Mobile and Ubiquitous Knowledge Management: Lessons from the Transportation Sector PDF

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Mobile and Ubiquitous Knowledge Management: Lessons from the Transportation Sector Christoph Pimmer1, Christoph Gütersloh2, Sebastian Linxen1, Roland Rohner3 1 Institute for Information Systems, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW, Basel, Switzerland 2 University of...

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Mobile and Ubiquitous Knowledge Management: Lessons from the Transportation Sector Christoph Pimmer

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Mobile and Ubiquitous Knowledge Management: Lessons from the Transportation Sector Christoph Pimmer1, Christoph Gütersloh2, Sebastian Linxen1, Roland Rohner3 1

Institute for Information Systems, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW, Basel, Switzerland 2 University of Zurich, Institute of Education, Zurich, Switzerland 3 Swiss Federal Railways SBB, Bern, Switzerland

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Pimmer, C., Gütersloh, C., Linxen, S., & Rohner, R. (2018). Mobile and Ubiquitous Knowledge Management: Lessons from the transportation sector. Paper presented at the 19th European Conference on Knowledge Management, Padua, Italy.

Abstract: In organisations marked by very high levels of mobility of resources and tools, the implementation of a mobile knowledge management (MKM) system might generate significant benefits in otherwise challenging knowledge-sharing environments. To explore potentialities and constraints of an MKM system based on tablets and smartphones in highly distributed workspaces, an applied research cooperation was carried out between the Swiss Federal Railways SBB and two Swiss Universities. The mobile app allows train maintenance workers to access prior solutions and to consult specialists when they face more challenges. In addition, they can also use the multimedia features of their smartphones to document problems and new solutions and make them accessible to a wider circle of colleagues. This paper reports on the findings from an interview study which explores the additional affordances offered by the new mobile knowledge management system (n = 11) vis-à-vis the challenges of the pre-established information system - as perceived by the maintenance workers. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic content analysis. The initial findings underscore the value of a MKM system in overcoming spatial and temporal constraints in highly distributed workspaces, and, at the same time, allowing for the substantiation of multimodal information (images, videos) by the maintenance workers in workspaces characterised by more complex, visual, topological and procedural knowledge. Beyond the perceived potentialities regarding knowledge creation and exchange, the defragmentation of human and material resources and the development of a wider, and more collective, knowledge system triggered tensions relating to power, rewards and politics, which need to be proactively addressed in the ongoing development of the system. Keywords: Mobile Knowledge Management; mobile knowledge, Activity Theory; Transportation sector

1. Background: mobile knowledge management The proliferation of mobile and ubiquitous technologies and networks has brought about significant transformations in many different areas of business. Unsurprisingly, mobile media have also been leveraged by organisations as a means to facilitate internal and cross-organisational knowledge management. However, in contrast to mobile learning, mobile knowledge management has been studied to a limited extent. This is not only an observation which was made in the early days of MKM (Zuga et al., 2006), but it still is true today, with, for example, google scholar that identifies about 80’000 articles on mobile learning compared to less than 1000 items for MKM. The origins of the notion of MKM can be traced back even before the digital “mobile era”, when “mobile knowledge management” was used to describe the ways in which geographically mobile staff created and shared knowledge – in contrast to local knowledge (management), which was conceived to be bound to place and procedures (Fagrell et al., 1999). With the emergence of mobile computing, however, MKM has been closely linked to digital and portable technology (Lehner, 2002). In this respect, knowledge management systems were made available on mobile devices. One example is highlighted in a study on a knowledge management decision support system designed for Notebooks, PDAs, smartphones which, drawing on a rule based system, can help to evaluate actions and alternatives for conducting e-business (Wen et al., 2008). Apart from studies that describe technological architectures of mobile systems (e. g. Wen et al., 2008, Fagrell et al., 2000), two general approaches to MKM can be distinguished: One stream of work focuses on restrictions and limitations associated with “scaled-down technologies” (Grimm et al., 2005). “Restrictive” approaches to MKM manifest, for example, in the mobile knowledge management study by Chen and Huang (2010), who determined that users with larger screens have a higher task performance than users with smaller screens. In contrast, another line of work places centrality on the added value provided through the use of mobile and wireless media – as opposed to stationary, digital and non-digital KM tools. The central characteristics are seen in the availability of knowledge “anytime” and “anywhere”, personalisation, context awareness, and options for permanent connectivity. In terms of content, similar to mobile learning, it is conceived to be key to creating “cut down” versions of original material tailored to the screens of mobile devices (Zuga et al., 2006). Notably, in addition to the generally limited body of research on MKM, many approaches are rather technological and technical, highlight the use of mobile devices to facilitate “anytime” and “anywhere” access to knowledge (Liaw et al., 2010, Zuga et al., 2006) but tend to neglect the underlying organisational ramifications. One example is the study of Liaw et al. (2010), who, although they seek to base their work on activity theory (which is by definition a cultural-historical theory (Cole and Engeström, 1993)), examine “individual” knowledge management and make very little reference to the wider organisational or political implications of an altered activity (or knowledge) system. This is a limitation that the present study seeks to address.

