Contents and Systems

Knowledge management systems were defined in section 4.3 — “Knowledge management systems” on page 79. In the following, first the technological roots of KMS are reviewed (section 7.1). Then, the contents of KMS are analyzed along with their structure and the types of media used (section 7.2). The definition of KMS is detailed with the help of a review of KMS architectures that have been proposed in the literature or have been implemented as standard KMS platforms. Based on this analysis, an amalgamated architecture for a centralized KMS is presented. The architecture is discussed in detail with the help of a structured list of KMS functions that will be used in the empirical study (section 7.3). As an alternative to this ideal architecture for a centralized KMS, an architecture for a distributed or peer-to-peer KMS is presented (section 7.4). Finally, a classification of KMS will be suggested on the basis of a brief, but comprehensive review of the literature (section 7.5).