Participatory Design in Knowledge Management: An Opportunity to

Small and Medium Business

Amanda Carolina Teixeira

, Nelson Tenório

1,2 b

, Danieli Pinto

, Nada Matta

and

Arthur Gualberto Bacelar da Cruz Urpia

1,2 e

Stricto Sensu Departament, Cesumar University, Maringá, Paraná, Brazil

Cesumar Institute of Science Technology and Innovation (ICETI), Maringá, Paraná, Brazil

Business Faculty of Cianorte, Cianorte, Paraná, Brazil

Technological University of Troyes (UTT), France

Keywords: Technology, KM Implementation, Factors, Literature Review.

Abstract: Knowledge Management (KM) has become an essential driver to develop dynamic capabilities for businesses,

organizational learning, and boost knowledge assets on behalf of competitiveness. Nonetheless, some critical

success factors are hampering KM implementation, such as a lack of a KM strategy, cultural aspects,

leadership, and technology. In this paper, we focused on KM implementation within Small and Medium

Enterprises (SMEs). Our study explores if Participatory Design might be considered an opportunity for KM

implementation in SMEs, by focusing on information technology as a critical success factor. To achieve this

goal, we conducted an ethnographic study in the real environment of a consulting firm that is starting its own

KM. Our results show that Participatory Design might be recommended to SMEs to implement KM, by taking

advantage of already available, but underused technological tools.

1 INTRODUCTION

SMEs are the main sources of job creation and local

economic development. Despite representing 90% of

businesses in the world (Durst and Bruns, 2018),

SMEs have limited resources in which require

developing dynamic capabilities to remain

competitive in a constantly changing market (North

and Babakhanlou, 2016).

SMEs are important drivers of economic growth

in Brazil. Data from SEBRAE (2020) show that there

are more than 19 million companies spread across the

Brazilian territory. Of these, around 89.93%

correspond to SMEs and comprise the most

diversified segments. They are responsible for

employing around 20 million people and have a 30%

share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Knowledge and the capacity to manage it are

considered the most distinctive and strategic assets a

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-3132-1101

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https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-3422-8746

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-8729-3624

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-5273-6373

business can have, as it helps firms to act intelligently,

and it is also a driver to organizational learning. The

success of any firm depends on this intangible

resource (Nieves and Osorio, 2015). In this context,

KMintends to manage organizational knowledge

through the coordination of people, processes, and

technologies through the creation, sharing, and

application of knowledge aiming at promoting

organizational goals (Dalkir, 2017; Davenport and

Prusak, 2005).

Despite this, there is a tendency in KM to focus

on large businesses and neglect SMEs (Durst and

Edvardsson, 2012). Moreover, there are some

obstacles to KM implementation in SMEs, namely

critical success factors, such as the absence of a clear

strategy for KM, the lack of sharing culture,

leadership support and managers’ commitment, as

well as the absence of an information technology

infrastructure that supports information sharing

Teixeira, A., Tenório, N., Pinto, D., Matta, N. and Urpia, A.

Participatory Design in Knowledge Management: An Opportunity to Small and Medium Business.

DOI: 10.5220/0010655400003064

In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2021) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 29-39

ISBN: 978-989-758-533-3; ISSN: 2184-3228

(Wong and Aspinwall, 2005; Anand, Kant, Patel and

Singh, 2012; Miklosik and Zak, 2015).

As a way of stimulating KM implementation in

those companies, by tackling the critical success

factors, Participatory Design can be deemed as a

promising opportunity. Increasingly applied in design

projects, one of its characteristics is to provide users'

participation, through empathy and communication,

understand their behaviors and what they want during

their experience with the product, enabling the

creation of new attractive modes for user experience

(Mahlamäki, 2013; Wang, Yu and Xu, 2017).

