Poulymenakou, Angeliki

A Contingency Approach to Knowledge Acquisition: critical factors for knowledge based systems development

(1995)

This dissertation is concerned with methodological, organisational and epistemological aspects of knowledge acquisition.

The basic argument that the research has sought to explore and substantiate is that knowledge acquisition should be seen as a context-sensitive rather than as a technology-sensitive process. Therefore, human, social, cultural and political issues should be expected to affect knowledge acquisition practices and outcomes within organisations.

A contingency approach is proposed for the study and practice of knowledge acquisition, whereby such issues can be identified, expressed and evaluated in a particular context. For this purpose, a number of contingency factors have been proposed in this research.

The research in this dissertation encompasses three distinct pieces of empirical work within which the relevance of the contingency approach has been evaluated, and contingency factors have been identified, elaborated, and applied in the context of a knowledge acquisition study.

The research has concluded by re-framing the profile of knowledge acquisition as an organisational practice in terms of four modalities of analysis. The perspective introduced through these modalities for knowledge acquisition is not bound to the constraints of technology, emancipates actors from the burden of methodology, and constitutes a step forward in capturing the rich interplay between context, content and process in this intriguing area of human inquiry in information systems.

Supervisor: Professor Ian Angell, PhD

Angeliki Poulymenakou is currently a lecturer in the Information Systems Department at the Athens University of Economics and Business. Angeliki is a member of the Hellenic Electronic Trading Research Unit (Heltrun).

Τμήμα Διοικητικής Επιστήμης & Τεχνολογίας - Angeliki Poulymenakou's home page.