2. Study context and solution approach The study at hand does justice to the definition of mobile knowledge management in two ways: Firstly, it explores the implementation of a mobile knowledge management application designed specifically (but not exclusively) for smartphones and tablets, and, secondly, this application is used in an organisational setting marked by very high levels of mobility of (human) resources and tools. More precisely, the case study was carried out in the context of the Passenger Operating division of the Swiss Federal Railways, SBB, the national railway company of Switzerland. SBB provides transportation services for more than one million passengers every single day. SBB Passenger Operating is central to these services, as its more than 7’000 staff-members are in charge of preparing, running and maintaining 5’500 trains per day, which includes preventive and curative maintenance and the running of the locomotives and passenger coaches. Maintenance work is challenging, because the schedules are tight and the maintenance workers have to identify and address an array of different, and, especially in newer trains, complex, problems of a variety of vehicles and fleets, mostly working on their own.

To support the highly mobile work of these maintenance workers, a mobile knowledge management system was devised in an iterative and participatory process (Gütersloh and Linxen, 2017). The app, can be accessed on mobile (and desktop) devices and which was particularly geared towards the standard tablet used by the SBB train maintenance crew (see Figure 1 and 2 for examples of the graphical user interface (GUI) of the mobile app). The system supports different forms of usage: (1) documenting a problem and (2) a new solution; and (3) accessing a solution and/ or obtaining additional specialist advice. The textual descriptions of the problem and solution documentation (1 and 2) can be enhanced by capturing multimedia, i.e., images and videos, directly with the device at hand. New solutions are automatically made available to a wider circle of maintenance workers within and across the individual maintenance sites, who can access this information if they encounter the same or a similar problem (3). If the solution approach suggested does not help to solve the problem, in-app functions are available to contact subject matter experts (specialists) via e-mail and phone calls. In this process, every user also has the opportunity to add further information to an existing solution.

Figure 1: Example of the GUI supported rolling stock

Figure 2: Example of the GUI supported technical systems

Importantly, the MKM was not designed as a replacement but as an add-on to the existing formal guidelines and standards. The maintenance workers were required to use the MKM only if they could not find solutions to their questions in the official documentations. Although some of these formal guidelines and standards were made available on mobile devices during the project, the opportunities to include the knowledge and experience of maintenance workers in these documents were restricted, und this aspect could be thus considered as the key distinguishing feature of the MKM.

3. Research goals and methods The goal of this case study research was to explore the experience of maintenance workers in piloting a new, mobile knowledge management system for 10 weeks and contrasting their experience with the challenges inherent in the pre-established, “non-mobile” system. In other words, it was sought to understand the benefits and limitations of the new system better if contrasted with the pre-established procedures and practices. Accordingly, the research question was formulated as follows: What are the affordances and constraints of the implementation of a new mobile knowledge management system in a public transport company in comparison with the pre-established, nonmobile system - as perceived by the users of the system?

To address the question, a number of 11 maintenance worker were interviewed between October and December 2016. The interviews were semi-structured and covered the maintenance workers’ experience with the pre-established as well as with the new MKM system. The interviewer followed an interview guide but was although open to follow topical trajectories in the conversation. The conversations were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic content analysis. That is, the transcripts were read and reread in an initial text work. In a first round of coding the main categories emerged in a combination of in-vivo coding and theoretical evolved categories. After fixing the code-system the whole text material was coded again.

4. Results 4.1 Affordances: Integrating distributed resources in a collective and multimodal knowledge base As outlined, the affordances offered by the new system were sought to be understood and analysed vis-à-vis practices and structures attendant to the pre-established system. There, the searching and sharing of knowledge in situ was reported to be considerably restricted by the mobility of human and infrastructural resources and tools, and by the large geographical distances between offices, in which relevant information was stored, and the trains, which stretched over distances of several hundred meters. In this way, information sharing between central and peripheral areas of the large maintenance sites was aggravated. In addition to geographical constraints, work which was organised in different shifts amounted to a temporal distribution of resources and knowledge. This fragmentation complicated the day-to-day work, especially in situations in which a solution to a problem was required urgently, as a maintenance worker illustrates: “Sometimes you need to make decisions within 20 minutes, and you can’t wait for someone … who only has day shifts”. Moreover, the access to digital information was bounded in that it was mostly restricted to stationary computers in the offices. These conditions inhibited the ad-hoc access to knowledge and, importantly, led to a number of inefficiencies in the delivery of the maintenance services, as the below quotes illustrate: It would be very helpful if you would have the information at hand and would not need to start the computer or inquire with the stockist. For the LED lighting, I once needed 90 minutes. Then I walk over to the office, and search if there are any relevant documents in place In response to these challenges, one of the advantages of the mobile system was perceived to lie in the smooth and quick access to central work knowledge. You can handle it very well, which is especially relevant in our area, I think. So you don’t need to search something for hours, yes. Quick accessibility has been particularly facilitated through an iterative design process with several usability tests (link to your paper). The fact that some work teams had already established informal WhatsApp groups to support each other in problem situations prior to the implementation of MKM further underpins the value of the mobile support system, especially regarding the provision of rapid solutions. However, in contrast to the devised MKM system, information channelled in a WhatsApp conversation is ephemeral and unstructured and can hardly be made available to other actors outside of the immediate communication context. In essence, a central knowledge function of the mobile system can be perceived to allow for the re-organisation of individual (“… everyone cares for her/himself”) and distributed knowledge into a collective and centralised knowledge base, and make the overall fabric of knowledge sharing more efficient, as the following quote illustrates: It is a very good tool to document solutions. And other employees, who encounter an incident for the first time, can access this pool and can take a look: What kind of solutions are there? And [they] don’t need to start from scratch. The boundary-crossing nature of the mobile system can be viewed to be particularly helpful in the organisation settings at hand in which collaboration and knowledge sharing had been optimised within co-located social constellations (teams) but were deemed to be restricted beyond these organisational units. The system’s capability to allow for the sharing of knowledge across pre-established organisational frontiers was perceived to be a motivating factor by some:

I think it is motivating for one, if you see: Hey, the people can make use of it. I deem this positive, for oneself. One can progress. Another advantage offered by the mobile system was seen in its capacity to document multimedia in the form pictures and short videos: “to insert photographs … in the solution … this is what I liked”. These affordances were grounded in the condition that maintenance work involves the understanding of complex multimodal representations, including motor skills, which can hardly be shared in the form of text only. Or one has the installation point S1 … S1 covers two square meters. Viewed from the front [the question arises] Yes, and where now? In that moment a photo would help. And [exactly] below there … you need to measure.

4.2 Socio-technical, organisational and political challenges and constraints Contrary to the affordances described, the research also identified constraints and limitations of the MKM; some of which were rooted in the socio-technical shortcomings of the current pilot system and, in this light, the interviews helped to elicit suggestions for future improvement. Others originated from the perceived transformation of the fabric of knowledge generation and sharing associated with the implementation of MKM and were organisational and political in nature. The identified technical constraints, which revealed concrete suggestions for the further improvement of the system, were insufficient search functions and the lack of enhanced profile and presence features of specialists. Also, these issues need to be understood in light of the pre-established system. Whereas specialist involvement often drew on pre-existing relationships, i.e., on people who already knew one another, the mobile system widened the knowledge sharing community and enabled interaction also between weak and non-existing social ties. These opportunities brought about the necessity to enhance the profile of specialists to overcome barriers related to the communication threshold among unknown actors, as one study participants aptly outlined: I think, if I’d only have a picture of a person, a name and one sentence why the person is knowledgeable, or, perhaps information about how long s/he works at SBB. Simply something personal … this would help me enormously to reduce the threshold. In addition, and as another constraint, the system which stretched temporal boundaries by bringing together maintenance workers and specialists from across different day and night shifts would have required presence and absence functions to allow specialists to distance themselves from support requests in their private time. This was not only a concern voiced by specialists but also by maintenance workers who feared intruding the specialists’ privacy. But then you would need for example a kind of online and offline function. So that the specialist can determine if s/he would like to be contacted. This is to avoid that I wake someone up at 1am in the morning. A related idea to alleviate the danger of privacy intrusion was less invasive, text-based communication functions, similar to the ones offered by SMS, WhatsApp and Telegram. A central constraint voiced in the interviews was the lack of quality control in the new system. Whereas the development of official documentation, e. g., standards and guidelines, was perceived to be highly time consuming and bureaucratic (“there is a change index, it must be controlled, and then there are five pages about security warnings”), it was acknowledged that even the more informal knowledge in the mobile KM system needed to have some sort of quality control, especially because they were shared across the different sites. In other words, the circulation of personal work-related knowledge across the geographical boundaries made the knowledge to be conceived as more formal and thus raised the demand for additional technical control mechanism.

And this needs to be controlled absolutely, to avoid the emergence of problems concerning entire fleets. This is very dangerous. That means a controlling function of each new contribution is a must. The concern regarding quality control was also central outside of the interview settings, especially at the management level. In these discussions and presentations, the question how to ensure that the informal knowledge in the MKM would adhere to regulatory requirements was key. Apart from more technical and technological challenges and constraints of the pilot system, its deployment also prompted organisational and power-related issues. One of them was expressed in the suggestion that the system should also allow users to add informal skills and specialist’s roles outside of the structures prescribed by the organisation. I’d find it neat to have informal specialists. For example, if one knows: I’m the absolute door specialist. So that then I’d be also in the system. This demand (which arose from a constraint of the pilot system) is not just a technical issue but connects to fundamental ways in which expertise and power is bestowed in an organisation. Whereas specialist roles are typ...