Transcript Slide 1

Activity theory for knowledge
Management
Professor Lorna Uden
.Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology,
Staffordshire University,
Beaconside, Stafford, ST18 OAD. UK.
Email: [email protected]
Professor Lorna Uden
2009
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Talk
• Introduction
• Problems with current knowledge
management
• Proposed ideas
– Activity theory
– Distributed knowledge system (DKS)
• Conclusion
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Knowledge Management
• Knowledge is a key resource in organisations.
• Knowledge is defined as dynamic human process of
justifying personal belief towards the truth.
• Knowledge management is the process of creating,
codifying and disseminating knowledge for wide
range of knowledge intensive tasks. (Harris et al 1998).
• Knowledge Management Systems (KMSs) are tools
to effect the management of knowledge and are
manifested in a variety of implementations including:
– Repositories, expertise databases, discussion lists and
context-specific retrieval systems incorporating
collaborative filtering technologies.
(Davenport et al 1998)
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Limitations of current approaches
to knowledge management
• Current knowledge management approach
• Related to the capacity of ICT to store,
manipulate and distribute large quantities of
information in real time for competitive
advantages.
• Most managers see KM as knowledge
repositories that collect and store knowledge
in the same way as databases manage data.
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• Traditional KM systems are often deserted by
users (Bonifacio and others (2002)
• Problem is not technical, but inadequate
epistemological model that is in contradiction with
the deep nature of knowledge.
• Traditional KM systems embody an objectivist
view of knowledge independent of all subjective
and contextual elements that are typical of raw
knowledge.
• Knowledge is not a simple picture of the world, it
always presupposes some degree of
interpretation.
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Effective KMS must build on a genuine
representation of real, distributed work
and business that can be implemented in
ICT without loss of context.
• Inadequate epistemological model that is
in contradiction with the deep nature of
knowledge.
• Objectivist view of knowledge
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The origins of activity theory
• Cultural-historical tradition & the Vygotskian
school of psychology
• The philosophical tradition which includes
Kant, Hegel, Marx & Ilyenkov
• The concept of activity in Russian
psychology
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Activity Theory
• Is an evolving theoretical framework which is
used to inform the analysis and
implementation of systems that are used in
the workplace.
• Originated within Soviet psychology, but today
there is an emerging multidisciplinary and
international community of scientific thought
united by the central category of activity - a
community researching far beyond the
original background.
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• Activity theory is a philosophical and crossdisciplinary framework for studying different
forms of human practices as developmental
processes, with both individual and social
levels interlinked at the same time” (Kuutti, in
Nardi, 1996, page 25).
• A minimal meaningful context for individual
actors called an activity must be included in
the basic unit of analysis.
• Activity is driven by various needs in which
people want to achieve a certain purpose
(or goal).
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The Structure of an Activity
• Activity is a form of doing directed to an
object and activities are distinguished from
each other according to their objects.
• An individual can participate in several
activities at the same time.
• An activity has an object and activities can
be distinguished according to their objects.
• Transforming the object into an outcome
motivates the existence of an activity.
– an object can be a material thing, less tangible things
(plan) or totally intangible (a common idea) as long as it
can be shared for manipulation and transformation by
the participants of the activity.
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• It is possible that the object and motive
themselves will undergo changes during the
process of an activity; the object and motive
will reveal themselves only in the process of
doing.
• An activity is a collective phenomena.
• An activity has a subject (actor) who
understands the motive of the activity.
• An activity exists in a material environment
and transforms it.
• An activity is a historically developing
phenomena.
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• Contradictions are the force behind the
development of an activity.
• An activity is realised through conscious and
purposeful actions by participants.
• The relationships within an activity are
culturally mediated.
• Kuuti (1996), inspired by Engeström (1987),
represents the structure of an activity in the
following diagrams* where the relationships
are mediated by artifacts:
[Kuuti, K. (1996). Activity Theory as a Potential Framework for HCI Research. In
‘Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction.’
B.A. Nardi (ed). pp 17-44. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA]
[Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by Expanding. Orieta-Konsultit, Helsinki]
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Tools
Subject
Object
Outcome
Mediated relationship at the individual
level.
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Tools
Object
Subject
Rules
Community
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Outcome
Division
of
Labour
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Levels of an activity
• Objects are transformed into outcomes through a
process that typically consists of several steps or
phases. Activities consist of actions or chains of
actions, which in turn consist of operations.
