Distributed recommender for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing

A novel model of distributed knowledge recommender system is proposed to facilitate knowledge sharing among collaborative team members. Different from traditional recommender systems in the client-server architecture, our model is oriented to the peer-to-peer (P2P) environment without the centralized control. Among the P2P network of collaborative team members, each peer is deployed with one distributed knowledge recommender, which can supply proper knowledge resources to peers who may need them. This paper investigates the key techniques for implementing the distributed knowledge recommender model. Moreover, a series of simulation-based experiments are conducted by using the data from a real-world collaborative team in an enterprise. The experimental results validate the efficiency of the proposed model. This research paves the way for developing platforms that can share and manage large-scale distributed knowledge resources. This study also provides a new framework for simulating and studying individual or organizational behaviors of knowledge sharing in a collaborative team.     

Trust and knowledge sharing in diverse global virtual teams

Global virtual teams (GVTs) allow organizations to improve productivity, procure global knowledge, and transfer best practice information instantaneously among team members. GVTs rely heavily on IT and have little face-to-face interaction, thereby increasing problems resulting from geographic barriers, time language, and cultural differences, and inter-personal relationships. The purpose of our study was to design a normative framework that would assist organizations in understanding the relationship between diversity, mutual trust, and knowledge sharing among GVTs, with additional focus on understanding the moderating impact of collaborative technology and task characteristics. Empirical data was collected from 58 GVTs and analyzed using a Hierarchical Multiple Regression technique. Results showed that in GVTs, deep level diversity has a more significant relationship with team processes of mutual trust and knowledge sharing than visible functional level diversity. This relationship is moderated by the collaborative capabilities of available technology and levels of interdependence of the task. Furthermore, knowledge sharing and mutual trust mediate the relationship between diversity levels and team effectiveness.     

Document recommendation for knowledge sharing in personal folder environments

Sharing sustainable and valuable knowledge among knowledge workers is a fundamental aspect of knowledge management. In organizations, knowledge workers usually have personal folders in which they organize and store needed codified knowledge (textual documents) in categories. In such personal folder environments, providing knowledge workers with needed knowledge from other workers’ folders is important because it increases the workers’ productivity and the possibility of reusing and sharing knowledge. Conventional recommendation methods can be used to recommend relevant documents to workers; however, those methods recommend knowledge items without considering whether the items are assigned to the appropriate category in the target user’s personal folders. In this paper, we propose novel document recommendation methods, including content-based filtering and categorization, collaborative filtering and categorization, and hybrid methods, which integrate text categorization techniques, to recommend documents to target worker’s personalized categories. Our experiment results show that the hybrid methods outperform the pure content-based and the collaborative filtering and categorization methods. The proposed methods not only proactively notify knowledge workers about relevant documents held by their peers, but also facilitate push-mode knowledge sharing.     

Managing knowledge sharing: Emergent and engineering approaches

We wished to determine how the process of knowledge sharing could be managed, seeing that it is a knowledge management dilemma. If knowledge sharing is crucial to an organization’s interests, but is inherently emergent in nature, how can the organization still manage the process? In order to answer this question, a distinction was made between two approaches towards managing knowledge sharing: an emergent approach, focusing on the social dynamics between organizational members and the nature of their daily tasks, and an engineering approach, focusing on management interventions to facilitate knowledge transfer. While the first is central to today’s thinking about knowledge, we used a field study in six organizations to show that both approaches have value in explaining knowledge sharing. Instruments that are part of the engineering approach create conditions for variables in the emergent approach, which in turn also exert a direct influence on knowledge sharing.     

Advanced quality prediction model for software architectural knowledge sharing

In the field of software architecture, a paradigm shift is occurring from describing the outcome of architecting process to describing the Architectural Knowledge (AK) created and used during architecting. Many AK models have been defined to represent domain concepts and their relationships, and they can be used for sharing and reusing AK across organizations, especially in geographically distributed contexts. However, different AK domain models can represent concepts that are different, thereby making effective AK sharing challenging. In order to understand the mapping quality from one AK model to another when more than one AK model coexists, AK sharing quality prediction based on the concept differences across AK models is necessary. Previous works in this area lack validation in the actual practice of AK sharing. In this paper, we carry out validation using four AK sharing case studies. We also improve the previous prediction models. We developed a new advanced mapping quality prediction model, this model (i) improves the prediction accuracy of the recall rate of AK sharing quality; (ii) provides a better balance between prediction effort and accuracy for AK sharing quality.     

