A multilevel model for effects of social capital and knowledge sharing in knowledge-intensive work teams

Although it is a widely held belief that social capital facilitates knowledge sharing among individuals, there is little research that has deeply investigated the impacts of social capital at different levels on an individual's knowledge sharing behavior. To address this research gap, this study combines a multilevel approach and an optimal network configuration view to investigate the multilevel effects of social capital on individuals’ knowledge sharing in knowledge intensive work teams. This study makes a distinction between the social capital at the team-level and that of social capital at the individual level to examine their cross-level and direct effects on an individual's sharing of explicit and tacit knowledge. A survey involving 343 participants in 47 knowledge-intensive teams was conducted for testing the multilevel model. The results reveal that social capital at both levels jointly influences an individual's explicit and tacit knowledge sharing. Further, when individuals possess a moderate betweenness centrality and the whole team holds a moderate network density, team members’ knowledge sharing can be maximized. These findings offer a more comprehensive and precise understanding of the multilevel impacts of social capital on team members’ knowledge sharing behavior, thus contributing to the social capital theory, as well as knowledge management research and practices.     

A social recommender mechanism for improving knowledge sharing in online forums

Nowadays, online forums have become a useful tool for knowledge management in Web-based technology. This study proposes a social recommender system which generates discussion thread and expert recommendations based on semantic similarity, profession and reliability, social intimacy and popularity, and social network-based Markov Chain (SNMC) models for knowledge sharing in online forum communities. The advantage of the proposed mechanism is its relatively comprehensive consideration of the aspects of knowledge sharing. Accordingly, results of our experiments show that with the support of the proposed recommendation mechanism, requesters in forums can easily find similar discussion threads to avoid spamming the same discussion. In addition, if the requesters cannot find qualified discussion threads, this mechanism provides a relatively efficient and active way to find the appropriate experts.     

Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: A case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake

The US response to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake was a large effort coordinated by three major agencies that worked in tandem with the Government of Haiti, the United Nations, and many countries from around the globe. Managing this response effort was a complex undertaking that relied extensively on knowledge management systems (KMS). For the first time, however, US government agencies employed social media technologies such as wikis and collaborative workspaces as the main knowledge sharing mechanisms. In this research we present a case study developed through action research of how these social media technologies were used, what influences they made on knowledge sharing, reuse, and decision-making, and how knowledge was effectively (and at times ineffectively) maintained in these systems. First-hand knowledge of the response is used, offering strategies for future deployment of social media and important research questions that remain regarding social media as knowledge management systems, particularly for disaster and emergency management.     

The role of social media in the engagement and information processes of social CRM

This study furthers investigation into exactly how Social CRM (S-CRM) is different from traditional CRM, and models the interrelationships between its capabilities. It is underpinned in dynamic capabilities theory, to explain how social media, as a resource all organizations use, can lead to differing performance outcomes. It is underpinned in seminal research into traditional CRM, but which does not cater for the disruptive nature of social media. We outline how S-CRM is a second-order dynamic capability consistng of a set of first-order integrative dynamic capabiliies that, when properly interrelated, lead to performance outcomes. We particularly model the role of S-CRM front- and back-office technology capabilities, customer engagement initiatives, and social information processes in driving customer relationship performance. Findings show that S-CRM is different from traditional CRM in a range of ways in the front- and back-offices, and provide a framework for researcher and managers in information systems and marketing to operate at strategic and tactical levels within S-CRM, while being congisant of both.     

Investigating effectiveness and user acceptance of semantic social tagging for knowledge sharing

Social tagging systems enable users to assign arbitrary tags to various digital resources. However, they face vague-meaning problems when users retrieve or present resources with the keyword-based tags. In order to solve these problems, this study takes advantage of Semantic Web technology and the topological characteristics of knowledge maps to develop a system that comprises a semantic tagging mechanism and triple-pattern and visual searching mechanisms. A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and user acceptance of these mechanisms in a knowledge sharing context. The results show that the semantic social tagging system is more effective than a keyword-based system. The visualized knowledge map helps users capture an overview of the knowledge domain, reduce cognitive effort for the search, and obtain more enjoyment. Traditional keyword tagging with a keyword search still has the advantage of ease of use and the users had higher intention to use it. This study also proposes directions for future development of semantic social tagging systems.     

