Topic map and ontological support for knowledge management in the enterprise

The paper aims to observe what role the modern IT tools play in the process of knowledge sharing inside the enterprise. Our hypothesis is that semantic data models and semantic web applications foster knowledge sharing through the codification of tacit knowledge. We propose a topic map based technology for the management of unstructured information. Topic map technology enables the visualization of concepts through associations similar to the human thinking and unlike the traditional hierarchical way. This technology requires the clear definition of all concepts (topics) to ensure that all co-workers share a common meaning of each topic. The technology provides possibility to attach documents to all occurrences of a topic.