Since information technology is one of the most

critical success factors in KM implementation, in this

paper, we present the opportunities of Participatory

Design to engage companies’ members in

implementing KM within SMEs. Hence, our

contribution aims to strengthen the knowledge-

sharing culture within SMEs organizations

motivating and engaging people to participate in KM

design initiatives. In this sense, employees can have

the opportunity to discuss and present their own users'

needs getting their belonging-sense that drives their

engagement to KM effectiveness. To achieve this, the

literature, discussing technology as a critical success

factor, as described in Section II. Section III presents

Participatory Design, while Section IV a systematic

literature review approaching Participatory Design in

KM and our research method. Finally, sections V and

VI focus on our findings and discussions, while

conclusions close our paper.

2 TECHNOLOGY AS ONE OF

THE MAIN CRITICAL

SUCCESSFUL FACTORS

DURING KM

IMPLEMENTATION

KM is recognized for assisting organizational

performance through the implementation of tools,

processes, systems, structures, and cultures to

improve the processes of creation, sharing, and use of

knowledge, which are crucial for innovation,

competitiveness, companies’ decision making,

adjustment to market conditions and to create value

for the business (Despres and Chauvel, 2001; Choy,

2005).

Despite the fact knowledge is one of the main

assets of organizations, managing it is a challenge for

SMEs. Although they are innovative by nature, since

they produce customized products and services and

are easily adaptable to changes in the business

environment (Durst and Bruns, 2018), they

concentrate most of their organizational knowledge -

predominantly tacit - in their partners and managers,

have little recorded knowledge and do not store it

properly for later recovery and use (Durst and

Edvardsson, 2012).

KM implementation could bring numerous

benefits to organizations, such as sales growth,

employee development (skills and learning),

consumer satisfaction (loyalty), innovation,

creativity, better relationship with other firms,

improvements in human resources management, and

organizational performance (Durst and Bruns, 2018).

Some KM processes are facilitated by SMEs’

characteristics, which favor their implementation. On

the one hand, knowledge sharing is favored by the

familiar climate between employees, which promotes

trust and strong social interaction, with higher

frequency in communications, ease of information

flow, and overlapping activities among colleagues.

Knowledge storage and retention process, on the

other hand, face constraints, since solutions are

customized and differentiated, while the storage

process demands financial resources, time, and

people to formalize and structure artifacts, patterns,

systems, and procedures. Consequently, knowledge

rests concentrated in the mind of only a few people

(Wang, Yu and Xu, 2017).

Before any KM initiative, however, it is necessary

to pay attention to some critical success factors,

which are activities and practices that must be

directed to ensure KM implementation (Choy, 2005).

Wong and Aspinwall (2005) list 11 critical success

factors for KM implementation in SMEs, in this order

of importance: support from top management and

leadership; a culture that encourages sharing; a clear

strategy and purpose for KM; resources, processes,

and activities; training and education; human

resource management; information technology;

motivational assistance; organizational infrastructure

and evaluation. From all these aspects, the ones

related to people are more crucial than the technology

itself in supporting KM Davenport and Prusak, 1998;

Delong and Fahey, 2000), since the formation of a

knowledge-sharing culture based on trust favors

people's willingness to collaborate (O´Dell and

Grayson, 1998; Govella, 2019). Hence, KM is

recognized as a cultural phenomenon (Choy, 2005),

whose main foundation is people.

Davenport and Prusak (1998), when approaching

the eight success factors of KM, affirm that one of the

most important conditions is the existence of a culture

favorable to knowledge, not to mention the

importance of motivated workers who develop, use

KMIS 2021 - 13th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

and share knowledge, in addition to the support and

commitment of senior management and leadership.

An environment conducive to sharing

presupposes the creation of a culture of knowledge

sharing supported by leadership, in which employees

understand the importance of knowledge sharing,

highlighting trust as a key element for the formation

of this culture and technological infrastructure that

gives support to communication (Dorow, 2017).

Nonaka and Takeuchi (2004) call “ba” these

favorable environments for the creation of a shared

culture of trust and empathy, in which participants

share their context and create knowledge from a

network of interactions. These informal environments

allow people to develop mutual respect and friendship

in their relations over time, even more than in clearly

established channels (Dorow, 2017).

Despite these considerations, in the current

pandemic context, in which companies are operating

remotely while increasing the speed of use and

creation of means of communication, it is imperative

to analyze and focus on one critical success factor that

is currently decisive for others to flourish: technology,

which is indispensable for communication, social

interaction and collaboration. Thus, this study opted to

analyze the opportunities presented by Participatory

Design while tackling this factor.

