students to create and manage the new knowledge that is being delivered to them. His comparisons on several commonly used ICT tools in education covered: clickers, collaborative editing, Facebook, Google Jockeying, Instant Messaging ,Social Bookmarking, Videobloging, Virtual Meeting, Virtual Worlds and Wikis. He concluded and recommended that Virtual Meeting, virtual worlds and wikis were still the few best tools to be used in education.

Du and Wagner [START_REF] Du | Learning with Weblogs: An Empirical Investigation[END_REF] also strongly agreed that learning with weblogs is able to enhance and create active learning among students. Students are able to perform better by uploading their coursework in public to be criticized by other students; hence this has improved student performance. Du and Wagner's [START_REF] Du | Learning with Weblogs: An Empirical Investigation[END_REF] research also found that active learning is able to form knowledge sharing and collaboration group work among students. Their investigation on the effectiveness of weblog and its impact on the performance of different learner levels has concluded that a web based learning log can be a predictor of learning performance and this enhances a traditional learning log.

Other works reviewed also demonstrated that weblogs are a collaborative distributed tool which promotes constructivism learning among bloggers. Ras et al. [START_REF] Ras | Using Weblogs for Knowledge Sharing and Learning in Information Spaces[END_REF] showed that using weblogs promotes knowledge sharing and learning in information spaces where journals are maintained through weblogs as an input for both an experience base and information element base learning from experiences. Hsu et al. [START_REF] Hsu | Acceptance of blog usage: The roles of technology acceptance, social influence and knowledge sharing motivation[END_REF] interviewed 212 bloggers in their work and based on the theory of reasoned action, the authors found that the model proposed by them had evidently shown factors such as ease of use, enjoyment, knowledge sharing (altruism and reputation) that were positively related to attitude toward blogging. Social factors and attitude toward blogging also significantly influenced a blogger's willingness to continue to blog.

Research Methodology

The research reported here was conducted using two approaches: microblog entries were collected from a chosen group of employees who were involved in a project for a 30-day period in the case company; and text analysis was used to analyse the microblogs. This was followed by an interview session conducted with the participants of a chosen project on their tasks and Web 2.0 system's functions that they used as they exchanged and shared knowledge with their peers to carry out their project activities.

First of all, an active project that consists of members from all the departments that participated in the project was identified. This was followed by a briefing to set the objectives appropriately. Yammer was chosen to be implemented for a period of 30 days by all the members of a project team. Training and features of Yammer were also provided. All the entries and comments posted by participants were extracted into a Microsoft (MS) Excel file. The MS Excel file contained the raw post data. In this research project, the SAS Text Miner system was used to analyse the microblog entries so that unstructured text that consisted of the employees' opinions could be identified and analysed. By analysing these entries, the text mining software was able to identify topics of discussion, importance of these topics, related sub-topics and knowledge generated by participants from their discussions and problem-solving activities. The outcomes of the text mining allowed ease of knowledge retrieval from topics of importance and easy-to-understand topic linked maps visually highlighted knowledge contributed and shared by the employees on Yammer. During the interview session with all the project participants, a list of related questions on task categories and Yammer's functions were asked.

Yammer Microblog: Text Mining and Analysis

SAS Enterprise Miner software was used to carry out text analysis. Figure 2 depicts the patterns of the post entries of the employees on the Yammer microblogging system. The visual output of their usage patterns is shown in the form of a bar chart indicating frequency of post by author. Figure 2 also shows the frequency of entries posted by different authors. The chart shows that one of the project members, Phoebe Than, is the most active participant among all the other participants in the microblogging space. She has posted the most entries in this exercise. She had contributed a total of 61 entries. One of the possible explanations is the fact that she is the project manager of the chosen project and she is very supportive of the use of microblogging system as a tool to update status and share knowledge with her other peers. She had taken the initiative to devote herself and her time to willingly share a lot of information pertaining to the chosen project with other members on the chosen social networking platform. Her contribution as a knowledge creator and sharer also ensured that the research project yielded the anticipated outcome.

Fig. 2: Author with the highest frequency of postings

In Figure 3, different terms and their frequency from the posts are illustrated. Every box in the diagram is a term measured by its frequency and the weight of the term within every post being made. The box which is highlighted shows the term "+server" has the highest frequency count. In this example, it has a total of 52 counts that appear in the data collected from the entire test period. However, the weight of the term is only 0.56547 which shows that the importance of this term is at an average level. The higher the weight the more importance the term has from the entire corpus of the posts. This shows that the entries posted in the project are mostly related to the issue on "server". A question that one may need to answer in the future work is to study the low weightage value for terms that were identified as terms of slightly above average levels from the participants.