Activity
-
Motive
Action
-
Goal
Operation
-
Conditions
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• There is construction and renegotiation within the
activity system.
– coordination between different versions of the object
must be achieved to ensure continuous operation.
– tasks are reassigned and redirected , rules are bent and
reinterpreted.
• There is incessant movement between nodes of the
activity
– what initially appears as object may soon be
transformed into an outcome, then turned into an
instrument, and perhaps later into a rule. e.g. an
unusual medical case first appears as a problem, is
transformed into a successful diagnosis and treatment,
the account of which is used instrumentally as a
prototype or model for other similar cases, and is
gradually sedimented and petrified into a rule requiring
certain procedures in all cases that fit the category
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Contradictions
• Contradictions manifest themselves as
problems, breakdowns, clashes.
• Activity theory sees contradictions as sources
of development, activities are virtually always
in the process of working through
contradiction.
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Why activity theory?
• Activity theory is deeply contextual and oriented at
understanding historically-specific local practices,
their objects, mediating artefacts and social
organisation (Cole & Engeström 1993).
• Activity theory is based on a dialectical theory of
knowledge and thinking, focused on the creative
potential in human cognition.
• Activity theory is a developmental theory that seeks
to explain and influence qualitative changes in
human practices over time.
(Hasan 1999; McMichael 1999; Kuutti 1999).
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• Activity theory provides a comprehensive unit of
analysis.
• The use of mediating instruments. This
mediating instrument makes it possible for an
instrument to mediate and change a supporting
activity as subjects’ invent their activities context.
• Activity theory helps to maintain adequately the
relationship between the individual and social
levels in the objects to be studied, especially in
situations where there is a need to grasp
emergent features in individual and social
transformation.
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• Activity theory, by its nature, is
multidisciplinary.
• Activity theory enables the study and
mastering of developmental processes.
• Activity theory is interventionist in its
methodological approach.
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Implications of AT for KM
• The hierarchy of activity structures
• Activity should be the unit of analysis in
the study of KMS. This is a conceptual
level about the KM Design
• Internalisation and Externalisation
• Knowledge sharing
• History
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Activity Theory Methodology
• Activity theory does not offer ready-made
technologies and procedures for research
(Engeström 1993)
• Engeström (1990) recommends three
methodological principles for activity theory.
• A collective activity system is taken as the
unit of analysis, giving context and meaning
to seemingly random individual events.
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• Historically analyse the activity and its
constituent components and actions.
• Inner contradictions of the activity systems
shall be analysed as the source of
disruption, innovation, change and
development of that system.
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A Distributed Approach
Distributed Knowledge Management (DKM)
• Knowledge is considered local, deriving from
continuous negotiation within organisational units.
(Wenger 1998).
• Is managing the processes of creating local
knowledge within autonomous groups and
exchanging knowledge across them (Bonifacio, Bouquet &
Traverso 2002).
• A distributed knowledge management architecture,
of an organisation is viewed as a constellation of
knowledge nodes (KNs) that are autonomous,
locally managed knowledge sources, which
represent organisational and social units at a
technical level
(Bonifacio, Bouquet & Cuel 2002).
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Problems of applying Activity
Theory to Knowledge Management
• The researcher involved in it must have a complete
understanding of the activity system under
observation, including the dynamic interplay of all
the units of the activity system (McMichael 1999).
• Researchers must understand and account for all
history, actions, rules, tools, and divisions of labour
that at play in the activity systems and these
obviously cannot be assumed to exist in all activity
systems.
• The difficulty faced by researchers in unravelling
activity systems.
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• The difficulty of distinguishing between the
levels of activity, actions and operations.
• The research time frame must be long
enough to understand user’s objects,
including where appropriate, changes in
objects over time and their relation to the
objects of others in the setting being studied.
• Some activities cannot directly result in the
desired outcome, only indirectly. This would
mean that there should be multiple data
collection methods to achieve a convincing
research result.
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Conclusion
• For effective KMS, it is necessary to understand the
interrelationship of cultural, technical and
organisational elements.
• Activity theory principles are ideal for making visible
the structure and dynamics of work situations,
especially with respect to contradictions.
• Contradictions provide a systematic way of
modelling and reasoning about breakdowns and
opportunities for KM design. The strength of the
activity theoretical perspective is the recognition
that work systems are inherently dynamic.
• More research is needed.
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