A Comparative Study: Corporate Information Portals and Corporate Knowledge Portals

Lisa Soon Department of Management, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road Nathan 4111 Queensland Australia Email: l.soon@griffith.edu.au

Abstract

In this paper, the nature of corporate portals with regards to its information or knowledge content is explored. Generally, portals are web-based information systems developed as websites. A portal is also known as a corporate portal for business and work purposes. In this research, the web portal information resources and services provided in an organization in relation to the information and knowledge contents were investigated. Next, the handling of information or knowledge contents was analyzed. Two case studies were conducted to explore the nature of corporate portal contents in real-life in regards to adoption and use of information and/or knowledge. The findings showed that knowledge management practice is related to the creation, implementation and use of a knowledge portal. This research creates awareness on the distinction between information portals and knowledge portals. The targeted audience of this research is the web portal designers, website developers, portal providers, management that endorse the use of portal technology and the corporate portal user communities.

1. Introduction

A portal is a form of web technology which is also known as portal technology. As world wide web has been receiving increased attention (Scharl, 2001b) on the Internet, portals accessed through the world wide web is gaining popularity. In this paper, the use of portals is also referred to as the use of websites through a main window entry point. This window entry leads to a central collection of information resources and services for use by their targeted portal user communities.

In extant portal research (Compaq Global Services, 2001; Glander-Hobel, 2002; Hazra, 2002; IBM Corporation, 2002; McGrath, 2001; SAP AG, 2002; The Delphi Group, 2001, 2002; White, 2000; Zahir, 2002), scholars frequently use the term “information portals” or “knowledge portals”. What factors determine a portal as an information portal or a knowledge portal? This is the motivation to explore portals and distinguish information and knowledge portals. Portals used in businesses for work purposes are known as corporate portals (also known as business portals or enterprise portals) (Bråthen, 2003; Collins, 2001; Davydov, 2001; Detlor, 2000; Dias, 2001; Gurugé, 2003; Plumtree Press, 2003; Terra & Gordon, 2003). In this research, the corporate information portals and corporate knowledge portals were specifically investigated.

First of all the existing literature on portals, information, knowledge, and knowledge management was reviewed. With the portal literature, the main elements of portals were identified. Literature on the relations of portals, information, knowledge, and knowledge management were also examined. After obtaining an insight through a theoretical grounding of the literature, a research approach was designed and some empirical case studies were conducted. Particularly, the information and knowledge needs of portal users in relation to portal contents were examined. Case study method was used.(Bill, 2000; Gillham, 2000; Yin, 2003).

This paper adopts the following structure. In the following section, the related work of web portals, information, knowledge and knowledge management was investigated. Section 3 presents the research methods. The method chosen allows critical comparisons and evaluations on the types of information and knowledge use in web portals. Section 4 describes the case studies that explore the use of information and knowledge contents in portals. The research findings are explicated in section 5. In concluding, the strategic values of information portals and knowledge portals in the world of global business competition are reported in section 6. Section 6 also indicates the direction of the future work

2. Related Work

Portals

In a logical sequence, what portals have in common will be first discussed before information portals and knowledge portals are examined. In table 1, some different definitions for portals by some scholars are put forward.

Table 1. Different Definitions of Portals

The central theme derived from these definitions is: “Portals are a single stop window over the web page that provides a collection of information resources and services for a specific targeted audience”. However, the above definitions have not informed us how to distinguish a portal as an information portal or a knowledge portal.