Fig. 3: Terms with the highest frequency

In Figure 4, the term "license" has the highest weight with a value of 0.9. This means that the importance of this term is the highest among all other terms being talked about among members of the project although the frequency of this term is only five in the entries posted by the users. This means that the current project is currently handling "license" or legal issues. It is consistent with the findings of the interview content conducted at the end of our research work.

Fig. 4: Terms with the highest weight

In Figure 5, a concept map is used to show the topics which are related to the term "ITSSC". Related topics of discussion could be expanded into a second level of the map to understand the sub-topics. For example, in Figure 5, the term "setup" is expanded and it shows that "setup" is relevant to the infrastructure department and it is also related to the setup of "server". Furthermore, the term "Putra" when it is expanded, shows that it is related to "Sunway", "Project" and "Hotel". This explains that several topics of discussion among participants are all related to the Putra Place project. Furthermore the lines that connect between any two terms were presented using different thickness. The lines connecting the "Putra" and "Hotel" is the thickest which means that the frequency of discussion communicated by project team members on these two terms is the highest. Another observation indicated the term "Hotel" was closely related to "Pyramid", "email domain" and "implementation".

These connections are consistent because our interview data towards the end of the testing period showed that the text analysis matched the interview findings. 6 illustrates another significant term, "legal privileges", and its relevant concepts. Since the project is now discussing the legal issues with its clients, conversation between the members are also mostly focused on legal precaution that is of high concern among members in the project. Hence, it can be seen in the concept map that the patterns of this topic and other topics that are well related to legal matters such as "unauthorized", "+prohibit", "liability", "virus damage" and "legal" terms. Furthermore, the thickness of the lines connecting these terms is almost the same, which shows that the frequency of these terms appearing together is almost the same. In addition, as the term "legal" was expanded to the second level, it visually expands to other related terms such as "consent", "companies", "disclosure" and "responsible". The concept maps reveal the conversation patterns on the subject "legal privileges" through topics and sub-topics among the members of the project. The concept map in Figure 7 shows that "Putra" is another key topic discussed by the team members. The concept map shows that the term "Putra" is closely related to the term "hotel" where the line thickness explains their relationship. And based on the text analysis, the second more relevant term is "place". This shows that most of the related entries are about the network and the knowledge of the network from the terms "join" and "knowledge", as they are clearly highlighted in Figure 7. Another example would be the term "team". As shown in the concept map, the term "team" relates to terms such as "sales", "marketing", "finance", and "purchasing". Based on text posted, it was found that there are few new groups that were just created by the users in this exercise. This clearly shows that the users actually make use of Yammer to create new groups for their own departments for ideas, status and topics of discussion. Fig. 7: Concept map on the term "Putra"

Information retrieval through text filtering

Information retrieval using text filtering was carried out in order to allow extraction of information on specific terms used by the participants. This is very useful in identifying specific information from a large amount of data such as data on social media systems. Based on the updated activity diagram, new findings for the information retrieval perspective are described in Figure 8.

By using the Text Filter (Figure 8), information can be easily retrieved. Therefore, through the Interactive Filter Viewer, the communication topics related to the author can be discovered. As shown in Figure 8, when terms such as "implementation" and "server" are entered as the retrieving criteria, the document on the screen shows all the text entries which contain terms with author detail presented visually. Furthermore, the software also shows the 'Relevance' column which indicates how relevant the term is to the entries. Based on the output in Figure 8, it shows that one of the respondents, Benny Leong, has the highest number of occurrences of these terms in his entries in Yammer. Therefore, it is believed that in the project, Benny Leong is working very closely with server implementation. IP, Fun and Wagner [START_REF] Ip | Weblogging: A study of social computing and its impact on organizations[END_REF] and Du and Wagner [START_REF] Du | Learning with Weblogs: An Empirical Investigation[END_REF] pointed out that a clear set of social networking functions help to improve knowledge creation and sharing in a technology-mediated environment. Based on the data collected from our interviews, we found that different categories of tasks required a different set of functions for carrying out day-to-day tasks which involved plenty of knowledge creation and sharing activities. Analysis of the interview content also identified a set of task categories that are carried out by the project members of the team. The set of activities identified in each task is shown in Table 2. Table 2 is a set of nonexhaustive task categorizations identified from the interviews conducted with the members of the project. Based on the 'Task Categories' in Table 3, a common set of non-exhaustive functions used by each task category is also identified. content; that is, the licensing issue of the project. This has evidently shown that objectives in this project have been accomplished. First of all, engagement from collaboration and communication is strong. Secondly, knowledge mined from posts is generated. Lastly, use of Web 2.0 functions to facilitate knowledge activities for employees of different task categories is shown. In short, the findings have shown that the project members do make use of Yammer to share knowledge on the progress of their project. Although the testing period was short and the data maybe insufficient, the findings show that information posted are mostly project related. Evidence also highlight that microblogging is useful for knowledge sharing within a company and if it is given more time than in this exercise and more participants actively involved in using the system, then findings can be more generalized.

