Thus far Information Technology has grown mostly from the ‘T’ or Technology side of IT. As this technology is becoming mature and supply of the same is exceeding demand, it is becoming a superspecialty. The ‘I’ side of IT is steadily becoming more important. Subjects like taxonomy, metadata frameworks, information systems organization, semantic web, knowledge management, etc. are getting increasing attention. In future, the ‘T’ will be more and more shaped by ways the ‘I’ is generated and used in different domains of real world and activities of daily life. The dynamics of ‘I’ or information as driven by those who use it requires relevant practical paradigms that are aligned with knowledge based wealth creation activities. Present approach of pushing more technology in the form of Enterprise Applications Integration [EAI] has to be integrated with processes that sustain effective Knowledge Management and culture of learning organizations. In this paper we bring out that the ancient Indian Vedic view of Pancha Kosha, i.e. the five-layers view of conscious human existence, together with a ‘Knowledge Plant’ (K-Plant) management model to provide some deep insight into how we holistically integrate people, process and technology with capacity to drive the information space in ways that sustain knowledge enabled wealth creation by organizations. The same approach is also useful in building virtual knowledge-driven enterprises. We also refer to implementations of such virtual enterprises supporting knowledge management systems in three kinds of organizations. All the three implementations support the information-interaction-collaboration framework for the kind of K-Plants approach stated in this paper. The three are generic enough to cover a wide variety of real-world organizations.
decision support systems, enterprise applications integration, information systems organization, knowledge management, learning organizations, organizational behaviour, pancha kosha, systems thinking, virtual enterprises
