The Disciplinary Rhetoric of Knowledge Management in an Aerospace Industry Community

The Disciplinary Rhetoric of Knowledge Management in an Aerospace Industry Community (Poster)
Student: Norman Makoto Su, UCI/ISR
Advisor: Gloria Mark, UCI/ISR
Student: Hiroko N. Wilensky, UCI/ISR
Advisor: David Redmiles, UCI/ISR
Abstract: Knowledge management (KM) is a discipline whose practitioners hail from a diverse set of backgrounds. In academia, KM theorists belong to computer science, management and social science departments. In industry, KM implementers belong to information technology, human resources and marketing departments. These different camps each have their own views of what KM is. Moreover, these camps seek to legitimize and further their own definition of KM. Our study seeks to uncover the discourse and rhetoric of knowledge management practitioners. Drawing from both a Strong Programme and Actor-network Theory approach to the social analysis of science, our study will analyze how the KM discipline has evolved by scrutinizing the concepts, participants and ideas revealed in the community's discourse. Our study focuses on the conversations of an aerospace industry community devoted to knowledge management.
Bio: Norman Makoto Su is a PhD student in the Informatics department at UCI. With his advisor, Dr. Gloria Mark, he is conducting a longitudinal study with Stew Sutton of The Aerospace Corporation investigating how people navigate and utilize multiple communities within an organization. His previous research has included an analysis of blogging community characteristics across international cultures, pervasive environments for film and novel mobile interfaces.
Bio: Hiroko Wilensky is a second year PhD student (Advisor - David Redmiles). Her research interests are in the impact of technology on organizations and work practices, CSCW and knowledge management. She plans to study a group of engineers who are involved in multiple social worlds simultaneously at their work place. She is particularly interested in how these engineers define and structure their workspaces and work practices and how their department, which is their primary social world at their workplace, forms their organizational culture.