Microblogging for Enterprise Education

The use of a microblog system for higher education institutions has been very successful. Nauman and Suku [START_REF] Nauman | Adoption of Twitter in higher educationa pilot study[END_REF] investigated the adoption of Twitter in an Australian higher education institution using Davis's [START_REF] Davis | Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and user acceptance of information technology[END_REF] Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to predict Twitter usage. Their findings suggested that information sharing using Web 2.0 is encouraged but it is more about enjoyment and social presence and not merely about how useful or easy-to-use a technology is. However, exploring enterprise education using microblogs is still fairly limited in terms of research reviewed. For example, Chelmis and Prasanna [START_REF] Chelmis | An empirical analysis of microblogging behavior in the enterprise[END_REF] suggested that learning in an enterprise setting shows that users with strong local topical alignment tend to participate in focused interactions, whereas users with disperse interests contribute to multiple discussions, broadening the diversity of participants. Riemer and Richter [START_REF] Riemer | Tweet Inside: Microblogging in a Corporate Context[END_REF] explored communication patterns in a team that adopted Enterprise Microblogging. Their findings show that contextual differences and an open communication platform impact on user appropriation. They suggest that decision makers need to vest trust in their employees to use microblogs for productivity in corporate environments for learning purposes. Studies show that there are some moderately successful cases in enterprise education using microblog systems for knowledge sharing; but some still highlight barriers in their implementation besides needs to consider elements such as religion, culture and education systems. Using microblog systems for enterprise education through knowledge sharing has had some small successes but it is still an area that needs more research study.

Conclusion

Findings suggest that microblog activities exhibit acceptable levels of engagement and communication patterns among Yammer users. Text analysis highlighted terms with the highest frequency and weight which inform important issues that are most communicated among participants in the project. It is also shown that knowledge is exchanged between knowledge workers on these topics. Findings showed that participants use microblogs to share expertise; hence, the Web 2.0 tool is a useful tool to collaborate, communicate and share knowledge at the organizational level. The fit between different Web 2.0 functions and different categories of tasks has facilitated effective sharing and exchanging of knowledge. In future studies, findings can be generalized when organizations of different trades and different cultural and educational backgrounds from different countries can be studied.

Fig. 2 :

 2 Fig. 2: Intrinsic and extrinsic motivational stimuli with the two cases

Fig. 5 :

 5 Fig. 5: Concept Map on the Term "ITSSC" and Related Sub Topics

Figure

  Figure6illustrates another significant term, "legal privileges", and its relevant concepts. Since the project is now discussing the legal issues with its clients, conversation between the members are also mostly focused on legal precaution that is of high concern among members in the project. Hence, it can be seen in the concept map that the patterns of this topic and other topics that are well related to legal matters such as "unauthorized", "+prohibit", "liability", "virus damage" and "legal" terms. Furthermore, the thickness of the lines connecting these terms is almost the same, which shows that the frequency of these terms appearing together is almost the same. In addition, as the term "legal" was expanded to the second level, it visually expands to other related terms such as "consent", "companies", "disclosure" and "responsible". The concept maps reveal the conversation patterns on the subject "legal privileges" through topics and sub-topics among the members of the project.

Fig. 6 :

 6 Fig. 6: Concept map on the term "Legal Privileges"

Fig. 8 :

 8 Fig. 8: Retrieving an author based on terms

Table 1 :

 1 Weblogs and their features

	Types of Weblog	Features and Usage
	Bulletin	Disseminating messages
	Commentary	Allowing members to add comment on weblogs
	Individual Profiles	Allowing community members to read what the author
		has blogged about
	Eprops	Is a way of letting the author know you like his/her
		post. Some websites offer unlimited Eprops
	Permalink	Individual permanent URL to their weblog post
	Skins	Readymade templates for users to change blog outlook
	Syndications	Notification features where it prompts the readers
		about their favorites weblogs being updated
	Metro/	A group of webloggers from the same geographical
	Community/Blogring	region or shared or similar interests
	Chatterbox	Allowing real time interaction between webloggers and
		visitors
	Private Blogs	Blogs which are only accessible to certain people

Table 2 :

 2 Tasks-task categories

	Tasks or activities of tasks	Task categorization
	Software design	Creative
	Software documentation	Detail
	Debugging	Creative
	Programming	Creative
	Customer support	Mechanical
	Documentation	Mechanical
	Schedule project	Creative
	Administer project	Routine
	Administer people resources	Routines

The fit between different task categories and functions is tabulated in Table 3. From Tables 2 and3, it can be concluded that the type of knowledge contributed and shared by participants to carry out different categories of tasks needs different functions. There may be some common functions that all may use, such as "Search by category" and "Commentary". However, "Content management tools" and "Time structuring" are used only by some tasks.

