Abstract
"Weblogs", are being applied by organisations in their attempts to harness the tacit knowledge of workers and develop "organisational intelligence" as part of broad knowledge management and communication strategies. This activity could play a key role in the competence development of knowledge workers and support personal (lifelong) learning strategies.
The new genre of "workblogs" could provide organisations with access to network spaces for intelligence gathering and dissemination. However, inherent in this practice are tensions that require consideration by all stakeholders alike. The open, relatively anonymous, and democratic nature of "social" "blogging" culture could challenge organisational hierarchies.
Analysing practice including blog conversations, espoused policy and use by organisations as part of their communication strategy the authors introduce the notion of "protected authority"; which could result in stifling the "open" nature of "blog" conversational culture and render ineffective the application of this emergent technology in support of strategic knowledge management initiatives.