Information Technology is one of the main critical

success factors for KM implementation (Choy, 2005;

Wong, 2005) as it plays a vital role in enabling and

supporting tacit knowledge creation, sharing,

transfer, and use, including geographically dispersed

teams (Chugh, 2019). They are catalysts for

knowledge development, as they help it to be

managed systematically, helping to convert tacit to

explicit knowledge by supporting communication,

collaboration, and KM processes of accessing,

capturing, storing, and sharing knowledge. Moreover,

it is considered one of the KM pillars that impact

organizational performance together with people and

processes (Dalkir, 2017).

Despite the relevance of technology infrastructure

for large-scale information sharing, it is necessary to

think of mechanisms to engage workers in tacit

knowledge transfer as it is often low and there is often

a lack of confidence

(Chugh, 2019), and to consider

social, motivational, interactive, and organizational

cultural aspects in the processes of knowledge

creation and sharing (Hasanali, 2002). Thus,

technology should be considered not only a

mechanism for storing and managing information, but

also a promoter of collaboration, communication, and

sharing among peers, in the form of social networks,

video-conferencing tools, blogs, wikis, discussion

groups, e-mail, or web portals (Chugh, 2019)

This interactive process can be facilitated by

platforms, such as social networks, as they can function

as a KM system to provide access to sources of

knowledge that can be combined in different ways,

stimulating knowledge creation through exchange

between people with differing backgrounds. One

advantage of these networks is the formation of a group

identity, trust, and a common understanding that

contributes to the transfer and creation of knowledge

among the participants (Nieves and Osorio, 2015).

The effectiveness of KM tools (including

technological ones) in the process of generating,

coding, and transferring knowledge inside and

outside organizations (Ruggles, 1998) depends on the

existence of a collaborative and knowledge-sharing

culture (Servin, 2005). Bearing this in mind,

Participatory Design can be considered as an

opportunity to stimulate the good use of technology

and its effectiveness. Technology itself does not

foster knowledge sharing, as this depends rather on a

separate extrinsic motivation that can come from

organizational culture or leadership encouragement.

Considering this structure needs to be designed in a

personalized way for each company, it can be helpful

to integrate the company's workers in the design

process, taking advantage of existing technologies

combinations, instead of buying a new system.

Indeed, there is no single, ready-made solution in KM

systems: What works for one company may not work

for another (Choy, 2005). Thus, this scenario

reinforces the usefulness of Participatory Design in

KM implementation.

The use of Participatory Design might stimulate,

as a spillover effect, a culture of collaboration

favorable to knowledge among employees,

customers, and suppliers in the process of knowledge

exchange, favoring trust and common ground that

enables knowledge expansion within and outside

organizational boundaries employing technological

support.

The next subsection presents some basic concepts

and the context of Participatory Design to clarify this

work's main proposal.

3 PARTICIPATORY DESIGN

The real understanding is based on tacit knowledge,

that is, practical knowledge, intrinsic to people and

difficult to express in words, whose dissemination

takes place through a social process, in which people

need to contribute to becoming part of the network of

Participatory Design in Knowledge Management: An Opportunity to Small and Medium Business

knowledge (Lee and Yang, 2000). In this context, it

is necessary to promote an organizational structure

and culture that encourages the expression and

retention of tacit knowledge within the organization,

the improvement, and expansion of knowledge bases,

as well as the integration between individuals and

knowledge through collaboration and sharing in a

process of a systematic transfer of knowledge and

best practices (Bhatt, 2002; Huysman and Wulf,

2006; Martins and Meyer, 2012; Gonzalez and

Martins, 2017; Lee and Yang, 2000).

Before introducing the concept of Participatory

Design, it is worth understanding ‘participation’. It is

the action of being part of something or sharing

something, referring to decision-making processes

involving lay people in situations in which they

strengthen their autonomy by expressing opinions and

making decisions in the development of a project

(Bratteteig and Wagner, 2014). Participation involves

people in the significant adaptation of their contexts to

change their lives, valuing the capacity of local actors

through methods that facilitate social learning and

problem solving through the integration of different

types of knowledge (Sanoff, 2007; Berthet, 2016).