Special knowledge sharing incentive mechanism for two clients with complementary knowledge: A principal-agent perspective

In this paper, we study how the firm share the special knowledge of two knowledge-complementarity clients by implementing a large and complex project which the firm out-sourced. Firstly, incentive mechanism for complementarity special knowledge sharing are designed for clients being risk-neutral and risk-averse respectively under the asymmetric information. Further, knowledge complementary effects and other relevant factors on the optimal incentive coefficient are analyzed. Lastly, the numerical results are reported.     

An information security knowledge sharing model in organizations

Knowledge sharing plays an important role in the domain of information security, due to its positive effect on employees' information security awareness. It is acknowledged that security awareness is the most important factor that mitigates the risk of information security breaches in organizations. In this research, a model has been presented that shows how information security knowledge sharing (ISKS) forms and decreases the risk of information security incidents. The Motivation Theory and Theory of Planned Behavior besides Triandis model were applied as the theoretical backbone of the conceptual framework. The results of the data analysis showed that earning a reputation, and gaining promotion as an extrinsic motivation and curiosity satisfaction as an intrinsic motivation have positive effects on employees' attitude toward ISKS. However, self-worth satisfaction does not influence ISKS attitude. In addition, the findings revealed that attitude, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms have positive effects on ISKS intention and ISKS intention affects ISKS behavior. The outcomes also showed that organizational support influences ISKS behavior more than trust. The results of this research should be of interest to academics and practitioners in the domain of information security.     

Exploring the affect factors of knowledge sharing behavior: The relations model theory perspective

With a view to achieve the ultimate goal of a permanent development, operation, and growth, to any business and enterprise, the strategy of knowledge management must be reinforced, and the sooner the better. In despite of those new and high interests shown toward the organization-embedded knowledge, not much concrete finding has been obtained regarding how and why employees are reluctant to share what they know.In our research, we proposed to base on the relations model theory to explore how different relation models, cultivated and shaped by different corporate cultures, give their influences on the willingness of knowledge sharing from employees. In the mean time, with a view to get closer to the realistic circumstance in the office, we give it a shot to include additional moderating variables, task inter-dependence, as well as time-of-cooperation, into our full research framework, aiming to see if they will disturb the influencing processes between the four principal relations and the willingness of employees to share their knowledge.The result reflects the distinct impact from communal sharing and equality matching on the willingness of sharing, while a subtle but negative impact of market pricing on the sharing willingness. There is no clear effect of authority ranking. Furthermore, in the analysis of interaction mode including additional moderators, the result has exhibited that task inter-dependence does moderate the relationship between communal sharing/equality matching/market pricing and the notion of sharing, while time-of-cooperation also adjusts the influencing processes between communal sharing, equality matching, market pricing, and willingness of sharing. This analysis and study grant us some clues regarding how corporate culture would eventually leverage employees’ intention in sharing their knowledge, and advise the business organizations how they should correctly formulate the knowledge management strategy and activities to augment the knowledge inter-flows between employees.     

Predicting knowledge sharing practices through intention: A test of competing models

In knowledge management (KM)-related research, effective knowledge sharing is considered to be one of the most critical components of KM success. For the present research, the authors conducted a longitudinal, two-phased study to evaluate if the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and three variations of the Theory of Planned Behavior—namely, TPB, decomposed TPB (DTPB), and revised TPB (RTPB)—can adequately predict knowledge sharing behaviors. The first TRA-based study shows a severe limitation in the ability of the intention to predict actual knowledge sharing behaviors collected from a knowledge management platform. In a subsequent study, three variations of TPB-based models were employed to show that, although the independent variables (i.e., attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control that is decomposed into controllability and self-efficacy) give satisfactory explanations of variance in intention (R² > 42%), the intention–behavior gap still exists in each of the three models. Only the perceived self-efficacy in the revised TPB can directly predict knowledge sharing behaviors. This gap highlights the importance of knowledge sharing as a fundamentally social activity for which the actualization of intention into actions may be interrupted due to barriers such as a mistake-free culture or others’ deliberate misinterpretations that may in turn cause unanticipated negative consequences to the person. The theoretical implication of this study is that in applying TPB to study knowledge sharing practices, researchers must focus on control beliefs that reflect people’s capacity to overcome possible environmental challenges encountered in carrying out their knowledge sharing intentions.     

Inter-organizational networks for knowledge sharing and trading

Although companies are increasingly developing complex networks of connections with their partners and customers and shifting their focus towards expanding the knowledge management concept externally, research addressing the management of knowledge across organizational borders is rather sparse. Our aim in the present paper is to develop a typology of cross-organizational networks of information and knowledge flows. In order to arrive at such a typology we examine two issues. The first concerns the locus of control on the processes that enable knowledge flow. The second refers to the tradability of the streams of knowledge that flow among organizational entities. We examine four types of knowledge networks: “knowledge communities”, “knowledge chains”, “knowledge supplies” and “knowledge markets”. For each type of knowledge network, we examine its distinct characteristics, study related examples, consider the associated research challenges and analyze an indicative case.     