Atluri and Gal (2002) define information portals as web sites that serve as main providers of focused information, gathered from distributed data sources. To distinguish information and knowledge portals, the IBM researchers, Mack et al. (2001), state that information portals provide a valuable service on the Internet, by selecting, organizing, describing and sometimes evaluating useful sites. They however refer to information portals used by knowledge workers as knowledge portals to establish the knowledge management role. Knowledge portals serve tasks performed by knowledge workers. However their research did not further discuss the elements that distinguish information and knowledge portals. Neither did they present any comparison work on information and knowledge portals. To discuss the use of portals in enterprises for business and work purposes, previous research (Bråthen, 2003; Collins, 2001; Davydov, 2001; Detlor, 2000; Dias, 2001; Ferguson, 2003; Gurugé, 2003; Hazra, 2002; Plumtree Press, 2003; Terra & Gordon, 2003; The Delphi Group, 2001, 2002)also examines the use of corporate portals amongst internal users such as staff members and business associates

To understand whether a portal is an information portal or knowledge portal, literature on the relationship amongst information, knowledge and knowledge management was further reviewed.

Relation of Information, Knowledge, Knowledge Management to the Web Portal

Scharl (2001a, 2001b) uses the term ‘web information systems’ when he discusses the use of the full potential of world wide web. A web site is a specific location on the web where one visits, gathers information and perhaps even orders product. Each web site has a web site address (Haag, Cummings, & McCubbrey, 2002). Web portals, otherwise known as web information systems, collect, process, store and distribute information just like an information system.

What is information? What is knowledge? Which one of them exist in portals? Information delivers meanings (Ahituv & Neumann, 1986; Checkland & Holwell, 1998; Laudon & Laudon, 2000). Information is data shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to human beings (Laudon & Laudon, 2000). Knowledge can be tacit or explicit. Explicit knowledge is knowledge expressed and made transmittable in a formal and systematic language (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Voss, Nakata, & Juhnke, 1999; Wiig, 1999) like that on the web pages. The information stored as web page contents is a form of explicit knowledge. On web pages, this knowledge is codified and organized in some customized format for the intended users.

Looking through the lens of knowledge management, the web information is explicit human knowledge. What exactly is knowledge management? What is the benefit of knowledge management? Table 2 is created to succinctly express the viewpoints of some scholars.

Table 2. Definitions of Knowledge Management

Information and Knowledge in Portals

The use of knowledge on portals is investigated. From various scholars (Davenport, 2000; Nonaka, Takeuchi, & Umemoto, 1996; Prusak, 1977; Soon, Chen, & Underwood, 2003; Stenmark, 1999, 2000), it was discovered that explicit knowledge is obtained through externalization of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is gained after some cognitive processes (i.e. classification, indexing, understanding and application) have taken place in the human minds (internalization) (Nonaka et al., 1996; Soon et al., 2003). According to Nonaka’s (Nonaka, 1997; Nonaka, & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka, Takeuchi, & Umemoto, 1996) four modes of knowledge conversion, knowledge goes through four transformation stages: socialization, externalization, combination and internalization.

Since knowledge on portals is transmitted as expressed information through technology, web portal information is clearly the explicit knowledge. In inductive reasoning, if any portal serves a purpose of disseminating information it is a web information portal. What if it goes beyond the one-way information dissemination? Will the online two-way or multiple-way communication allow intellectual exchange/ information exchange of experts using all four modes of knowledge conversions? From different literature in table 3, it was found out that portals provide web services such as email, chat-room, forum, relay chat, groupware, discussion room, listserv and so on. If the means as mentioned is put in place in portals, human knowledge can be further socialized, and combined. In table 3, some evidence of communicative tools and collaborations using corporate portals in corporations using the quotations from some scholars are demonstrated.

Table 3. Portals: Intellectual Exchange and Collaboration

Since Internet is a channel for establishing and maintaining contact with members of communities, organizations, and customers (Rowley, 2000), knowledge portal allows members in the virtual communities to collaborate for a common work purpose and for knowledge exchange. In other words, web activities encouraging human-to-human interactions is an essential attribute in the knowledge portals. So a preliminary distinction that can be drawn now is an information portal delivers, stores, and retrieves explicit knowledge as web information dissemination (as a result of the mode of externalization of knowledge). A knowledge portal however has to allow all the four knowledge conversion modes to take place. What processes or elements in portals allow the knowledge to be further discovered, created, transferred, reviewed, reused, and discarded as in a knowledge life cycle process? A knowledge portal should be able to capture and contain knowledge.