Participatory Design came up with the idea of

participatory democracy in Scandinavian Europe 40

years ago, allowing citizens to participate in decisions

that impact their lives; over time, the practice was

also introduced in the industrial sector and systems

development, in the design of products, processes,

and interfaces (Camargo and Fazani, 2014; Straioto

and Figueiredo, 2015).

Participatory Design involves actors with different

roles, life contexts, experiences, and interests within

the activities of the co-creation process and product

or system design, such as designers, development

teams, and external partners - suppliers and their

consumers (Chen et al., 2018). It supports the creation

of the best user experiences with the product

(Govella, 2019), which makes them more accepted,

source and usable, as it values a way of thinking and

acting of the participants during the development

process, prioritizing empathy, dialogue, and

communication to solve the collective learning

process (Camargo and Fazani, 2014; Berthet, 2016;

Chen et al., 2018).

There is an approximation between co-creation and

design, which together give rise to the terminology

'Co-design'. Co-creation refers to any act of collective

creativity shared by two or more people, whereas

Codesign indicates collective creativity applied

throughout the entire range of a design process, in the

development of a collaborative project with a common

goal involving the creation of a shared understanding

of the content of design, with the participation and

integration of actors from different disciplines, trained

or not in design (Sanders and Stappers, 2008).

Codesign (also called collaborative design) refers

to the interdisciplinary process of developing

products and services in partnership with various

stakeholders (designers, users, promoters, decision-

makers). In this process, there are some levels of

participation: i) informative (solitary); ii) consultative

(weak participation); iii) collaborative (with people

exerting more influence in decision making) and iv)

empowerment (which is when there is a transfer of

control over decisions to people, with strong

participation). Thus, it is denoted that participation

and collaboration have points in common, although

they do not mean the same thing (Straioto and

Figueiredo, 2015).

The practice of Collaborative Design or Co-Design

is not recent, but it has existed for over 40 years under

the name of Participatory Design, and both have in

common the fact that they bring the user and other

actors to participate in the design process, regardless

of their skills and abilities, with a single common goal

(Sanders and Stappers, 2008). While collaboration

encourages the contribution of various actors in the

creative process, participation promotes the active

intervention of users in the development of the

project, giving them power over project decisions,

and design beneficiaries are not just a source of

information for designers (Scariot et al., 2012).

As Participatory Design deals with an important

KM process, which is the creation of knowledge, this

could also eventually favor it in terms of encouraging,

establishing, or reinforcing a culture favorable to

knowledge and its sharing. Thus, this work seeks to

understand how the literature has been dealing with

Participatory Design in the field of KM, identifying

the relationship between them, as influences and

applications. From the results of this review, several

perspectives of empirical studies can be glimpsed,

such as evaluating situations in which Participatory

Design could be a strategy that supports the

implementation of KM, favors some of its processes,

or minimizes the effects of some factors successful

critics.

Due to the similarities between Participatory

Design and other nomenclatures, such as

Collaborative Design and Codesign, it was decided,

in the review protocol, to adopt all of them to expand

the range of studies related to the theme. In the next

session, we present the steps followed to answer the

research question.

KMIS 2021 - 13th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

4 RESEARCH METHOD

To investigate Participatory Design in KM

implementation in SMEs, we accomplished a

qualitative and exploratory study based on a protocol

adapted from Denyer and Tranfield (2009) and Pinto

et al. (2017). We sought to understand the

opportunities presented by Participatory Design in

KM implementation by tackling information

technology as one of the main critical success factors.

So, we firstly reviewed KM literature in the last fifteen

years. Secondly, we accomplished an ethnographic

study to analyze a KM implementation initiative in a

Brazilian SME firm. Finally, we identified potential

opportunities Participatory Design might present to

similar contexts, by emphasizing the critical success

factor of information technology.