A fuzzy trust evaluation method for knowledge sharing in virtual enterprises

The success of virtual enterprises (VEs) depends on the effective sharing of related resources between various enterprises or workers who perform related activities. Specifically, VE success hinges on the integration and sharing of information and knowledge. Trust is an important facilitator of knowledge sharing. However, the trustworthiness of a peer is a vague concept that is dynamic and that often shifts over time or with environmental changes. This study designs a trust-based knowledge-sharing model based on characteristics of VEs and the knowledge structure model to express knowledge associated with VE activities. Subsequently, the factors that affect the trust evaluation are identified based on the characteristics of trust and VEs. Finally, this study develops a knowledge sharing, decision-making framework in which a fuzzy trust evaluation method for sharing knowledge is proposed based on VE activities and the interactions among workers in allied enterprises. The method consists of three sub-methods, including an activity correlation evaluation method, a current trust evaluation method, and an integral trust evaluation method. Under the premises of secure VE knowledge and reasonable access authorization, the proposed knowledge-sharing method provides the trust level between a knowledge-requesting enterprise and a knowledge-supplying enterprise to improve the willingness of the latter to share more valuable knowledge, ultimately increasing the efficiency and competitiveness of VEs.     

Collaboration and knowledge sharing in network organizations

A network organization comprises a new type of environment around which people organize themselves so as to reach a common objective. A network organization enables the recommended interaction among people with different backgrounds, which happens when the problems they deal with are complex and multidisciplinary. Most network organizations require interactions in a geographically distributed fashion, fostering the serious challenge of displaying coherence of purpose necessary for global efficacy as from local activity: these features require an environment with special functionality. This paper describes and analyzes a collaborative environment for support to knowledge sharing and coordination of actions in geographically distributed network organizations. A case-study using the collaborative environment is presented, and the results obtained by using this environment are discussed.     

A study of Facebook Groups members’ knowledge sharing

There have been many studies focusing on individuals’ knowledge sharing behavior in the organizational setting. With the rapid prevalence of social networking sites, many people began to express their thoughts or share their knowledge via Facebook website. Facebook is an open environment which does not provide any immediate monetary benefits to its users. Its Groups members’ knowledge sharing behavior could be different from the ones in organizations. We proposed a research model to examine factors which promote the Facebook Groups users’ willingness to share knowledge. The factors in the study include extrinsic motivation, social and psychological forces, and social networking sharing culture. We used PLS to test our proposed hypotheses based on 271 responses collected through an online survey. Our results indicated that reputation would affect knowledge sharing attitude of Groups members and sense of self-worth would directly and indirectly (through subjective norm) affect the attitude. In addition, social networking sharing culture (fairness, identification, and openness) is the most significant factor, not only directly affecting knowledge sharing intention, but also indirectly influencing the sharing intention through subjective norm and knowledge sharing attitude.     

A user-friendly platform for developing and accessing grid services

This article presents an enhanced platform that provides a friendly environment of developing grid services and accessing grid services over Globus Toolkit 3 (GT3). This platform includes a class of functions for processing parameters input from a developer via GUI, a class of functions for generating files required for defining a grid service specified, and a class of functions for creating client program and facilitating accesses of the deployed services. As a result, the development and access of grid services requires less special expert knowledge of a developer at the server side and users at the client side, the efficiency of developing and accessing grid services can be improved. This paper describes our design ideas, necessary functions, and implementations. The comparisons with other related toolkits are given and the extended version of the platform on top of the web service environment rather than GT3.

A connective ethnography of peer knowledge sharing and diffusion in a tween virtual world

Prior studies have shown how knowledge diffusion occurs in classrooms and structured small groups around assigned tasks yet have not begun to account for widespread knowledge sharing in more native, unstructured group settings found in online games and virtual worlds. In this paper, we describe and analyze how an insider gaming practice spread across a group of tween players ages 9–12 years in an after-school gaming club that simultaneously participated in a virtual world called Whyville.net. In order to understand how this practice proliferated, we followed the club members as they interacted with each other and members of the virtual world at large. Employing connective ethnography to trace the movements in learning and teaching this practice, we coordinated data records from videos, tracking data, field notes, and interviews. We found that club members took advantage of the different spaces, people, and times available to them across Whyville, the club, and even home and classroom spaces. By using an insider gaming practice, namely teleporting, rather than the more traditional individual person as our analytical lens, we were able to examine knowledge sharing and diffusion across the gaming spaces, including events in local small groups as well as encounters in the virtual world. In the discussion, we address methodological issues and design implications of our findings.

