Towards design principles for knowledge management systems that support experientially derived tacit and procedural knowledge

Lessons-learned systems (LLS) are intended to capture and disseminate experientially derived knowledge. However, their use has delivered limited organizational benefits. One cause for this may be the lack of support for tacit and procedural knowledge (TPK), which are often regarded as synonymous with the expertise and skill enabling execution of tasks. Despite the importance of TPK for organizational performance, there is little to no extant design knowledge on how to design KM systems suitable for their management. Towards this gap in knowledge, we reference the literature and formulate design principles for a class of KM systems that can capture and disseminate experientially derived TPK. We demonstrate the utility of our design principles by developing a prototype to support the knowledge-intensive task of aerial surveys for wildlife. Through exploration of the protype’s use in a detailed scenario, we demonstrate the utility of the artifact and its underlying design principles. Our study contributes novel design knowledge and provides practicable guidance for addressing an unsolved problem.