Analysis of the Fit of Task Categories and Web 2.0 as the Knowledge Sharing System

The interview content and documentation obtained from the project team provide more accurate relationships between categories of tasks and technological functions that one uses in daily activities. These activities range from 'change of font for a field or a label on a data entry screen' to a complex task like 'rewrite a commission calculation routine'. It is virtually impossible to compile all the activities and the most effective approach would be to group these tasks into 'task categories'. By relating each 'task category' to each group of technological features, a high level relationship will be revealed. Based on these relationships, knowledge activities using a social networking system could further be investigated. The study of the fit of task categories and Web 2.0 functions for knowledge sharing can be deepened as more companies of different trades participate.

Analysis on Yammer Microblog Content

Outcomes of text analysis provided a number of useful insights on the microblogs posted by the project members. Concept maps were used to illustrate the most and least communicated topics among employees. Evidence of knowledge exchange activity is shown through employee collaboration. Knowledge contributions from authors are also analysed and identified; this highlights staff engagement on the Yammer social networking platform. As the project is almost at its completion stage, the discussion was found to have focused on legal issues. Therefore, the term "license" and "+server" were found to yield the highest weight and frequency respectively. The text analysis findings matched the outcomes of the interview


Angela Lee
email: angelal@sunway.edu.my

Siew Hoong

Tong-Ming Lim

An Exploratory Study on the Use of Knowledge Management System and the Employees' Perception on Organisational Knowledge Sharing and Reuse

Keywords: Knowledge sharing, knowledge reuse, perception, knowledge workers, POKM

. This research studied the implementation of Practice of Knowledge Management (POKM) that is currently used in an information technology (IT) shared services company. The research findings highlighted that the technological, people and organisational factors affect differently knowledge workers at the junior, middle and senior levels. The findings also highlighted that the POKM quality is stable and organisation of the content is rated well. However, POKM has a poor response time and search capability. Hence, the content is difficult to locate, but most participants agree that knowledge in the POKM is useful for their day-today job, accessible anytime and anywhere. The user interface of POKM is not very easy to use, with a weak set of functions and features. And users are not very satisfied with the efficiency and effectiveness of the systems. However, employees are satisfied with the ease of access, download and reuse of knowledge. Most users agree that POKM is a new knowledge acquisition enabler. Innovative ideas and tasks can be accomplished more efficiently. Lastly, users agree that POKM enables knowledge sharing and creation.

Introduction

In an ever-changing economy, the advancement of technology has demanded many companies to constantly evolve themselves to be more competent global players. The number of companies that rely heavily on Internet technology to carry out their dayto-day business operations has increased in leaps and bounds. Advanced web-based systems have become an important part of organisational strategy. It is generally agreed that the key that keeps organisations always ahead of their competitors is to transform themselves into knowledge-centric organisations. Most organisations acknowledge that successful knowledge creation and sharing culture is the key asset of these organisations. The new culture of organisations today is to nurture Community of Practice (CoP) in these organisations to make full utilisation of their knowledge. Therefore, it is important to carry out research in a case study company which has started to use a Knowledge Management System (KMS) to understand factors that cause such efforts to succeed or fail.

In this research, an information technology (IT) shared services company was chosen to participate in this project. The objectives of this project were to investigate information such as difficulties and benefits experienced by employees in the process of implementing and adapting a KMS system. This information will then be used to formulate problem statements for the subsequent phase of the research work. Based on the interviews conducted with employees of the case study company, it was found that the KMS utilisation had been drastically decreased even though tremendous effort had been invested in it. The low KMS usage had not met the objectives of the company. These objectives included increasing knowledge sharing among employees and intensifying organisational communication among employees in the company by riding on the advanced IT automated system currently being implemented. At the stage when research was carried out, each employee was given a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI): usage of KMS for communication and knowledge sharing. This made usage of KMS a mandatory activity for the employees. This may not have been a good method to encourage usage of KMS as it might result in poor information quality. If the knowledge in the KMS is not very useful, employees will not bother to read or share it. The knowledge-related activities among employees were so poor that the amounts of collaborative communication and knowledge sharing among employees created concerns for the top management.

The objectives of this research comprised the following set of goals: i.

To study the usage of KMS among employees. ii.

To investigate the use of the Knowledge Based Management System (KMS) towards improving job performance through innovative ideas. iii.

To thoroughly understand the KMS benefits, the perception of the system, motivators and barriers among employees. Currently, the KMS system in the company does not see much knowledge sharing among employees. This project tried to understand factors that motivate employees to accept the KMS as the IT automated tool to improve their productivity rather than a system for use as an information repository only. Therefore, this research used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect data to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the KMS implementation in the company.