4.1 Participatory Design and

Knowledge Management:

Literature Review

In this literature review, we present a general

evaluation about a topic, allowing us to find out

literature gaps about an issue, fostering future

investigations (Rivero-Baiocchi, 2019).

We accomplished the literature review through

five steps as follow: i) research question; ii) definition

of keywords, databases, and research strategies; iii)

selection of articles based on abstract, title, and

keywords; iv) full reading of selected articles and new

filtration; v) presentation of results and discussion. In

the first step, we considered the following research

question: “Is there scientific literature addressing

Participatory Design in Knowledge Management in

the last fifteen years?” In the second step, we looked

for publications related to the topic on online scientific

databases: the Brazilian Portal de Periódicos da

Capes, Science Direct, and Dimension, based on the

keywords: “Knowledge Management” and

“Participatory Design”; “Knowledge Management

and Collaborative Design”; “Knowledge Management

and Co-Design” from 2005 to 2020.

In total, we reached 108 papers regarding our

target topic. So, in the third step, we have read the

title, keywords, and abstract of all selected papers,

which resulted in the second filter criteria. Moreover,

we just considered complete articles published in

national or international journals while we excluded

duplicated papers. We selected papers that were

related to the topic of Participatory Design and its

synonyms to Knowledge Management and vice-versa

as the main topic. At this step, 18 were chosen for full

reading, and 90 were excluded of which 22 were

duplicated. In the fourth step, we re-evaluated those

papers, including only those articles that presented a

connection between Participatory Design,

Collaborative Design, or Co-Design with KM, but not

the contrary. In the fifth and last step, we analyzed the

13 papers. The criteria of analysis were focused on

the content of the selected papers summarizing

critically each one.

Our results show that KM is fully present in

Participatory Design. KM plays a key role in design

processes since management is crucial to coordinate

design teams, as it represents knowledge schemes that

aid in decision making. Interestingly, in the 13 paper

remnants, we also found that participatory methods

contribute to creating favorable contexts and

environments for people's interactivity. Hence, KM

processes can be fostered due to interactivity,

coordination, and participation facilitated by

collaborative methods, which help in the design of

innovative products and systems.

The relationship between participative contexts

and participatory design methodologies for the

creation of KM systems, generate and share new

knowledge, understand user requirements in product

development, foster innovation, collaboration, and

communication of multidisciplinary teams and

communities of practice, create solutions in the most

diverse contexts. In this context, two dimensions in

the selected articles make a strong link between

Participatory Design to KM: participation and

technology, as presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Dimensions covered in selected articles.

Authors

Dimensions

Tecnology Participation

Berthet et al. (2016) X

Wang et al. (2009) X

Valtolina et al. (2012) X X

Wang et al. (2017) X

London and Singh (2013) X X

Van Der Bijl-Brouwer and

van Der Voort (2014)

Rızvanoğlu (2018) X

Treasure-Jones et al. (2019) X X

Sakellariou et al. (2017) X

Kyakulumbye et al. (2019) X X

Hajrizi et al. (2017) X X

Rivero-Baiocchi (2019) X

Zaman and Falak (2018) X X

Source: The authors (2021).

Of the 13 articles finally selected, ten concern

‘technology’, nine discuss ‘participation, while only

six both issues together. Nonetheless, only five

Participatory Design in Knowledge Management: An Opportunity to Small and Medium Business

articles were selected to be discussed, as all of them

have in common the fact that they address contexts in

which participation is used to KM design, supported

by technology, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Contexts in which participation is used to design

KM solutions.

Author Context

Valtolina et

al. (2012)

A new perspective for designing and

developing interactive systems to support

collaborative knowledge management,

involving the interaction of domain experts

through participation to map and translate their

professional models into the appropriate

vocabularies, notations, and visual structures

suitable for navigating between the elements of

the interface, facilitating knowledge sharing

among heterogeneous communities of practice.

London and

Singh (2013)

Participation appears to create effective high-

performance collaborations in

multidisciplinary supply chain groups on

individual projects, given that the integration of

consultants and contractors brings together the

interaction of different worldviews, with the

search for interaction, collaboration, and

communication for the implementation of an

integrated design and delivery solution across

the entire supply chain, considering that the

actors in the chain operate most of the time in a

virtual team.