Zack (1999a, 1999b) groups knowledge into three types: 1. know-what: declarative knowledge, i.e., meta-knowledge; 2. know-how: procedural knowledge; and 3. know-why: usual knowledge. This knowledge may range from general knowledge to specific knowledge (Chan & Rosemann, 2002). In this paper, I argue that an information portal is where the explicit knowledge of know-what, know-how and know-why is. However, when this knowledge of know-what, know-how and know-why should ever be insufficient to support current usage and need clarification and update, it needs a knowledge portal with some other effective communicative means to engage an expert or more to clarify the grey area of knowledge. A knowledge portal has a mission to allow the additional capture, transfer, sharing and creation of new knowledge through the use of portals. Furthermore, the world is changing and the information in portals needs to be constantly updated to maintain the currency of web information. When information portals may keep some outdated information, a knowledge portal plays an important role in keeping every bit of explicit knowledge updated. In other words, human knowledge needs timely updating and be reflected via technology.

3. Research Methods

All research is different. Disparate approaches are hence taken and shown in dissimilar research. The research question is: ‘What are the common elements in portals that distinguish them as an information portal or a knowledge portal?’ Based on the nature of research and the research question posed, a research methodology useful in this research context was formulated.

There is a genuine need to explore whether portals used in a real-life phenomenon are simply information stores or designed to facilitate knowledge exchange as a knowledge repository. To explore the use of information portals and knowledge portals and their associated fundamental differences, the methods of case study (Bill, 2000; Gillham, 2000; Yin, 1984, 1989, 1993, 1994, 2003) were adopted. In this research, various supporting case study data collection tools are used, namely surveys, interview and observatory interview. This research involves two phases of the studies.

In the first phase, fourteen established organizations were chosen for interviews and surveys. The fourteen organizations were selected because of their substantial portal/website business experience in the Internet computing industry. There are thirty-one subjects involved in the first phase of study. The interviewees selected were the experts with a wealth of website design, development, management, maintenance and support experience. The selected interviewees were portal project managers, portal specialists, corporate website designers, website developers, web computing project leaders, corporate systems developers or the like. The interviewees either work in the private or the government sectors. They worked closely with support staff, various types of managers in corporations, decision makers and users. In each organization, there were a minimum of one and a maximum of four subjects involved in the field study. Usually, there were two to three subjects representing an organization. The interviews and surveys mainly took a structured format when some formal meetings were pre-arranged and events were carried out as planned. However, due to some unexpected circumstances, some interviews followed a semi-structured format. A list of preliminary portal functionalities through the portal literature was first obtained. After some analyses, a survey form with corporate portal elements that were identified was constructed. This research obtained agreement and confirmation from the interviewees before the field work took place. Face-to-face interview was the main data collection approach used. Telephone interview method was used when few interviewees could not afford time for a face-to-face interview.

In the second phase, this research aims at specifically examining what portal elements distinguish a portal as an information portal or a knowledge portal. Two case studies were conducted based on two identified corporate portals in real-life that addressed all elements found within first phase of the study. One organization was chosen from those interviewed in the first phase because of their willingness to further participate in this research. Another different organization was chosen for this research with the approval and support of their management to allow the investigation of their corporate portal in details. For ethical reasons, the names of the two organizations are made anonymous in this research. Instead, pseudonyms of organization A and organization B are used in the explanation of exploratory work in the two organizations. Officers were engaged in providing hands-on demonstrations to us. They also explained features in relation to the work purposes of their portals. There were software demonstrations of corporate portals in the observatory interviews. In a lot of interactions and discussions with participants, the participants explained the portal features that supported information needs and knowledge of users. During the hands-on demonstration of the portals in the two organizations, interviewees delivered a lot of in-depth information related to any portal characteristic demonstrated. Various questions were also asked regarding the aim of portal, what functions it had, how information and knowledge was captured, how knowledge exchange took place, and how web portal information was used for personal use, work, business or other purposes. They also discussed how information and knowledge was controlled and disseminated for authorized use in the portal user communities. They explained how the information and knowledge was related to the portal user needs. The information was transcribed as project logs after each interview for later analyses.

