What makes corporate wikis work? wiki affordances and their suitability for corporate knowledge work

  • Authors:

  • M. Lisa Yeo;Ofer Arazy

  • Affiliations:

  • Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada;Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

  • Venue:
  • DESRIST'12 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems: advances in theory and practice
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Wikis were originally intended for knowledge work in the open Internet environment, and there seems to be an inherent tension between wikis' affordances and the nature knowledge work in organizations. The objective of this paper is to investigate how tailoring wikis to corporate settings would impact users' wiki activity. We begin by synthesizing prior works on wikis' design principles; identifying several areas where we anticipate high tension between wikis' affordances and organizational work practices. We put forward five propositions regarding how changes in corporate wikis deployment procedures may impact users' wiki activity. An empirical study in one multi-national organization tested users' perceptions towards these propositions, revealing that in some cases there may be a need for modifying wiki's design, while in other cases corporations may wish to change their knowledge work practices to align with wikis' affordances.