Functions of ICT for supporting organisational learning

Information and communication technology (ICT) offers many opportunities for supporting knowledge management processes. It is, however, unclear what exactly these opportunities are and what functions of ICT are necessary to support knowledge management. We explore this issue by applying two complementary perspectives. First, we focus on a specific type of knowledge management process: learning processes, such as internal, feedback, external and creative learning. These are part of organisational learning. Taking their different characteristics as a starting point, each process puts different requirements on ICT support. Second, from the current types of ICT that we distinguished we reason what support ICT could offer for organisational learning. These two ways of describing ICT functions are then combined in a matrix. This combination provides important insights. For example, the broad category of groupware has the most potential for supporting organisational learning processes. Besides that, it appears hard to support creative learning with ICT; at least, this is not a particular strength of current ICT. Thus, this paper provides functions of ICT for supporting organisational learning. These can be useful for both the use and development of ICT for supporting these processes.