Promoting KM in the Aerospace Industry

Student: Hiroko Wilensky, UC Irvine/ISR

Advisor: David F. Redmiles, UC Irvine/ISR

Abstract:

We studied a community of knowledge management (KM) practitioners in the aerospace industry. Our ethnographic inquiry revealed that knowledge sharing and reuse – the core tenet of KM – is against the deep-rooted culture of aerospace engineering. Our analysis on the KM practitioners’ discourses identifies their beliefs: (1) KM is an imperative way to efficiently manage knowledge: finding “lost” knowledge and eliminating “redundant” knowledge; (2) KM tools and practices are progressive and are capable of solving knowledge issues; (3) yet, KM is misunderstood or hardly understood by people in the industry. We describe various hindrances which KM practitioners encountered while promoting their KM tools and practices.

Bio:

Hiroko Wilensky is a PhD student in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include knowledge management, CSCW, technology impact on work and organizations and technology diffusion and adoption. For the past three years, she studied a community of knowledge management practitioners. She is currently studying a community of librarians in an aerospace company and the adoption of blogs and wikis at their work places. She is a software engineer at Boeing Company and has worked on various network and space projects.