The social strategy cone: Towards a framework for evaluating social media strategies

Social media is growing rapidly. Providing both risks and opportunities for organizations as it does. The social strategy cone is developed for evaluating social media strategies. This framework comprises of seven key elements of social media strategies as based on a systematic literature review and case studies. The results of 21 interviews have contributed to the construction of the social media strategy cone for analyzing social media strategies. Three levels of maturity of social media strategy are proposed: initiation, diffusion and maturity. Initiation includes the key elements: ‘target audience’ and ‘channel choice’ while all case organizations studied payed attention to these elements. Diffusion includes the elements: ‘goals’, ‘resources’ and ‘policies’. Maturity adds the elements of ‘monitoring’ and ‘content activities’. Only 3 of the 9 organizations studied are in this phase of maturity. Although, theory suggests the importance of the element of ‘monitoring’ our research shows the need for more attention in practice.     

The role of lead users in knowledge sharing

This paper introduces a model of knowledge sharing in an online community of practice that suggests that knowledge contributions will be made by those who possess the relevant knowledge. For them, matching a ready-made solution to a problem is low cost. We hypothesize that lead users – due to their characteristics – are likely to possess more relevant solution knowledge and thus be centrally involved in contributing knowledge. Our results support the hypothesis by showing that lead user characteristics relate positively to making contributions to the community. In addition, we find that search and integration of knowledge from different external sources of relevance to the community positively moderates knowledge contributions by lead users.     

Understanding the formation mechanism of high-quality knowledge in social question and answer communities: A knowledge co-creation perspective

The social question and answer (Q&A) community provides people with an effective tool to obtain high-quality information. From the perspective of reciprocal determinism and value co-creation, this study aims to investigate the formation mechanism of high-quality knowledge in the community. We develop a model to investigate how cognitive factors and community technological factors influence users’ knowledge co-creation behavior, thereby influencing knowledge quality in the community. A survey of 382 knowledge contributors in a social Q&A community shows that knowledge self-efficacy, topic richness, personalized recommendation, and social interactivity have a positive impact on users' knowledge sharing and integration behavior, which subsequently affect the community’s knowledge quality. Moreover, users' ratings moderate the influence of knowledge sharing on knowledge quality. This research demonstrates the synergistic effect of people and technology in knowledge co-creation, thus advances literature about value co-creation and content quality in online communities.     

The effects of individual motivations and social capital on employees’ tacit and explicit knowledge sharing intentions

Due to the importance of knowledge in today's competitive world, an understanding of how to enhance employee knowledge sharing has become critical. This study develops an integrated model to understand key factors of employee knowledge sharing intentions through constructs prescribed by two established knowledge management research streams, namely, those concerning individual motivations and social capital. This study classifies employee knowledge sharing intentions as either tacit or explicit and investigates whether the level of the determinants and their influences differ between the two. The research model is tested with survey data collected from 2010 employees in multiple industries. Analysis results show that the proposed model significantly explains the variance of employees’ tacit and explicit knowledge sharing intentions. This finding indicates that the model's unified perspective enhances our knowledge of how to improve employee knowledge sharing. The new findings reveal that organizational rewards have a negative effect on employees’ tacit knowledge sharing intentions but a positive influence on their explicit knowledge sharing intentions. The analysis results confirm that reciprocity, enjoyment, and social capital contribute significantly to enhancing employees’ tacit and explicit knowledge sharing intentions. Additionally, these factors have more positive effects on tacit than on explicit knowledge intentions. The implications of the new findings are discussed.     

Combining different evaluation systems on social media for measuring user satisfaction

Web 2.0 allows people to express and share their opinions about products and services they buy/use. These opinions can be expressed in various ways: numbers, texts, emoticons, pictures, videos, audios, and so on. There has been great interest in the strategies for extracting, organising and analysing this kind of information. In a social media mining framework, in particular, the use of textual data has been explored in depth and still represents a challenge. On a rating and review website, user satisfaction can be detected both from a rating scale and from the written text. However, in common practice, there is a lack of algorithms able to combine judgments provided with both comments and scores. In this paper we propose a strategy to jointly measure the user evaluations obtained from the two systems. Text polarity is detected with a sentiment-based approach, and then combined with the associated rating score. The new rating scale has a finer granularity. Moreover, also enables the reviews to be ranked. We show the effectiveness of our proposal by analysing a set of reviews about the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (Italy) published on TripAdvisor.     