Treasure-

Jones et al.

(2019)

Participation occurs through collaboration to

build a technological tool for informal learning,

supporting learning practices and knowledge

construction in real work contexts in healthcare

SMEs, resulting in changes in practice, such as

making individual knowledge explicit.

Hajrizi et al.

(2017)

A collaborative design approach induces

multidisciplinary participation towards the

development of new and more complex ways to

connect people, information, and technology in

the university and with society. Employs an

inclusive design approach to establish a shared

vision, purpose, and methods to build

collaborative environments to enable discovery

and access, interpretation and analysis, creation

and sharing of knowledge, valuing the social

context of learning – where knowledge is

acquired and understood through action,

interaction and sharing with others, often made

possible by technology.

Zaman and

Falak (2018)

Participation takes place through the

engagement of the local community in the

process of designing systems for knowledge

management in a rural indigenous area.

Source: The authors (2021).

Analyzing these five articles, it should be noted

that all of them necessarily involve ‘technology’ to

include and engage people from different

backgrounds and disciplines from the same context of

work or community to collaborate, co-create or

develop a project related to KM, namely the design of

interactive systems (Valtolina et al., 2012; Zaman and

Falak, 2018) or the creation of a solution to improve

design processes (London and Singh, 2013), a

technological tool to facilitate learning during work

(Treasure-Jones et al., 2019) and an environment of

virtual collaboration (Hajrizi et al., 2017). Thus, this

review shows that technology is crucial to support

participative or collaborative processes delivering a

KM solution.

4.2 Ethnographic Research

We conducted this research through ethnographic

research once it analyses the behavior of a group,

social or cultural system and is based on a deep

description and interpretation of personal experiences

within the studied contexts, combining observation,

attentive listening, and participation in community

events (Silverman, 2005; Schuler and Namioka,

2015), facilitating data interpretation (Kozinets,

2010). We collected primary and secondary kinds of

data. Primary data were collected from observation

during a period of five months – from July to

December 2020 – of a working group’s meetings,

called ‘Knowledge Management Squad’, a kind of

committee responsible for KM implementation in an

SME consulting firm focused on Information

Technology solutions to big financial companies. As

it is a characteristic of an SME, the company, not

willing to invest a huge number of financial resources

on a consultancy to KM implementation, preferred to

organize a working group to study and implement

KM practices, although none of them had

considerable experience in the field.

The group was made up of eight members: six

from the company, representing each of the business

units, one KM’s master student, and a consultant

specializing in job training. In total, 22 online

meetings through the MS- ‘Teams’ platform were

observed, with an average of two hours each. The

company was chosen by using the criteria of

convenience and accessibility, with the consent of the

KMIS 2021 - 13th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

company’s partners. A field diary of each meeting

was written by using a structure of folders in

Microsoft OneNote containing the following aspects:

i) date; ii) time; iii) purpose of the meeting; iv)

participants; v) converging opinions; vi) divergent

opinions; vii) decisions made; viii) researcher's

perceptions; ix) remarks from members' main ideas

about each meeting topic, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Example to illustrate how field diary was

elaborated.

In addition, secondary data, such as group

documents (e.g., minutes of meetings, planners, mind

maps, MS-PowerPoint presentations from company

meetings), were used as a complement for our

analysis of the field diary to write the final report.

Moreover, to the ethnography final report, we used a

script to characterize the organizational culture,

understanding participants’ roles, behavior, attitudes,

beliefs, routines, rules, activities, deliveries, aiming at

finding evidence of multidisciplinary participation,

members engagement during the process of designing

knowledge management initiatives for the company,

collaboration while using technological tools, level of

interaction between members and the impact of all

these in structuring KM initiatives.

For data processing, a thematic codification of the

final report was done, based on topics related to

technology, allowing to find opportunities presented

by Participatory Design for KM implementation in

SMEs focusing on this critical success factor. Thus,

IT does not contribute to a successful KM initiative

without considering organizational culture

mechanisms that promote knowledge transfer

(Karlsen and Gottschalk, 2004).

