Open Knowledge Management: Lessons From the Open Source Revolution

One might argue that the future of knowledge work is manifested in how open-source communities work. Knowledge work, as argued by Drucker (1968); Davenport, Thomas, and Cantrell (2002); and others, is comprised of specialists who collaborate via exchange of know-how and skills to develop products and services. This is exactly what an open-source community does. To this end, in this brief communication we conduct an examination of open-source communities and generate insights on how to augment current knowledge management practices in organizations. The goal is to entice scholars to transform closed knowledge management agendas that exist in organizations to ones that are representative of the open-source revolution.