Exploring the influence of excessive social media use at work: A three-dimension usage perspective

Pervasive social media has resulted in technology dependency and excessive usage, which can lead to negative outcomes in organizations. This paper aims to investigate the effects of social media’s different excessive usage patterns on employee job performance and the corresponding underlying mechanism. Specifically, we propose three dimensions of excessive social media use at work (i.e., excessive social, hedonic, and cognitive). These dimensions are related to technology-work conflict and strain, which in turn decrease employee job performance. An empirical study of 305 social media users in organizations reveals that excessive social media use for socialization and entertainment can generate conflict between technology use and work demand, whereas excessive social media use for information-sharing reduces employees’ psychological strain. In addition, technology-work conflict and strain negatively influence job performance. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.     

The three facets of knowledge: A critique of the practice-based learning theory

The community of practice learning theory (Lave and Wenger, 1991) can be credited with establishing the social basis of learning, viewing it as occurring through participation in social practices and activities. However, it remains silent on the cognitive content of what is learned by participants in a community of practice. Nor does it address explicitly the role of individuals in the knowing process. Individuals are merely depicted in terms of a desire to belong to a community, progressing from a peripheral participation position to a more central one. The aim of the present paper is to assess the contribution of Lave and Wenger's (1991) practice theory for educational and other learning social settings. In a schooling context, for instance, Lave and Wenger's (1991) account of learning would imply that what students learn at school is how to relate and belong to the school community. By reducing learning and knowing to participation, and by displacing cognition from individuals to anonymous practices, the practice-based epistemology ignores the significant corpus of content knowledge (such as curriculums) and ascribes too passive a role to individuals and glosses over their differentiated access to resources for changing practices and their differentiated efforts in their social and cognitive development. The present paper suggests an approach to knowledge that takes into account the various facets of knowledge, that is, knowledge as knowledge-productive practices, as content, and as relation to a knowing subject, at the same time preserving the sociality of knowledge and learning.     

组织内部知识共享的类型及进化博弈模型

针对组织内部知识共享面临的动态性和知识结构的多样性,本文根据知识差异及知识结构将组织内部知识共享的博弈划分为多种类型,在此基础之上建立了知识共享的单群体和多群体动态博弈模型,并分析了模型的进化稳定策略和稳定域。结果表明,组织能否实现知识共享取决于激励策略、组织知识结构,以及知识共享的初始状态三个方面的因素,在满足稳定域约束的条件下共享知识才能成为进化稳定策略。该结果可为组织实现高水平知识共享提供理论指导和决策支持。     

The influence of personalization on tag query length in social media search

Social content systems contain enormous collections of unstructured user-generated content, annotated by the collaborative effort of regular Internet users. Tag-clouds have become popular interfaces that allow users to query the database of these systems by clicking relevant terms. However, these single click queries are often not expressive enough to effectively retrieve the desired content. Users have to use multiple clicks or type longer queries to satisfy their information need.     

An empirical investigation of information sharing behavior on social commerce sites

Social commerce sites (SCSs), a new model of social media, provide fertile ground for customers to communicate their opinions and exchange product- or service- related information. Given the significant opportunities related to the use of social media data for customers’ insight, we explore the factors driving information sharing behavior on SCSs. In this paper, we propose and empirically test a comprehensive theoretical model for customer information sharing behavior through analysis of online survey data as well as network and behavioral usage data of over four months from 1177 customers in a SCS. The research model was empirically validated with the use of both subjective and objective data in a longitudinal setting. Our results show that customer information sharing is influenced by both individual (i.e., reputation and the enjoyment of helping others) and social capital (i.e., out-degrees’ post, in-degrees’ feedback, customer expertise and reciprocity) factors. This study contributes to the existing literature by highlighting the role of directed social network in customer information sharing behavior on SCSs. We believe that the results of our study offer important insights to the IS research and practice.     