5 RESULTS: PARTICIPATORY

DESIGN FOR KM

IMPLEMENTATION

Analyzing the company in which ethnography was

carried out, organizational culture influences the

degree of use of the available tools. For this reason,

Participatory Design tends to have greater chances of

success within technological platforms in conditions

that favor collaborative work among employees. The

research was conducted during the Covid-19

pandemic when enterprises were forced to adapt

completely data collection to a remote context. Thus,

Participatory Design could be recommendable for the

good use of existing technology platforms and tools

that can support the KM implementation process. The

technological dimensions identified were the use of

already existing communication platforms and the

use of online collaborative tools.

5.1 Using Already Existing

Communication Platforms

The company had some underused platforms in many

of its functionalities. With the beginning of the KM

implementation process, the Squad started to explore

these tools not only to communicate and enable

collaborative work but also to complete a complete

KM cycle in each practice implemented, namely

knowledge creation, sharing, storage, and use. Two

practices were chosen to be implemented in the pilot

plant. First, a practice related to writing technical

articles and another one related to giving lectures,

both conducted by the company’s employees.

Although both practices already existed, they were

not structured, and materials were not well stored and

shared with the rest of the company.

First, the working group after several discussions

decided to create a knowledge base (called a library)

using the SharePoint Platform to foment these KM

processes in each KM practice. The platform existed

in the firm but was not being used, so it helped to host

the first practice to be implemented, i.e., technical

articles produced by employees with tips and new

technical knowledge. This practice previously and

occurred spontaneously, dispersed through e-mails,

and without a stimulus from the company to foster its

constant production in a structured manner.

Second, the ‘Stream’ Platform started to be linked

to MS-Teams and MS-Sharepoint to store and

disseminate live lectures given by employees

themselves on topics of the company’s interest (a

practice called Tech Hour, that after pandemic started

Participatory Design in Knowledge Management: An Opportunity to Small and Medium Business

to be completely remote). One important group

finding during these two practices’ implementation

was that MS-Sharepoint might stimulate synergy,

interactivity, and connection between the two

implemented practices and ease knowledge access.

KM practices could be completely structured by

the Squad based on a KM cycle. For this, the group

used a platform called MS-Teams to plan agendas,

host meetings, folders with materials, and schedule

activities to monitor group members’ task division in

a planner. Hence, the existing two practices were

collaboratively organized by Squad. Considering

decision-making, the level of involvement and

participation of Squad members in meetings was

relevant to implement the chosen practices and

analyze as many variables as possible concerning

solutions for problems they found along the

implementation process. Hence, Participatory Design

methodologies are recommended to stimulate a

starting KM project, as it needs diverse points of view

from different participants of a company to be

effective and to have members' commitment.

Considering KM practices can have some

knowledge topics in common, the platform can render

KM effective if practices are concentrated in a unique

hub and knowledge can be founded by unified search

engines. Nonetheless, in the company studied, the

platform structuring counted with only two out of

eight people from Squad working on it, which can

prevent people to engage in it in the future if there is

not a good communication plan to foster use. Thus,

Participatory Design could play an important role in

stimulating future KM users to design the platform.

5.2 Using Online Collaborative Tools

Another aspect analyzed was the use of online

collaborative tools in the KM implementation

process. As Squad's work was eminently

collaborative, it was necessary to create mind maps to

organize new content about KM, organize the topics

to be discussed in each meeting, and the agendas of

the meetings. Moreover, online sticky notes were

used for voting and structuring critical enterprise

processes and the corresponding knowledge linked to

them in Design Thinking sessions, to elucidate the

best KM practices for each type of knowledge, online

spreadsheets, online voting forms, etc.

One of these tools used by Squad to map critical

knowledge was ‘Ideaboardz’, as can be seen in Figure

2. All this information was collected during online

meetings in which participants could contribute to

structuring the board.

The green part consists of the ‘activities’ contained in

the processes of one business unit; the yellow, the

knowledge involved in these processes, while the

purple, the artifacts generated, and finally potential

KM practices that could be implemented or that are

already being used.

Figure 2: Mapping strategic knowledge through an online

toll called Ideaboardz.

