Abstract. Knowledge work is performed in all occupations and across all industries. The level of similarity of knowledge work allows for designing supporting tools that can be widely used. In this paper an activity-based perspective towards knowledge work is taken. Based on findings from a previous ethnographically-informed study, we identified valuable activities to be supported in order to increase knowledge maturing inside companies. The goal of this paper is to contribute to which knowledge maturing activities are deemed important, so that they can be supported by IT services. Quantitative and qualitative data have been collected in 126 organisations of different size, sector and knowledge intensity. Important feedback and issues emerged and need to be managed in order to support success in the knowledge maturing activities that allow improvement of organisational learning through the dissemination and application of the most appropriate knowledge.

No abstract

No abstract

The level of similarity of knowledge work across occupations and industries allows for the design of supportive information and communication technology (ICT) that can be widely used. In a previous ethnographically informed study, we identified activities that can be supported to increase knowledge maturing, conceptualized as goal-oriented learning on a collective level. The aim of this paper is to investigate the current state of support and success of these knowledge maturing activities and to contrast them with their perceived importance, to identify those which have the highest potential for being supported by ICT. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through telephone interviews with representatives from 126 organizations throughout Europe in a sample stratified according to size, sector, and knowledge-intensity. The activities that appear to be most promising are "reflecting on and refining work practices and processes," "finding people with particular knowledge or expertise," as well as "assessing, verifying, and rating information." Rich empirical material about how these activities are performed and also the issues that emerged and need to be managed were collected. Three clusters of organizations were identified: best performing organizations, people-and awarenessoriented organizations, and hesitant formalists. It was found that a balanced knowledge strategy that leaned toward personalization outperformed a codification strategy.

In the context of designing supportive organizational and IT-based measures, understanding the effects of knowledge application and the support for innovation in different team settings are topics that have received increased scholarly attention. While the effects of knowledge application and support for innovation have been investigated and confirmed independently from each other, their joint influence in connection with team characteristics remains unexplored. This paper fills this gap by examining how and why team characteristics, such as task organization, task non-routineness, IT support and the integration of expertise, come to affect team performance. Our analysis of survey data collected from 203 team members in two medium-sized organizations suggests that the factors 'knowledge application', 'support for innovation ', 'task organization' and 'IT support' all exert some influence on team performance. Additional focus group data provided insights into measures, which organizations and managers can adopt to improve the performances of their teams.