The explorations of portal elements helped decide the elements to distinguish an information portal and a knowledge portal. For ethical reasons, the interviewee identities and ownership of the portal are anonymous.

4. Case Studies

The purpose of exploration is to find out facts in elements or work processes of portals that distinguish it as an information portal or a knowledge portal. The two phases are planned with different intentions and will achieve different outcomes. The aims and exploration work of the two separate phases are explained below.

First Phase of Exploration

The first phase aims at discovering the common elements in portals that distinguish it as an information portal or a knowledge portal. In the same phase of study, an investigation was performed to discover whether knowledge management practice is put in place in the development and implementation of a portal. As mentioned above, the twenty subjects are technical specialists and expert portal designers with substantial work experience of major portal projects from private or governmental sectors.

From the literature review, a list of possible elements that help distinguish information and knowledge portals was first of all prepared. The portal literature was from both academic and practitioner research. The elements are then reworded as survey questions. To encourage interviewees to voice their other viewpoints in relation to every question, their opinions, why they thought so were all probed for. For each question, they were also asked for any possible examples. They were approached with twenty five questions. With each question, they were invited to talk freely to share any other useful related information within the context of the question. The interactions thus adopted a nature of semi-structure interview. The interview results were transcribed, compiled and further analyzed.

After the evaluation, only the useful and relevant information was extracted. Table 4 Was produced to depict the essential elements that support the use of corporate portals based on the findings.

Table 4. Essential Elements in Corporate Portal

From Table 4, it is discovered that the seven elements are to be present in knowledge portal as users are knowledge workers who have to use the explicit web information for their work. When any of the seven elements is absent, it implies that the use is not for work or the user is not a knowledge worker using the web information for some kind of knowledge work. This supports Mack et al.’s work that the use of a knowledge portal is to support the work of the knowledge worker.

Second Phase of Exploration

The second phase aims at obtaining substantiating information from within the real-life portals to support the elements discovered in the first phase of exploratory work. Two corporate portals (in organization A and organization B) were investigated: a corporate portal for staff and students in a higher educational institution and the other was used by staff members in a government department. Both corporate portals control the user accesses through user identification codes and log-in passwords. These portals also restrict users to the utilization of the required information and knowledge for immediate work purposes.

In the discussions, interviewees demonstrated the use and functions of the portals that support knowledge on portals. Further discussions were made on knowledge creation, capture/storage, sharing, transfer, use and update. We recorded the discussions and interview contents. The following are some important extracts from the field work.

Organization A

In organization A, the corporate portal project team explained to us the plan of the corporate portal project. The organization was in the education industry. The project started some years ago with a strong management commitment and endorsement. At the initial stage, there was a stringent process in the team member selection in order to put the experienced web designers and developers onboard. The initial design phase considered a lot of the types of corporate information and databases to be put on the web for common sharing and use. The project considered the user access control in order to allow only the authorized members to use the required work-related information. The security control was tight over the corporate portal system so that private and confidential information could only be accessed by staff members who had the valid log-in identifications and passwords and not by outsiders. During the time of web design and web page template development, the project teams considered the consistency in corporate screen layouts, use of information contents, information display layouts, navigation methods, and corporate image in all pages. All information is housed in the same corporate portals used by all members in various divisions, departments, and organizational units of the organization. The organizations have all members distributed in four different locations within the same major parts of the city.