Literature Review

 A KMS manages knowledge and facilitates knowledge sharing among employees in companies. For companies that view knowledge as an important asset, they recognise that if KMS is used effectively, they can be benefited. Shannak [START_REF] Shannak | Measuring Knowledge Management Performance[END_REF] described components that constitute a Knowledge Management System (KMS) and highlighted how Knowledge Management System (KMS) performance could be measured. The research works conducted by Shannak [START_REF] Shannak | Measuring Knowledge Management Performance[END_REF] and Davenport et al. [START_REF] Davenport | Building Successful Knowledge Management Projects[END_REF] identified four categories of activities in a knowledge management project. They are: creating knowledge repositories; improving knowledge access and transfer; enhancing a knowledge environment; and managing knowledge assets. Therefore, it is essential that a knowledge management system fulfils these criteria as stated in these four categories.

By creating knowledge repositories, the organisation can capture and store their knowledge, documents and information; hence, easy access occurs. Furthermore, if there is any turnover of employees, the knowledge captured could be useful for the new employees to effectively take on the job [START_REF] Aranda-Corral | Social Ontology Documentation for Knowledge Externalization[END_REF].

The second category [START_REF] Ong | Developing an Instrument for Measuring User Satisfaction with Knowledge Management Systems[END_REF] of the activity is to improve knowledge access and transfer. It is about knowledge transfer between employees within a company. This is a complicated process, as different people have different areas of knowledge. To find the perfect substitute to transfer knowledge is tedious. Therefore, in a company, it would be best to have a Community of Practice (CoP) where people with similar interest are grouped together. The ease of accessibility to the required information is very important. If the KMS contains low quality information, it will provide poor quality information to the users, which may not be very useful for their work. Therefore having good categorisation and classification of topics in a KMS is necessary.

Another area that constitutes a Knowledge Management System (KMS) is the knowledge environment. An organisation should enhance its knowledge environment if it wishes to nurture a knowledge creation and sharing environment for all its employees. A suitable environment provides the right ingredients so that employees are more innovative and willing to share their knowledge. To ensure use of KMS in a knowledge-sharing culture is a long term effort, employees must be receptive to culture sharing in a company. Senior employees need to facilitate a useful knowledge management process.

The last category which constitutes a Knowledge Management System (KMS) would be managing knowledge as an asset. Organisations should consider knowledge as an intangible asset which could be transformed into innovative ideas that could improve the company's overall performance. As most companies are moving toward a knowledge-centric organisation, proper knowledge management and use of knowledge is as important as any other organisational agendas. The companies therefore should focus their attentions on the improvement of creation, sharing and utilisation of knowledge. As knowledge management has become an agenda of the highest priority in a company, factors that could intensify the knowledge activity in companies for better profits and productivity are challenging tasks.

Methodology

This section presents activities that were designed as part of the research to solicit data as input to understand and answer questions of interest. Firstly, company documents were examined and studied. This was followed by a series of interview sessions. These interviews were conducted to further understand the background information and comments of the interviewees based on a set of questions given to them one week before the actual interview. These interviewees are chosen across all the departments. Each department has at least three (3) candidates, consisting of a junior, mid rank and senior staff member. The interviews were recorded and an interview report was produced. Finally, a questionnaire survey was conducted. The design of the questionnaire was based on the data solicited from the initial document and interview outcomes. The questionnaire was prepared and a pilot test conducted on a group of selected employees. In this paper, the focus is on the outcomes of the questionnaire results after data cleaning, data consolidation, and analysis. The design of the questionnaire was based on several successful instruments as described in studies conducted by Shannak [START_REF] Shannak | Measuring Knowledge Management Performance[END_REF], Ong et al. [START_REF] Ong | Developing an Instrument for Measuring User Satisfaction with Knowledge Management Systems[END_REF], Lee et al. [START_REF] Lee | A Process-Based Knowledge Management System For Schools: A Case Study In Taiwan[END_REF], Ali et al. [START_REF] Ali | Knowledge Management Obstacles In Malaysia: An Exploratory Study[END_REF], Wu et al. [START_REF] Wu | Measuring KMS Success: A Respecification of The Delone And Mclean's Model[END_REF], Seonwoo et al. [START_REF] Seonwoo | The Implementation Framework of Knowledge Management System For Successful Knowledge Management: A Case Of R&D Supporting KMS[END_REF] and Brink [START_REF] Brink | Measurement of Conditions for Knowledge Sharing[END_REF].

A total of 57 employees of the case company took part in the questionnaire survey. These employees were from five departments (sales and marketing, business solutions, infrastructure service and computer operations, application development and IT process management) and of different levels of seniority in the company. The questionnaires were given out randomly to the employees. The survey was conducted to gain a better understanding of employees' perceptions towards the KMS and their satisfaction level of the system. Due to commercial and confidential reasons, the name of the company and the actual identity of the employees are not revealed.