Facilitating educators’ knowledge sharing with dedicated Information Systems

The process of knowledge sharing can be seen as the lifeblood for the establishment of a true Knowledge Society. Such a society must be grounded on an iterative process whereby existing knowledge is constantly shared, consolidated and – crucially – enriched with new knowledge. And knowledge sharing is the means by which that enrichment can take place. Without doubt, these processes play a vital role in the context of education, which ultimately has a strong bearing on the formation of the Knowledge Society. In this paper, knowledge sharing among educators is discussed within the context of long-term research work that the authors have carried out in the field. The paper reports on the design and development of a series of Information Systems conceived for the sharing of practices among educational practitioners. It discusses the thinking behind these different but related systems and examines how this is borne out in the implementation of key system features.     

Use of collaborative technologies and knowledge sharing in co-located and distributed teams: Towards the 24-h knowledge factory

The relocation of knowledge work to emerging countries is leading to an increasing use of globally distributed teams (GDT) engaged in complex tasks. In the present study, we investigate a particular type of GDT working ‘around the clock’: the 24-h knowledge factory (Gupta, 2008). Adopting the productivity perspective on knowledge sharing ([Haas and Hansen, 2005] and [Haas and Hansen, 2007]), we hypothesize how a 24-h knowledge factory and a co-located team will differ in technology use, knowledge sharing processes, and performance. We conducted a quasi-experiment in IBM, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, over a period of 12 months, on a GDT and a co-located team. Both teams were composed of the same number of professionals, provided with the same technologies, engaged in similar tasks, and given similar deadlines. We found significant differences in their use of technologies and in knowledge sharing processes, but not in efficiency and quality of outcomes. We show how the co-located team and the GDT enacted a knowledge codification strategy and a personalization strategy, respectively; in each case grafting elements of the other strategy in order to attain both knowledge re-use and creativity. We conclude by discussing theoretical contributions to knowledge sharing and GDT literatures, and by highlighting managerial implications to those organizations interested in developing a fully functional 24-h knowledge factory.     

Trust and conflict within virtual inter-organizational alliances: a framework for facilitating knowledge sharing

Trust and conflict are inherent issues of any organizational arrangement and central for knowledge sharing; yet they have received limited attention in the literature. In this paper, we undertake an investigation of both phenomena within the context of virtual alliances. A generic framework for understanding the dynamics of trust and conflict within the context of virtual inter-organizational arrangements is presented, followed by an examination of three distinct structural forms of virtual alliances, and strategies for generating trust and minimizing dysfunctional conflict. The paper concludes with an identification of avenues for further research.     

Exploring factors that influence knowledge sharing behavior via weblogs

Knowledge sharing is seen as one of the essential processes for knowledge management. A growing number of professionals have started weblogging, and use this tool to share their ideas. It is important to explore ways to encourage individuals to contribute personal knowledge and to assist community members to share their expertise. Through the lens of sharing culture, we explore the factors that facilitate voluntary knowledge sharing in a virtual community. Specifically, the use of three categories associated with a sharing culture – fairness, identification and openness – is considered as a linear combination, which means that enjoying helping and usefulness/relevancy thereafter promote knowledge sharing behavior. To test the theoretical model, we survey 442 members of three online communities. In addition to the positive effects of fairness and openness on community sharing culture, we also find that enjoying helping, sharing culture and usefulness/relevancy are strongly linked to member knowledge sharing behavior. This paper offers a new perspective on the mechanisms related to the sharing culture construct, which in turn facilitates weblog knowledge sharing behaviors and yields important implications for understanding knowledge sharing behavior in online communities.     

Reuse of knowledge assets from repositories: A mixed methods study

Reuse of information retrieved from an electronic knowledge repository and how this complements person-to-person interactions are poorly understood. I developed a research model that examined factors influencing how individuals benefit from reuse of knowledge assets. Using a mixed method approach, two empirical studies were conducted to test the model. The results showed that two key factors helped users to overcome difficulties in reusing knowledge assets: seeking assistance from and sharing a common perspective with the author of the asset. The study explains when and how individuals receive benefits from knowledge reuse. When individuals reuse complex knowledge assets in domains with which they are unfamiliar, they apparently gain more benefit by contacting the author; sharing a common perspective with the author also facilitates asset reuse. Thus both electronic repositories and person-to-person interaction mechanisms complement one another in facilitating knowledge sharing.