Organization A allows public users or internal staff/student members to access the same portal. As portals are websites of organizations, organization A planned and decided which type of user uses what types of information. The immediate internal users clicked the links on portals to enter sub-portals that help them perform specific work task. The sub-portal will request for identification and password to permit access. The web-based work tasks that staff/students performed contributed to operational work essential to business viability of the organization A using the portal. The team mentioned an advantage of the reduction in paperwork. For example, students could perform on-line enrolment and staff members could view their payslips. To ensure that the staff members used the corporate portal for his/her related work, the identification and password provided at log-in were related to the privilege on the type of information, system application and databases to be used. Organization A also used their portal website as a vehicle to disseminate information to users such as prospective students, prospective employees, and others. For general public users to access a portal of organization A, they access all general usable information without any log-in requirement. For examples, they could access the portal website to find out information about education programs. Prospective job finders could also find out job opportunities in this organization. All internal and external users of the organization portal could access all publicly available information. Other than using emails and message board facilities in the corporate web portal, electronic diary was a tool used on portal for staff appointment/work event scheduling purposes. Other critical information includes the retrieval of phone and email contacts of all staff members.

As an education provider, a useful tool of an on-line teaching and learning resource service is included in the portal. This service formed a basis of web-based teaching and learning community area whereby teaching members uploaded course materials and students could download all relevant course materials electronically. One of the important features was the inclusion of chat-room or discussion board. Students could pose questions for discussion on the web when doubtful. Replies just flow in whenever the question was heard. Amongst the staff members, staff can register for any seminar event or training courses on-line using their staff log-in identifications and passwords. For the administrative staff members, they could use the work-related application systems through the corporate portals. Additionally, the corporate systems developer commented that the corporate portal contains usable business information for all work purposes. Some work processes are incorporated into the corporate portals. For example, an academic staff member could enter marks into the student result system. Any staff member could register for a training course and obtain a confirmation acknowledgement on-line. However, the corporate systems developer stated that not all business operational procedures could be put on the web though they were looking into putting more work procedures through in future. A lot of work-related information obtained by the staff members could also help the staff members make work-related decisions. The corporate portal provides a lot of information and databases. However, when asked how knowledge was used in the corporate portal and how staff members use knowledge, there was no clear explanation on what type of knowledge-related information was captured or stored for future use in the corporate portals. As there was no indication of the need to create business intelligence in the project, no information was provided by the project team interviewed.

Organization B

The second organization selected for investigation was a government department dealing with the public users of its information for business purposes. The project was a great investment to facilitate effective communications and dissemination of information. This project was planned with an aim to retain the knowledge of workers and to create a knowledge base by capturing knowledge beneficial to the organization for long-term use. A second aim was to allow existing workers to use information/knowledge available on systems to achieve better work performance. To distinguish the types of users of their portal website, organizations B developed two portals. A corporate portal was created strictly for the use of internal staff or corporate associates. A separate organization portal was developed and made accessible to the general public users. As for the general public users, log-ins were not required on the general public users portal for publicly available information. Should any public user need some special information from organization B, the user has to write in to organization B for special permission. The user will then be granted permission to access the corporate portal using given identification and passwords to obtain the required information. Through such an arrangement, such a user would be made a corporate associate of the corporate portal. A reason given on the use of two separate portals was the staff member should only provide one time of log-in identification and password for each work session in any workday within the office (usually every morning of the working days). Staff could access the corporate portals to use all information/knowledge for tasks between the scope of duty of the particular staff member. This paper focuses on corporate portals and their contents, so the general public user portal of organization B was not the focus and would not be looked into any further.

The corporate portal of organization B effectively provided staff members with the information required to carry out their daily work activities. The portal is used by the internal staff as an office-desk-access portals. On the home page that was also the first screen of the corporate portal, a designated frame on the right-hand-side was used to show all the recent important news announcements. These news announcements were equivalent to news placed on the notice boards at different parts of the offices in organization B. All staff members were aware that these news updates were important and were directly related to their work. Within the organization, staff members made use of emails to communicate and exchange information. To deal with the public users effectively of its communications and information exchange for business purposes, staff members use the bulletin board and list servers to for information exchange on more specific subject issues. As there were subject-specific matters, the forums are regarded as knowledge bases. From time to time, the information within each forum is compiled using the historically recorded responses to specific. Documentation on subject-specific matter is performed periodically. Such documentations are made available to all staff in the organization.

