Does an internal web-log or internal SNS become an agent of the organizational learning?

Abstract

Today, some new digital communication tool, for example web-log and SNS (Social Network service) becomes poplar in the world. Japan is not also the exception. Web-log has become popular in 2005 and SNS has become popular in 2006. The top SNS service company, mixi, Inc., has listed in the mothers market and the numbers of mixi member is over 8 million at Jan. 28. 2007. Various kinds of people in Japan are just using these services and they can become friendly with these operations in short time. Furthermore, in recent years, web-log and SNS are also used for the business purposes internally in various companies, i.e. Oracle Japan, NTT Data, UNIQLO etc. Since there is not enough know-how to succeed in utilization of these new digital communication tools, most these companies are in the process of trial and error. The approach for the introduction seems so similar as the one of groupware. We have a lot of fear that many companies will fail to operate new communication tool without suitable approach. Tsuchiya, et al. (2006) indicates a possibility of an internal web-log or internal SNS for promoting people’s emergent process, but they did not show enough know-how to manage the process. Itami (1999) proposed a concept of management of “BA” and said a possibility of IT tools for knowledge management in a company or an organization. Unfortunately, there were not any suitable IT tools at that time, e.g. groupware did not meet people's expectations. Currently we can use some new tools, internal web-log and SNS, and we believe that we can create better conditions for people’s emergent process in a company or an organization. Everybody understands that it is hard to control people’s emergent process completely. However, we certainly need to manage the process as well as introducing a new tool in an organization. But the know-how of management the emergent process is not clear. Furthermore, nobody has proposed the suitable effectiveness measurement of the new tools. Nobody mentions about the agent function of the new tools for organization learning. The purpose of this thesis is to propose and discuss some ideas of agent function of internal web-log or SNS in Japanese company or organization. We refer some case studies in Japan and try to extract principles of successful utilizing these new tools. We also discuss the facilitation approach to facilitate people’s emergent process for their learning.