Knowledge management for administrative knowledge

Administrative knowledge or office knowledge is the knowledge used in conjunction with the support operations in an organization. Systems managing this knowledge are referred to as extended office systems (EOSs). EOSs will be used to support knowledge exchanges in organizations. The types of knowledge handled by EOSs are illustrated and their characteristics are highlighted. Based on these characteristics, a formalism is proposed, which utilizes structural and descriptive links to achieve an extensible, open-ended representation. A prototype system using the representation and incorporating approximately 200 items of knowledge has been developed and can answer questions about a software engineering company.