Applying wikis to managing knowledge—A socio‐technical approach

As organizations are increasingly moving towards geographically dispersed and virtual forms of collaboration, knowledge sharing through social software such as wikis is widely acknowledged as an important area of research and practice. However, social software remains an under‐investigated issue in the literature on knowledge management (KM), and there is a lack of studies demonstrating how organizations can successfully incorporate these technologies into their everyday operations. To bridge this gap, our paper examines a case of successful wiki implementation. We claim that understanding the implementation of wikis requires a socio‐technical perspective focusing on the organizational context and activity system in which they are implemented rather than on their technological proficiency. Furthermore, we claim that their implementation brings about change in existing social systems, and results in new kinds of social constellations, interactions, and identities, which are manageable and controllable only to a limited extent.