Staff members could obtain the required data, documents, files about their work from the central database based on the level of their work privilege. Many mundane work processes such as the leave application, booking to use corporate vehicle, the use of corporate resources for meetings and etc are done on-line. These work processes are linked to the different legacy application systems (e.g. human resource management systems, facility and resource control systems, and so on) of organizations. All staff can access common information on the a duty description and work related the duty for any particular staff member. While all staff usually log-in and access his own work-related information, any staff member can be assigned extra duty (e.g. when his certain colleague has to go on-leave) and access more other types of information. In such a situation when one also covers his colleague’s duty, he will log-in with his usual identification and password but be able to access his and that particular staff member’s work-related information.

As one of the important services of organization B was providing special business-related information to the customers. This information enabled the work success of the customers. Information delivered to customers was often specialist knowledge well-elaborated and explained electronically or through documentation. To stay updated with the latest type of knowledge in the specialist knowledge domain, various essential URL links were included in the corporate portal to capture the changes in legal issues, socio-economic situations, geographic matters, and so forth related to the business operations of organization B. All staff were able to make work-related decisions using the databases on legacy application systems, internal information resources and links to external resources. In a nutshell, an information store (or a repository of explicit knowledge) was indirectly created on the corporate portal by tapping in internally and externally useful resources. Any staff member who found out new URL links to useful external databases or resources could always update the network systems administrator and hence have them added to the existing list of links. To use, store and reuse the critical business information affecting the organization’s operations, news announcements were made and recorded in news bulletin issues. Like work documentations, the bulletins were later stored in a central database for the future use of all staff.

Discussions

In line with the work in section 2.3, knowledge on portals is transmitted as related expressed information through technology that is based on specific purposes within the same knowledge domain. For example, organization B used knowledge for all work purposes within their business domain. Web portal information is clearly the explicit knowledge (tacit knowledge externalised). For the purposes of explanation here, we equate the web information that explains a type of knowledge as explicit knowledge. Since information is used to inform and knowledge enables one to act, it makes good sense that any portal serving a purpose of disseminating information is a web information portal. In contrast, portals that allow members in the virtual work environment to use explicit knowledge in work activities, make work decisions, collaborate for a common work purpose and to facilitate intellectual knowledge exchange are the corporate knowledge portals.

Business intelligence accumulated and established based on inclusion and use of relevant web information and web services on the web. These web information and web services might be important useful knowledge to be learnt and used by users. It is the synergy of the summated understood information that forms the basis of business intelligence. In the interview with organization A, there was no discussion on how they integrated the internal and externally useful web information resources and services to enhance one’s expertise/ specialist knowledge, to enhance their business performance or to improve the business viability. Organization B discussed how the external web information resources and services could be used at the organization’s advantage and to be incorporated in their corporate portal.

In the case studies, organization A is more inclined to disseminate information, store and reuse useful relevant information than organization B. In organization A, the discussion board is used to exchange information and for communication for the intended purposes only. Although the educational portal provides well developed tools facilitating learning processes, it is merely intellectual information exchange in a plethora of information areas. Such intellectual information exchange cannot be seen as that more specifically used in a specific knowledge domain (for example, knowledge that can be used in work activities, enables decision making or collaboratively be used to contribute to a common work purposes). When there is no effort put in place in order to identify each useful piece of information to a specific matter and further organize them, there is no work done to deposit knowledge into a repository area. By comparison, organization B has demonstrated a development of a portal by first understanding the staff members work needs, work-related knowledge to enable one to work and to retain such knowledge (convert the tacit knowledge of staff members to explicit knowledge on the web). In organization B, information in major communication tools such as the bulletin board and list servers are later collated and compiled into documentation for future use. This knowledge is deposited into some kind of knowledge store to be re-accessed as organized and compiled documentations.