Prior to the questionnaire survey, a short write-up and briefing on the survey's objectives were given to the employees. The objectives of this survey were to better understand the existing KMS and to find out possible improvements of the current KMS system from various aspects such as functionality and social network capabilities from systems such as Yammer or Facebook. In this exercise, employees were required to fill in general information such as job type and position level. No names were required as the survey was done anonymously so that confidentiality was kept.

The questionnaire was divided into four parts and consisted of a total of questions. The first part consisted of four questions and they were simple dichotomy questions. These questions asked about employees' perceptions of the existing KMS as well as their main usage of the system. Questions asked also included the purpose of using KMS, the type of user that they grouped themselves into and the people they interacted with most through KMS. The next part of the questionnaire survey attempted to ask the employees to rate themselves. Responses for each question were rated from strongly agree (given a value of one) to strongly disagree (given a value of five). This set of questions examined different aspects of the KMS such as the KMS quality, KMS content quality, KMS interface, KMS functions, KMS user satisfaction, perceived KMS benefits, KMS system use, trust, KMS security, organisational issues, extrinsic and intrinsic reward that might affect employees' use of the system. This provided a better understanding of the employees' perception towards the existing KMS system.

In the design of the questionnaire instrument for this research, a set of questions was designed to investigate the future improvements of the KMS. A total of questions were designed to collect responses from the employees. All these questions were used to collect opinions on the features of enhancement of the current KMS system. In this exercise, the evidence of the interview content was validated, to indicate whether employees had a strong desire to adopt social media systems as a replacement to the current system. Lastly, the survey looked at how the employees rated the overall KMS technology in terms of functionalities, flexibility, convenience and reliability. These questions enabled the employees to express their opinions by rating various aspects of KMS as very excellent, excellent, fair, poor or very poor. In short, the design of the questionnaire basically covered all the issues to validate the employees' interview responses.

Empirical Analysis

In this section, the findings from the questionnaire survey are thoroughly analysed. The responses from the employees were collected and analysed to understand the employees' perceptions of the KMS, willingness to share knowledge, readiness to adopt an enterprise microblogging system. Based on the questionnaire survey, responses from 37 out of the 57 employees in the company were collected. The response rate was 65%. The process of collecting responses from the participants was quite time consuming due to their busy work schedule.

Figure 1 shows the types of KMS users in the company. From the 37 respondents, 32 of them use the KMS in their work. Five respondents do not utilise the KMS at all. It was clear that some employees' jobs do not require them to use KMS at all. From responses collected, 54% of the respondents are moderate users, 24% are light users and 8% are heavy users. The responses compiled found that employees in the IT shared services company are made up of a large population of 'moderate' knowledge users. The low percentage of 'heavy' knowledge user type has raised the concern of the management, considering this is a knowledge-driven organisation where knowledge is created, used, exchanged and shared on a daily basis. Based on Figure 1, it can be seen that 86% of the employees make use of the KMS to a certain level or extent.

Fig. 1: KMS user types

The KMS quality outcomes shown in Figure 2 indicate another area that provides insight on how employees perceive the system. In terms of KMS quality, a number of questions were asked and analysed. As the chart shows, most of the respondents chose 'Agree' to all the quality related questions. The numbers of positive responses are more than the negative responses. Therefore, it can be deemed that the quality of the KMS is quite good. However, the negative responses from some of the respondents that chose 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree' on the quality of the KMS should not be neglected and these indicate a need for improvement. KMS quality can be a rather serious factor that affects adoption and trust toward the use and confidence in the system. More careful and detailed study may be helpful in this respect.

Fig. 2: KMS quality

Another area of interest is the KMS content quality where most of these respondents agree that the KMS content is useful to them. They agree that the KMS is important and helpful to their work; the system is accessible anytime and anyplace as well as the recommended solutions in the KMS being useful. In term of searching capabilities, the KMS is still lacking. In Figure 3, respondents clearly indicate that on average they agree that the KMS is quite easy to use. A total of 11 respondents chose 'agree'. The numbers of respondents who chose 'disagree' and 'strongly disagree' are much higher compared to other responses. Hence, it is believed that the KMS search and retrieve capabilities still need further improvements. Figure 4 tabulates the responses about the design of the KMS interface. Only a small number of respondents disagree and strongly disagree on the user-friendliness of the system interface. This shows that the system is quite user-friendly. The responses of the question on the functions and capabilities from the respondents are examined and analyzed. The responses show that there is still room for improvement in the KMS. The KMS can incorporate more and better functions and capabilities that suit user needs. Hence, the interface is a potential research area that the researcher can work on.

Fig. 4: The KMS Interface

In Figure 5, the KMS functions are generally acceptable to the respondents in terms of their usage for knowledge networking, knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. All three questions in this area received positive feedback, as most of the respondents rated 'agree' as their answers. Based on the analysis, it is shown that the respondents have not fully utilised all the KMS functions as they should.