6 DISCUSSION

Although communication platforms and other

technological tools were used for KM

implementation in the company studied, ethnography

identified some gaps concerning participation that

hindered workers and leadership involvement in

decision-making relating to KM choices. Squad

barely benefited from other company Squads’

involvement to make some synergies during the

process of investigation and structure of the practices,

which prevented a lot of discoveries and the spread of

the importance of KM and its meaning across the

company since the beginning of KM Squad.

Participatory Design can be useful to boost the

possibilities of taking advantage of available

technological resources and can promote some

spillover effects: a) a culture of collaboration among

employees; b) prevent people inhibition; c) promote

collaboration among leaders and led, avoiding

knowledge concentration within seniors; d) fosters

the emergence of other methodologies, such as

hackathons, which involve people from different

areas to solve complex problems; e) helps to better

explore current KM practices and to develop new

ones, following KM cycle of capture, creation,

sharing, storage, and use; f) encourages people from

different areas to share knowledge not only during

collective events but also during individual work.

Also, it was verified that workers involved in KM

design (the group Squad) were much more committed

KMIS 2021 - 13th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

and motivated to the applicability of knowledge to

generate value for the company than others that were

not involved. This is not a result of a lack of interest,

as companies’ members are interested in managing

accumulated knowledge. The lack of knowledge

about KM made other companies’ members more

distant and with a lot of doubts and difficulties

understanding Squad’s goals and implementation

process. Thus, workers’ involvement can also be

considered a critical success factor for KM

implementation and stresses how workers can

contribute to reaching organizational goals through

knowledge sharing and collaboration to problem-

solving.

Participation should be an element to be

considered while designing KM implementation

strategies for SMEs. The lack of considerable funds

to pay consultancy firms should not hinder these

companies to innovate by using already available tech

and human resources to KM design as illustrated by

our case. Some SMEs' characteristics, such as

members' proximity and a familiar environment favor

the creation of working groups to KM design, as

members tend to be more collaborative if they trust

their peers. Thus, contexts in which people participate

in KM developments could be confirmed in Hajrizi et

al. (2017), Zaman and Falak (2018), Treasure-Jones

et al. (2019).

7 CONCLUSIONS

The theory currently fails to explicate how to tackle

KM's critical success factors to KM implementation

in SMEs. Thus, integrating theory on Participatory

Design and KM presents itself as an opportunity to

solve this fail and extend theory in both areas. In this

paper, we investigated the opportunities presented by

Participatory Design to implement KM in SMEs

using technology, a critical success factor in KM

implementation, through a literature review and

accomplishing ethnography research. In this sense,

the paper analyses the opportunities of participatory

design in the KM implementation process based on

lessons learned from a concrete KM implementation

case that uses the support of technological devices,

which is also a KM critical success factor. Our results

show Participatory Design has the potential to engage

teams and people participation to implement KM in

SMEs by taking advantage of technological

platforms. In this sense, we suggest SMEs consider

exploring available tech tools to engage employees to

design KM since if it is combined with a familiar

context and greater proximity between people, they

support interaction and collaborative practices, which

enables trust for knowledge sharing.

It should be noted some study limitations. First,

the explorative nature of only one case study. Hence,

generalisability should be avoided. Further studies

can overcome these limitations, replicate this study in

a dissimilar organizational setting. Moreover, they

can explore other critical success factors that could be

strengthened by Participatory Design or the

relationship between them. For instance, leadership

could be strategic to encourage people participation

in structuring the best usage of technological

platforms’ potential for the sake of KM.

Finally, in further research, we will explore the

impact of Participatory Design in other critical

success factors and the opportunities behind it in the

same case study. Also, we suggest future research to

analyze other types of SMEs to verify if Participatory

Design could also help in designing KM initiatives

from the perspective of critical success factors such

as leadership, strategy, organizational culture, and

which of them could be most benefited by

Participatory Design. Hence, despite SMEs' lack of

financial resources to invest in innovation,

Participatory Design should be seen as an opportunity

for firms willing to implement KM, by taking

advantage of its own technological and human

resources.

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