Fostering Knowledge Sharing in Project Management

Abstract

We present an ontological analysis of the problem of fostering knowledge sharing in project management. The ontology has five dimensions derived by parsing the problem statement, namely: (a) fostering methods, (b) fostering factors, (c) fostering functions, (d) knowledge types, and (e) knowledge sharing methods. Each dimension is a taxonomy of discrete categories. The exhaustive set of combinations of categories across the five dimensions, together with appropriate connecting words and phrases, constitutes a closed description of the problem. We map (a) the extant literature on knowledge sharing, and (b) the extensive experience of one of the authors in construction project management, to these combinations to synthesize (a) the current state-of-the-knowledge on the topic, (b) the gaps in it, and (c) an agenda for further research. The method is systematic, logical, repeatable, and extensible.