组织知识共享网络模型研究——基于知识网络和社会网络

 以组织中同时作为社会活动和知识活动载体的“人”为研究对象,以构建一个客观高效的组织知识共享网络模型为研究目的,提出基于知识网络和社会网络的组织知识共享网络模型及构建方法,并探讨该网络模型如何影响组织中主体间知识共享的过程和方式。从应用实例来看,该方法具有客观、可视化、定量等特点,因而可以较好地应用到组织知识的分布、查找、推送等知识共享实际应用中去,为组织知识共享的定量分析提供了一种新的工具和思路。     

The dynamics of intellectual property rights for trust,knowledge sharing and innovation in project teams

The research question is: How can intellectual property rights (IPRs) influence trust, attitudes, commitment, knowledge sharing, and innovation in inter-organisational project teams?The four strategically selected team cases include eight global knowledge-intensive industrial oil service companies in Norway. The methodology included 24 in-depth interviews done in 2016.The study finds that formal intellectual property rights are key to building up and keeping trust in the team and also for building up the right attitudes within the team. The IPRs increased the innovativeness in the team and incremental innovations. The IPRs fostered a unique knowledge sharing in these four teams enabling them to work towards innovative solutions and delivering in time. Formal IPŔs foster informal trust and expertise sharing and by that also the inter- organizational cooperation. The confidence and knowledge sharing strengthen the possibility for future collaboration and innovations both on an individual level and on a corporate level. The theoretical implication of our findings is that IPRs increase the trust, commitment, and attitudes within the team providing knowledge sharing and innovativeness for improved solutions and results. IPRs are positive for collaboration, and they are complementary governance mechanisms.The practical implication is that IPRs must be defined and accepted before the corporations start up the inter-organizational teamwork. The contract typology should in the start up be sensitizing giving directions and security and in the end definitive.     

Initiating private-collective innovation: The fragility of knowledge sharing

Incentives to innovate are a central element of innovation theory. In the private-investment model, innovators privately fund innovation and then use intellectual property protection mechanisms to appropriate returns from these investments. In the collective-action model, public subsidy funds public goods innovations, characterized by non-rivalry and non-exclusivity in using these innovations. Recently, these models have been compounded in the private-collective innovation model where innovators privately fund public goods innovations. Private-collective innovation is illustrated in the case of open source software development. This paper contributes to the work on this model by investigating incentives that motivate innovators to share their knowledge in an initial situation, before there is a community to support the innovation process. We use game theory to predict knowledge sharing behavior in private-collective innovation, and test these predictions in a laboratory setting. The results show that knowledge sharing is a coordination game with multiple equilibria, reflecting the fragility of knowledge sharing between innovators with conflicting interests. The experimental results demonstrate important asymmetries in the fragility of knowledge sharing and, in some situations, more knowledge sharing than theoretically predicted. A behavioral analysis suggests that knowledge sharing in private-collective innovation is not only affected by material incentives, but also by social preferences such as fairness. The results offer general insights into the relationship between incentives and knowledge sharing and contribute to a better understanding of the initiation of private-collective innovation.     

The influence of informal governance mechanisms on knowledge integration within cross-functional project teams: a social capital perspective

This paper aims to explore the influence of informal governance mechanisms (IGMs) on knowledge integration (KI) within cross-functional project teams (CFPTs). In order to achieve this objective, we provide a novel and distinct perspective – social capital (SC). From this perspective, we analyse three dimensions of IGMs, that is, social interaction, social trust and social cognition. Propositions on underlying influencing mechanisms of the three dimensions on KI are then empirically tested using qualitative data from semi-structured interviews and quantitative data from questionnaire surveys. Results indicate that strong social ties, mutual trust and formation of shared vision facilitate KI within CFPTs. In addition, communication platforms are encouraged to provide more opportunities for team members to exchange knowledge. This paper provides suggestions for both knowledge governance theory and project management practice.     

组织氛围对员工非正式知识分享的影响

通过对国内IT、化工、金融、管理咨询等行业中从事知识密集性工作的员工的问卷调查,利用SPSS11.5软件,探索性地研究组织氛围中的创新、公平、支持、人际关系和员工身份认同5个子氛围对员工非正式知识分享行为的两种影响效应。结果显示:在员工非正式知识分享中,公平氛围和身份认同氛围具有激励效应,创新氛围和人际关系氛围则具有显著的约束效应,支持氛围既具激励效应,也具有约束效应。