KM-Master Course , 2005

1. Module: Communautés virtuelles,Agents intelligentsC3: Collaborative Knowledge construction & knowledge sharing KM-Master Course, 2005 Thierry NABETH INSEAD CALT – The Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies, Fontainebleau, France

2. How to manage knowledge in a community context • The main issues of Collaborative knowledge construction & Sharing knowledge. • Motivation, resistance, etc • Addressing the issues • Rewarding contribution? • Transparency • Digital environments for Collaborative knowledge construction and knowledge sharing • In wikis? • In Blogs • In knowledge management platforms?

3. The main issues of Collaborative knowledge construction & Sharing knowledge. • The motivational issue • People do not see their interest in spending time • Knowledge = power, and resistance to change? • People see knowledge sharing as a threat • Effectiveness of the process • Can be a time consuming activity with limited value • Managing tacit knowledge • We are talking here of the management of the tacit knowledge. (see tacit knowledge specificity)

4. Addressing the knowledge sharing & capitalization issues • motivation • Self motivation (altruism, …) • Social: Reputation, recognition, pressure, … • Economic: Monetary reward, bonus • Organizational: roles • Knowledge manager, Knowledge engineer, Community organiser, etc. • Compulsion • In which context can it work? • What about the use of compulsion in network? • Other?

5. Addressing the knowledge sharing & capitalization issues • Mechanisms, • Transparency (translucence) • Social pressure • People recognition • Economic mechanisms: • measuring and rewarding value creation • Productivity: help the individual work process • Example of economic mechanisms: • Inkass (K trading) http://www.inkass.com/ • IQPort (did not work)

6. Digital environments for Collaborative knowledge construction and sharing • The different categories of tools: • Description • What are the supported processes • Centralized versus decentralised, control (roles, etc.) • People motivation • Quality? • Advantage/disadvantages? • Different (complementary) tools • Wikis, Forums, blogs, recommendation systems, KM management systems (such as CMS) • Other?

7. Some Theories that can be used for stimulating contribution • Theories: • Social exchange theory; Thibaut & Kelley (1959) • Collective Effort Model (social loafing); Karau et Williams (1993). • Goal setting and motivation; Locke & Latham (2002) • Interpersonal Influence theories (psycho sociology); Cialdini and Sagarin (2005) • Critical mass effects; Bob Metcalfe laws (?), David Reed (1999).

8. Social exchange theory • DescriptionSocial Exchange theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) explains how we feel about a relationship with another person as depending on our perceptions of: • The balance between what we put into the relationship and what we get out of it. • The kind of relationship we deserve. • The chances of having a better relationship with someone else.

9. Social exchange theory (2) • The social exchanges theories considers that voluntary relationships depend on • receiving satisfactory outcomes, • and that a person’s commitment to an existing relationship is proportional to his/her satisfaction in this relationship and to the investment he/she has already put in this relationship and it is inversely proportional to potential alternative relationships.

10. The Collective Effort Model Description:Collective Effort Model (social loafing); Karau et Williams (1993). According to this theory, people work hard when they think their effort will help them achieve outcomes that they value. The collective effort model identifies conditions under which people will socially loaf less: • Believing that their effort is important to the group performance. • Believing that their work is identifiable. • Liking the group they are working with.

11. Interpersonal Influence theories(psycho sociology) Cialdini and Sagarin (2005) The six principles of influence of Robert Cialdini: • reciprocity felt obligation to "reimburse" • social validation social conformance • commitment / consistencytendency to act in a similar way than in the past • friendship / liking • scarcity • authority

12. Critical Mass effects The value of a social structure (Network / Group / Community) is proportional to the size of this social structure. • Bob Metcalfe’s law (?): the value of a network • the value of a network equals approximately the square of the number of users of the system n*(n+1). • Andrew Odlyzko and Benjamin Tilly (2005): • the value of a network equals approximately n*ln(n) • David Reed’s law (1999): • the potential utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially (2n) with the size of the network.

13. Wikis • Description : • Collaborative definition of terms linked with one another • Mainly centralized, control: open to everybody to post. reviewing process? • Motivation: recognition, altruisms? • Advantage/disadvantages • Ease of use, Scalability • Lost control of the content by the user? • Examples: • Wikipedia, VCAI wiki, …

14. Blogs • Description : • Collection of stories, strong temporality • decentralized, control: each person control his/her blog. • Motivation: capture personal memory, support for the social network,… • Advantage/disadvantages • Ease of use, easy capture of experiences (stories) and opinions • No central space? • Examples: • Expert blogs, VCAI blogs of the students, …

15. CMS • Description : • Shared repository, project management • Mainly centralized. Control: usually limited to an organization (access control). Definition of roles: K-worker, K-manager • Motivation: pressure from the organization, bonus, etc. • Advantage/disadvantages • Robust, possibility of strong control & coordination (project), versioning, support for th work process • Heavy • Examples: • KM systems (1rst generation), SourceForge?, …

16. Collaborative knowledge construction and sharing. The VCAI Case • The different tools: • VCAI Wiki • VCAI Blogs • VCAI blog • Blogs of the students - email, Yahoo group, etc. • Discussion • What worked, what didn’t work? • Students’ motivation. (some contributed, others didn’t)

17. Principles & guidelines in a Wiki • Principles, processes, policies and guidelines defined in Wikis. Wikis propose a set of principles, processes and guidelines that can be used to regulate & coordinate the knowledge authoring and diffusion process in the community of the users making use of these Wikis. • Issues: • Creating high quality content • resolving disputes • addressing vandalism • Policies: • Access policies (open, close) • Level of control of the content (Loose or strict) • How to enforce the policies • Explicit definition of guidelines • Implicit definition of guidelines (Netiquette) • Definition of Roles (for instance in Wikipedia) • Easy fix of errors • Exclusion

18. Access and use policy of a Wiki Access to the Wiki: • Many Wikis (such as Wikipedia) rely on the concept of public and Open source content (creative common license), in which everybody is allowed to create or update the Wiki pages, and to make use of this content in various context (provided that proper citation of the author is done). • In some other cases, more restricted Wiki can exist, which access is restricted to a particular group, or for which you need to authenticate before publishing.

19. Practices & styles The processes and guidelines include the description of the different practices (such as style policies, templates, etc.) to be described to create high quality content, or to address issues that can happen in collaborative authoring context. • Example of guidelines: (Wikipedia) • Style guidelines (Manual of Style), • How to structure the content • How to write a great article • correcting errors, • disambiguating terms, naming convention