Fig. 5: The KMS functions

In term of user satisfaction, Figure 6 shows the satisfaction level of KMS users in terms of KMS efficiency, effectiveness, ease of access, ease of download and knowledge reuse. The figure shows the majorities are satisfied with ease of access, ease of download and knowledge reuse, whereas for KMS efficiency and effectiveness, the majority of the respondents tend to remain neutral or 'blank'. This message shows that the efficiency and effectiveness of the KMS may need some detailed study. Choosing 'blank' or ignore this question could have multiple hidden messages from the users. Fig. 6: User satisfaction towards the KMS Figure 7 shows perceived KMS benefits. This area examines what the user benefited from the KMS's perspectives. Responses of the three questions were analysed. The first question attempted to find out how KMS helped the users in acquiring new knowledge and innovative ideas. The second question asked about how the KMS helped users effectively manage and store knowledge and the last question examined how the KMS helped users to accomplish tasks more efficiently. Based on the respondents' answers, the majority of the respondents agreed that the KMS helped them, with 17 respondents agreeing to the first question, 19 respondents to the second and 15 respondents to the third question. Across these three questions, it shows that most users use KMS to manage and store their knowledge.

Fig. 7: Perceived KMS benefits

The uses of the KMS according to responses from employees are depicted in Figure 8. The questions on how the users actually used KMS to make decisions, record knowledge, communicate knowledge and information with colleagues, share general knowledge or sharing specific knowledge were asked. The figure shows that a very large majority of the participants chose 'agree' to all of the questions except for the question on the use of KMS to make decisions. Therefore, most users use the KMS to record and maintain their knowledge, communicate knowledge and information with colleagues, sharing general and specific knowledge.

Fig. 8: System use by the respondents

Another question in the survey was about future improvement of the KMS, which required the respondents to comment and provide data on the kind of improvements that could be introduced to the KMS. Based on these responses, future improvements and a potential new system may be introduced to the current system and the company respectively. Figure 9 shows that 22 respondents 'agree' that having more people actively involved to contribute knowledge on the KMS would be more fun. Most respondents agree that the system should provide more and better functions. Most respondents choose a 'watch-and-see' attitude before making a comment. Due to lack of exposure and experience on the new platforms, these respondents expressed that only if they had tried the new platforms would they want to respond to these questions. Therefore, most of them chose to remain neutral.

Fig. 9: KMS future improvements

The quantitative approach provides a quick and precise reflection on how employees' respond toward questions asked in the survey exercise. In the survey, respondents also provided some comment on their perceptions of the KMS. Some of the comments that the researcher should take into consideration, summarised as follows, are:

 Poor organisation of the information in the system.  Inability to offer search features like Google or Bing.  Need to spend more time to know more about the KMS.  Depositing articles into the KMS in order to fulfil the monthly quota as part of their KPI has resulted in poor content quality and deviation from knowledge sharing objective set by the company.

These four issues raised by the respondents should be taken into consideration seriously so that the KMS can be improved. In terms of organisation of knowledge and search features, there is still much room for improvements. However, the last issue above, about knowledge material deposited into KMS in order to fulfil the monthly quotas, is certainly a critical issue. The Community of Practice (CoP) in the company with respect to useful knowledge sharing practice is rather poor and weak. This is indicated by the fourth point in the remarks compiled from the participants, where the knowledge sharing being practiced among knowledge workers is driven by the quota set by the company. Hence, the objectives of the knowledge sharing has been deviated; as such, the desire for knowledge sharing practice outcome is poor. This shows that the KMS has not been properly used and the culture of knowledge sharing is still poor. Therefore, it is crucial that the employees change their mind-set to actually make use of the KMS for the purpose of knowledge sharing instead of just merely depositing articles that are not very relevant.

Research Findings: Analysis and Discussion

One of the objectives of this research is to study the perception of the usage of the KMS in the case study company towards improving the company's productivity and discovering new innovation from knowledge in the KMS. Currently the system usage is poor. The system is merely used as a referencing system on policy, transactional documents, procedures and other 'new' knowledge articles. As described in Nonaka [START_REF] Nonaka | Organizational Knowledge Creation[END_REF], Aranda-Corral et al. [START_REF] Aranda-Corral | Social Ontology Documentation for Knowledge Externalization[END_REF], Parameswaran et al. [START_REF] Parameswaran | Research Issues in Social Computing[END_REF][START_REF] Parameswaran | Social Computing: An Overview[END_REF], knowledge activities in a full knowledge conversion model such as socialisation, externalisation and combination are essential in a company. The information within the system is now very messy. Searching for specific information is difficult and tedious as employees dump information into the system in order to fulfil their monthly quota currently.

