Abstract
Information and knowledge (IK) are each day more valuable assets in modern organizations (Atkinson, Court, & Ward, 1998; Carrillo, 1998; Liebowitz & Beckman, 1998). Distributing IK is indeed one of the main processes in knowledge management (Liebowitz & Wilcox, 1997; Horibe, 1999). Now, deciding which piece of IK goes to which member of an organization is a decision problem not simple in real organizations. There are many aspects that should be considered, such as what are the responsibilities and tasks of each person, which access rights they have, what are their preferences, and so on. Taking into account all these aspects requires either a huge amount of human labor or the help of an information-technology tool. In this article we explore how a particular technology, automated argumentation, which is a kind of automatic reasoning, can be applied to solve decision problems related to information distribution in an organization.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Knowledge: Structured information which compiles human experience and that is intended to guide human action; as in the preceding definition, we do not get involved in philosophical distinctions.
Information: Any collection of ordered symbols, normally grouped in documents. Here we do not measure it nor discuss its philosophical nature.
Automatic Reasoning: Computer-made process of manipulating symbols so that conclusions are drawn from premises.
Knowledge Management: The study of processes involving creation, discovery, storage, dissemination, or use of knowledge within an organization.
Argumentation: The process of supporting a claim with evidence that entails it.