An approach to the match between experts and users in a fuzzy linguistic environment

Abstract

Knowledge management systems are widely used tomanage the knowledge in organizations.Consulting experts is an effective way to utilize tacit knowledge. The paper aims to optimize the matchbetween users and experts to improve the efficiency of tacit knowledge-sharing. Firstly, expertise,trust and feedback are defined to characterize the preference of users for experts. Meanwhile, factorsincluding trust, relationship and knowledge distance are defined to characterize the preference ofexperts for users. Then, a new method for the measurement of satisfaction based on the principle ofaxiomatic design is proposed. Afterwards, in order to maximize the satisfaction of both experts andusers, the optimization model is constructed and the optimal solution is shown in the matching results.The evaluation results show the approach is feasible and performs well. The approach provides newinsights for research on tacit knowledge-sharing. It can be applied as a tool to match experts withusers in the development of knowledge management systems. The fuzzy linguistic method facilitatesthe expression of opinions, and as a result, the users-system interaction is improved.