Examining micro-level knowledge sharing discussions in online communities

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 1227-1238 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Alan Wang ◽  
Xiaomo Liu ◽  
Jianling Wang ◽  
Min Zhang ◽  
Weiguo Fan
2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zilia Iskoujina ◽  
Joanne Roberts

Purpose – This paper aims to add to the understanding of knowledge sharing in online communities through an investigation of the relationship between individual participant’s motivations and management in open source software (OSS) communities. Drawing on a review of literature concerning knowledge sharing in organisations, the factors that motivate participants to share their knowledge in OSS communities, and the management of such communities, it is hypothesised that the quality of management influences the extent to which the motivations of members actually result in knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypothesis, quantitative data were collected through an online questionnaire survey of OSS web developers with the aim of gathering respondents’ opinions concerning knowledge sharing, motivations to share knowledge and satisfaction with the management of OSS projects. Factor analysis, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis were used to explore the survey data. Findings – The analysis of the data reveals that the individual participant’s satisfaction with the management of an OSS project is an important factor influencing the extent of their personal contribution to a community. Originality/value – Little attention has been devoted to understanding the impact of management in OSS communities. Focused on OSS developers specialising in web development, the findings of this paper offer an important original contribution to understanding the connections between individual members’ satisfaction with management and their motivations to contribute to an OSS project. The findings reveal that motivations to share knowledge in online communities are influenced by the quality of management. Consequently, the findings suggest that appropriate management can enhance knowledge sharing in OSS projects and online communities, and organisations more generally.


Author(s):  
Serkan Gürsoy ◽  
Murat Yücelen

This chapter deals with the evolution of communities of practice by considering two key components which facilitate knowledge sharing: Organizational Learning and Social Capital. Dualities and intersections between the building blocks of these two components are investigated by discussing organizational learning in its explorative and exploitative forms, while considering social capital in its bridging and bonding forms. As a critical contemporary step of evolution, information and communication technologies are also elaborated in order to examine the impact of constant and instant tools on these facilitators of knowledge sharing. The study aims to derive proxies among these components of organizational learning and social capital in order to design an integrated framework that reflects the nature of online communities of practice.


Author(s):  
Sudipta Kiran Sarkar ◽  
Norman Au ◽  
Rob Law

This study, which is based on social exchange theory (SET), focuses on the capacities of social media to provide such means by examining the effect of value in online communities (VOC) in social media platforms on satisfying ecotourists' online socialisation and knowledge sharing. Based on the data obtained from 543 ecotourists and analysed by structural equation modelling (SEM), the results of this study confirmed that VOC, which embeds the SET factors of cooperation, reputation, trust and altruism, significantly influenced ecotourists' satisfaction in socialisation and knowledge-sharing intentions through social media. Furthermore, VOC served as a higher-/second-order factor reflected by the indicators of cooperation, reputation, trust and altruism. Finally, ecotourists' satisfaction in socialisation exerted a significant mediating effect between VOC and knowledge sharing.


Author(s):  
Noriko Hara ◽  
Pnina Shachaf ◽  
Thomas Haigh ◽  
Thomas P. Mackey ◽  
Robert J. Sandusky ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-73
Author(s):  
Catherine Demangeot ◽  
Kizhekepat Sankaran ◽  
Stephen Tagg

Enabling the sharing of dormant consumer knowledge, autonomous online consumer communities constitute communities of consumption practice. Drawing from the knowledge management literature, this article investigates consumer knowledge activation and accumulation dynamics in online communities within the naturalistic setting of an online forum. The netnographic study identifies different patterns of knowledge activation, giving insights into the kind of consumer knowledge that emerges in autonomous online communities. Different characteristics of online communities such as potential presence of rare knowledge, breadth of views or additive value of similar views are leveraged, to produce different types of collective knowledge. The study contributes to the online communities literature by deconstructing the dynamics of knowledge sharing and accumulation in autonomous communities; these function as communities of consumption practice and contribute to consumer empowerment through building collective knowledge from individual activations. It contributes to the consumer knowledge literature a two-level, individual and collective, characterisation of knowledge activation and accumulation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Haitham Alali

Online communities of practice (CoPs) are recognised as a KM initiative, whereby practitioners conduct discussions and share their experiences online. The imperative of the evaluation in measuring the effectiveness of Online CoPs fulfills its role and support for healthcare practitioners knowledge sharing has been recognized by practitioners and researchers in the KM field. Success measures of Online CoPs should support healthcare organizations in different methods; it could suggest ways to improve the design, implementation, usage, and operation of Online CoPs by addressing and understanding the main factors that impact the Online CoPs success and acceptance. Presently, establishing an evaluation framework has become essential for the advancement of research and practice in this area. The author has classified the existing researches, based on the area of evaluation. The study concludes by proposing a conceptual framework to measure the success of online CoPs in health care sector.


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