Therefore, through this study, the problems with respect to the existing KMS system are identified. By identifying these problems, the employees and the company are able to plan areas that need to be improved. In order to improve the company's productivity and to discover knowledge for innovation, the quality of the information shared within the KMS needs to be increased and these issues need to be properly managed.

Another objective of this research was to study the current KMS and the employees' perceptions towards the KMS. Based on the survey conducted, the findings were documented. In order to have better understanding of the current KMS performance, the Categorization Matrix of Performance Indicators discussed by Shannak [START_REF] Shannak | Measuring Knowledge Management Performance[END_REF] was used as the basis for the KMS analysis. For this study, not all the indicators were used. The research instrument examined a set of relevant indicators in this phase. The measurement from the matrix were handled in two ways, through the log in the database and by conducting surveys. However, in this research, only the survey instrument was used, therefore the indicators which required logging into the database as the source was not used. For the survey measurement, the results were gathered from findings in the form of charts from the preliminary questionnaire survey. Table 1 shows the proposed Categorization Matrix of Performance Indicators, separated into three major focus areas -process, human, and IT -where each area has its own domains and performance indicators. Firstly, in the process focus area, one of the domains is on the quality of knowledge. The performance indicators focus on the extent the employees consider the knowledge in the KMS useful and reusable. This can be seen in the KMS content quality (Figure 2) which shows that a high number of users agree that knowledge information provided by KMS is important and helpful to their work and most of them also agree that finding solutions using KMS is useful. Another performance indicator to be examined is the aspect of work efficiency due to new routines. [START_REF] Shannak | Measuring Knowledge Management Performance[END_REF] This is viewed from the extent to which employees experience time saving when finding correct information in the KMS. Our findings show that the current KMS still has issues in helping users to find the correct information in a short span of time.

The human factor was another key performance indicator examined in this research. From the survey results, the KMS user satisfaction (Figure 6) among employees was high. Findings also indicated that most employees agreed that the knowledge in the KMS was reusable and they mostly had no issue in sharing knowledge. In the perceived KMS benefits in Figure 7, it shows that a high number of respondents agreed that the current KMS helped them to efficiently manage and store knowledge and also helped them to accomplish tasks more efficiently. In the analysis on the KMS system use, it shows that most employees used the KMS to record knowledge, communicate knowledge and information with colleagues, share general knowledge and share specific knowledge. However, in terms of decision-making, not many respondents had used the KMS for this purpose.

From the analysis, it shows that most of the respondents make use of the KMS. This shows that the employees of the company are quite actively involved in using the KMS. The last part of this study was on the usability of the KMS; that is, how userfriendly the KMS is. Based on the KMS interface responses shown in Figure 4, 14 out of the 37 respondents thought that the interface was pleasant whereas 13 remained neutral. This showed that there is still room for improvement for the interface of the KMS.

In conclusion, based on the analysis and findings from the survey, the results show that the current KMS's overall performance indicators are still high when compared to the three areas specified in the categorisation matrix. The KMS still fulfils most of the criteria. However, based on the staff perceptions towards the KMS, improvement still needs to be made, especially in the search function to allow better search capabilities and also in the system interface. In addition, the quality of information shared also needs to be improved so that it could help co-workers. Motivation from upper management and commitment of employees is needed to ensure information and knowledge shared is used and useful.

Organisational Knowledge Sharing and Education

The use of KMS in education has helped teaching professionals to reap benefits such as sharing of richer resources, appreciating teaching experiences and cross-learning of good practice. This allows improvements in teaching techniques and the quality of teaching delivery. However, findings presented by Petrides et al. [START_REF] Petrides | Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education[END_REF] and Sohail et al. [START_REF] Sohail | Knowledge sharing in higher education institutions: Perspectives from Malaysia[END_REF] also highlight that the journey of knowledge sharing in education comes with challenges too. From the perspective of organisational knowledge sharing, lessons learned and problem solving techniques exchanged and shared among knowledge workers help to educate and improve the quality and productivity of work delivered by knowledge workers. By being able to identify motivators, barriers and better understanding of the perception of KMS, knowledge sharing is an enabler that can educate employees to improve their delivery in organisations.

Conclusions and Future Research Plan

In conclusion, Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) are useful for retaining tacit and explicit knowledge which are hidden within employees. KMSs are able to store, access and share among co-workers within companies. However, if a KMS is not being fully utilised, it would defeat its purpose and end up being a waste of company resource. Thus, motivation from the top management, and dedication and commitment from the employees are essential to ensure the on-going use of the system. For future research, the plan is to enlarge the research scope by considering a comparison of the characteristics (unit and organisational level) of the intended subjects and the respondents as well as increase the number of participating companies so that data collected will not be too thin.

Fig. 3 :

 3 Fig. 3: The KMS content quality

Table 1 :

 1 Proposed Categorisation Matrix of Performance Indicator