In a close examination, it is organization B’s corporate portal that create a virtual environment to allow staff members to use the explicit knowledge in work processes, make work decisions, communicate/collaborate for work purposes, stay informed and know how to perform each other’s duty and to further facilitate knowledge exchange. There are sufficient web activities encouraging human-to-human interactions in organization B’s corporate portals. From the findings, two distinctions were observed between an information portal and a knowledge portal. (1) An information portal delivers, stores, and retrieves explicit knowledge as web information dissemination. A knowledge portal however allows all the four knowledge conversion modes to take place and also maintains knowledge currency in a central store. This knowledge store allows new ideas to be added, obsolete ideas to be discarded and existing knowledge to be updated/renewed. Knowledge is then used to make informed decisions and perform work tasks. (2) In a knowledge portal, it is knowledge in point (1) of the related knowledge workers, experts or specialists "tapped" within a specific domain knowledge area achieving certain common goals. This is not obvious in an information portal. Hence, organization A’s corporate portal is a corporate information portal and organization B a corporate knowledge portal.

5. Findings

The two case studies in the previous section allow us to develop and present the seven elements in table 4 in the first phase of exploratory work. In the second phase of exploration, work nature related to the seven elements in the corporate portals of two organizations was further examined, discussed and explained. Through the findings of case studies, it was discovered that knowledge management practice has to be put in place to support a corporate knowledge portal through the stages of design, development, implementation, adoption and use. While information portals are common, there is a trend for the leading corporate portal developers to develop knowledge portals. Within such a workplace phenomenon, some policies or a kind of workplace approach may be formulated to support the knowledge management practice. In the case studies’ investigation, it was discovered that some useful policies that organization B has adopted has led to the successful creation, development, implementation, adoption and used of a corporate knowledge portal. Some policies based on the findings in case studies are:

1. Formulate a clear business mission of the organization using corporate portals
2. Allow users to exhibit some loyalty to the organization and instill a sense of belonging by being users/members of a designated corporate portal community
3. All staff see themselves as knowledge workers who are to share and use knowledge for work as a whole but not individually
4. Require staff to honestly report work, share workload, and foster a trusting work relationship amongst colleagues
5. All staff respect each individual as a knowledge worker in his/her knowledge field
6. All staff understand the importance that sharing of knowledge in work – to free everyone from duty substantially when any staff member has to go on recreation leave, sick leave or for other reasons. One’s duty is flexibly covered by other staff members.
7. Encourage consultative discussions amongst staff members and every staff member is allowed to provide input about information and knowledge that should go into the portal about work
8. All staff can help define the desired parameters of the community
9. Any dissent will have to be resolved in relation to the use of the type of information or explicated knowledge regarding a particular staff duty or responsibility.

6. Conclusion and Future Directions

In this paper, web portals, information, explicit knowledge, knowledge and the need of knowledge management in dealing with portals were first discussed. Using case studies, the empirical work was conducted in order to make some critical comparisons and evaluations on the types of information and knowledge use in web portals. Two case studies that explored the use of information, explicit knowledge and how knowledge was transferred over the web technology and how knowledge was managed in portals were described. With the findings, some useful practices that allow knowledge to be explicated and be shown in the contents of corporate portals to enable knowledge work were proposed. This research does not serve as a distinction point of information management and knowledge management. However, the case studies aimed to provide useful food for thought in readers to think over the important practices to allow information or explicit knowledge to be handled and managed using web technology. The limitation of this research is the two corporate portals have their general business activities demonstrated to us reported through the field studies. In future, more cases in various fields will be studied to determine in which particular situation, an information or a knowledge portal is adequate. The future work will further examine the corporate portals of more detailed e-commerce and e-business activities related to more detailed type of knowledge within the organizations. On a whole, this research highlights that the approach to knowledge management is important to the creation, implementation and use of a knowledge portal. This research also creates awareness on the distinction between information portals and knowledge portals.

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