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Employing Wiki for knowledge management as a collaborative information repository: an NBC universal case

  • Teaching Case
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Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases

Abstract

The Web 2.0 era is nourished by the emergence of collaboration-conducive web applications, such as blogs, social networks, and wikis. Among these, Wiki has particularly revolutionized the way information is created and shared within a wide variety of organizations, such as educational institutions, research centers, and business enterprises. The technically undemanding nature of Wiki alleviates the burden of mastering cumbersome or complicated technologies, thereby encouraging personnel to share and archive valuable tacit knowledge with other members of the organization. As a result, Wiki helps mitigate the reluctance of members to share knowledge, resolving one of the most pronounced challenges in managerial efforts to capture, transfer, and store knowledge for the firm. This case study presents the inception of a wiki by the NBC Universal Software Engineering and Delivery Team and the expansion of the wiki to other departments in the firm, in particular to Peacock Productions, which specializes in programming of documentary TV programs. The Peacock Productions case demonstrates that Wiki can be a powerful tool for managing knowledge in business corporations, which must adapt quickly to changing market demands.

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Notes

  1. Parise, Salvatore, ‘Marketing: The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World,’ The Wall Street Journal, 15 December 2008.

  2. Following Raman (2006), the authors differentiate between the terms, ‘Wiki (uppercase W)’ and ‘wiki’. The former is used to describe the concept or refer to the technology in general; the latter is used to refer to a particular application of the technology.

  3. EduCause Learning Initiative, July 2005, http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf.

  4. http://www.elevatorview.com/2008/01/08/7-effective-wiki-uses-and-the-companies-that-benefit-from-them/, last accessed on 23 January 2012.

  5. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/collaboration/ges-enterprise-collaboration-backbone/126.

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Appendix

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Table A1

Table A1 A timeline of events for the Wiki implementations

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Bibbo, D., Michelich, J., Sprehe, E. et al. Employing Wiki for knowledge management as a collaborative information repository: an NBC universal case. J Info Technol Teach Cases 2, 17–28 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jittc.2012.1

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