it 3/2011
Special Issue 
Broadening Participation
in Knowledge Management
in Enterprise 2.0
Ausweitung der Mitarbeiterbeteiligung am Wissensmanagement im Enterprise 2.0
Andrea Back, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland,
Michael Koch, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany
Summary Enterprise 2.0 is an approach to broaden partici-
pation of employees in enterprise knowledge management.
Building on concepts and tools from the Web 2.0, the effort
to participate is minimized and a broad audience is pro-
vided. This has positive effects on the motivation of employees
to participate. In this article we present an overview of the
ideas and tools behind Enterprise 2.0, and discuss challenges
and approaches for management.  Zusammenfas-
sung Eine Herausforderung für die Umsetzung von Wissens-
management im Unternehmen ist die Beteiligung der Mitar-
beiter. Die Konzepte und Werkzeuge rund um das Web 2.0 bzw.
Enterprise 2.0 stellen hierzu Lösungsansätze zur Verfügung.
Durch Minimierung des Aufwandes für den Einzelnen und Be-
reitstellung eines großen Publikums werden einige der bisher
vorhandenen Hürden verkleinert. In diesem Beitrag geben wir
einen Überblick zu den Grundideen und Werkzeugen im Bereich
Enterprise 2.0 und diskutieren vor allem auch Herausforderun-
gen und Lösungsideen für das Management.
Keywords K.6.0 [Computing Milieux: Management of Computing and Information Systems: General Economics];
knowledge management, information management, participation, social software, Enterprise 2.0 
Schlagwörter Wissensmanagement, Beteiligung, Informationsmanagement
1 What Is Enterprise 2.0 and How Does It
Relate to Knowledge Management?
Knowledge Management has undergone some develop-
ment in the last decade [22]
• from a focus on capturing (externalizing) information
from people, and storing the information in databases
without having a particular use in mind,
• to learning that knowledge is somehow bound to peo-
ple, and that it therefore is essential to connect people
(instead of filling databases).
The first efforts in connecting people have been yellow
pages systems and expert recommender systems [1; 7; 33].
What these approaches had in common with the database
approaches is that control of the information in the sys-
tem was up to editors. It still was quite hard for employees
to participate.
This changed through the introduction of a new set
of tools (Social Software) and a new paradigm to how
knowledge networks work (the Web 2.0).
1.1 Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is the “network as platform” [30, p. 1]. The con-
cept of “Web 2.0” is seen as a “set of principles and
practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites
that demonstrate some or all of those principles ...” [30,
p. 19]. The common principle of the Web 2.0 is to enable
it – Information Technology 53 (2011) 3 / DOI 10.1524/itit.2011.0635 © Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag 135

Special Issue
people to collaborate and share information online in
new ways, such as in wikis, communication tools (e. g.,
weblogs), social networking services (e. g., Xing or Face-
book), and social tagging services (e. g., del.icio.us).
The most important concept in the Web 2.0 is par-
ticipation, which means the free cooperation of as many
people as possible without any restraints from organi-
zations, processes, technologies or particular (technical)
platforms. In addition to making traditional cooperation
more easy to achieve, this enables the tapping of collective
intelligence (“wisdom of the crowd”).
To achieve this participation, the Web 2.0 builds on
some key concepts:
• usability – achieved by being web-based and interactive
(Ajax), and by allowing easy integration and combi-
nation (feeds, RSS),
• “me”-centricity (e. g., [32]) – the core of the Web 2.0 is
a direct usefulness for the single user – which leads to
high intrinsic motivation – in contrast to indirect value
defined by the benefit for teams and communities,
• flow-experience – joining a Web 2.0 application is fun,
helps its users to be creative, supports happiness and
therefore promotes a flow experience (see [15] for
a definition).
1.2 Social Software and Social Media
The technical part (applications) in the Web 2.0 is So-
cial Software; software or services that support, extend,
or derive added value from human social behavior [12].
Here again, we see the core concepts from the Web 2.0:
it is about human behavior and participation of the
single – not primarily about collaboration (like in Group-
ware). In other words, the focus is on making it easy for
the single to create and comment content (for his/her
own use or for simple intrinsic motivation), and not
so much on complex collaboration scenarios. Socio-
technical communities and other forms of collaboration
occur more or less as a by-product of the single-user
activities.
McAfee [28] summarizes the characteristics of Social
Software in the acronym SLATES (Search, Links, Author-
ing, Tags, Extensibility, Signals). We are using a slightly
adapted version for further characterizing the core con-
cepts [27]:
• Being able to publish contributions or edit content as
easily as possible (“Authoring”)
• Contributing structuring metadata by tagging (“Tags”)
• Adding additional content and metadata by annota-
tion and linking (“Authoring”, “Links”)
• Possibility to be informed about (subscribe to) new
content (“Signals”)
• Being able to find new content (“Search”, “Tags”)
• Modular, service oriented, and data-centric design of
the applications (“Extensions”)
Social Software can also be classified in some core appli-
cation classes, e. g., wikis or weblogs. We will come back
to this in Sect. 2.
Finally, there is the term Social Media, which is either
used as a synonym for Social Software or to describe the
communication channels opened by Social Software.
1.3 Enterprise 2.0
What about “Enterprise 2.0” now?
This term has been coined by Andrew McAfee for
using Social Software (to support collaborative work and
knowledge management) “within a company or between
companies and their partners or customers” [28].
The main idea of the Web 2.0, the straightforward pos-
sibility for everyone to participate, to contribute to the big
picture, can enrich many approaches to classical know-
ledge management in enterprises. Since the knowledge,
know-how, and qualifications of employees are crucial
resources, it bares enormous potential to facilitate their
participation.
For in-company operation, Social Software tools
are adjusted to company context, and are addition-
ally enriched by integration with existing intra-company
tools. The online-encyclopedia Wikipedia or the so-
cial networking platform Facebook have already served
as role-model for the prototypes of several compa-
nies [6; 11; 13; 14; 27].
Since cooperation does not stop at the boundaries of
companies, Social Software can also be employed for
enriching communication with customers and business
partners. If that results in a bi-directional communi-
cation, this is seen as part of Enterprise 2.0. If Social
Software is just used for communicating uni-directionally
from the company to customers, it usually is not in the
scope of Enterprise 2.0.
Some interpretations of the term Enterprise 2.0 even
go beyond the tool level, and focus on the structural
changes in companies made possible by the introduction
of Social Software. Keywords in this context are “easier,
faster, and contextual organization of access to informa-
tion, expertise, and business contacts” [23].
2 What Is Social Software (Good for)?
In this section we will address the question of what Social
Software is and what it can be used for.
2.1 Social Software Tool Classes
To structure the different tools in the domain of Social
Software, one first can try to cluster Social Software tools
in tool classes. Usually, we distinguish:
• weblogs and microblogs,
• wikis and group editors in general,
• social tagging (applications)/social bookmarking (ap-
plications), and
• social networking (applications).
This categorization is useful for a first overview, but does
not help to determine support potential or to think about
new tool classes.
To help in this, one first could try to identify basic
functions in communication and cooperation support,
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