The Generative Potential of Appreciative Inquiry as an Essential Social Dimension of the Semantic Web

2010 ◽  
pp. 411-434
Author(s):  
Kam Hou Vat
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Web ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Appreciative Inquiry ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Appreciative Processes ◽  
Virtual Communities Of Practice

The mission of this chapter is to present a framework of ideas concerning the expected form of knowledge sharing over the emerging Semantic Web. Of specific interest is the perspective of appreciative inquiry, which should accommodate the creation of some appreciative knowledge environments (AKE) based on the peculiar organizational concerns that would encourage or better institutionalize knowledge work among people of interest in an organization. The AKE idea is extensible to the building of virtual communities of practice (CoP) whose meta-data requirements have been so much facilitated in today’s Web technologies including the ideas of data ownership, software as services, and the socialization and co-creation of content, and it is increasingly visible that the AKE model of knowledge sharing is compatible for the need of virtual collaboration in today’s knowledge-centric organizations. The author’s investigation should provide a basis to think about the social dimension of today’s Semantic Web, in view of the generative potential of various appreciative processes of knowledge sharing among communities of practice distributed throughout an organization.

The Generative Potential of Appreciative Inquiry as an Essential Social Dimension of the Semantic Web

2010 ◽  
pp. 1882-1905
Author(s):  
Kam Hou Vat
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Web ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Appreciative Inquiry ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Appreciative Processes ◽  
Virtual Communities Of Practice

The mission of this chapter is to present a framework of ideas concerning the expected form of knowledge sharing over the emerging Semantic Web. Of specific interest is the perspective of appreciative inquiry, which should accommodate the creation of some appreciative knowledge environments (AKE) based on the peculiar organizational concerns that would encourage or better institutionalize knowledge work among people of interest in an organization. The AKE idea is extensible to the building of virtual communities of practice (CoP) whose meta-data requirements have been so much facilitated in today’s Web technologies including the ideas of data ownership, software as services, and the socialization and co-creation of content, and it is increasingly visible that the AKE model of knowledge sharing is compatible for the need of virtual collaboration in today’s knowledge-centric organizations. The author’s investigation should provide a basis to think about the social dimension of today’s Semantic Web, in view of the generative potential of various appreciative processes of knowledge sharing among communities of practice distributed throughout an organization.

The Generative Potential of Appreciative Inquiry as an Essential Social Dimension of the Semantic Web

2011 ◽  
pp. 605-628
Author(s):  
Kam Hou Vat
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Web ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Appreciative Inquiry ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Appreciative Processes ◽  
Virtual Communities Of Practice

The mission of this chapter is to present a framework of ideas concerning the expected form of knowledge sharing over the emerging Semantic Web. Of specific interest is the perspective of appreciative inquiry, which should accommodate the creation of some appreciative knowledge environments (AKE) based on the peculiar organizational concerns that would encourage or better institutionalize knowledge work among people of interest in an organization. The AKE idea is extensible to the building of virtual communities of practice (CoP) whose meta-data requirements have been so much facilitated in today’s Web technologies including the ideas of data ownership, software as services, and the socialization and co-creation of content, and it is increasingly visible that the AKE model of knowledge sharing is compatible for the need of virtual collaboration in today’s knowledge-centric organizations. The author’s investigation should provide a basis to think about the social dimension of today’s Semantic Web, in view of the generative potential of various appreciative processes of knowledge sharing among communities of practice distributed throughout an organization.

The Generative Potential of Appreciative Inquiry for CoP

2010 ◽  
pp. 60-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kam Hou Vat
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Appreciative Inquiry ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Virtual Enterprises ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
Appreciative Processes ◽  
The Many

The chapter investigates an actionable framework of knowledge sharing, from the perspective of appreciative inquiry. This framework should accommodate the creation of appreciative processes that would encourage or better institutionalize knowledge sharing among people of interest in an organization. The idea is extensible to the building of communities in cyberspace so much facilitated in today’s Internet and World Wide Web, and it is increasingly visible that such a model of knowledge sharing is quite promising for today’s virtual enterprises. The premise in our exploration is that organizations were beginning to understand the power of unleashing knowledge among individuals. What they struggled with was how exactly to unleash that power, albeit that the very behavior of hoarding knowledge is what makes employees successful. The presence of an explicitly appreciative format rendered by the enterprise should allow many to say what is on their mind without being questioned, critiqued or put on the defense. And it could be done using the many electronic services of technology-enabled appreciative systems made available. However, the task of identifying what to watch in building a knowledge-sharing community online is not at all straightforward. For example, community can be examined by focusing on how users or participants work with and learn from the experience of community participation, or on the nature of collective imagination and feelings of identity as a tool for understanding belonging and attachment to particular virtual communities. Our investigation should provide a basis to think about the generative potential of some appreciative processes on a virtual community’s knowledge activities. The design and refinement of technology as the conduit for extending and enhancing an organization’s appreciative systems is an essential issue, but the role of the individuals as participants in a virtual community is as important. The emergent challenge is to de-marginalize the concept of appreciative sharing of knowledge among members of the organization, expositing on the effective meaning behind the organization’s creation of the appreciative framework for knowledge work through which purposeful individual or organizational activities could be supported with the elaboration of suitable information technologies.

Impact of Chinese Culture Values on Knowledge Sharing Through Online Communities of Practice

2009 ◽  
pp. 1101-1114
Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Alexandre Ardichvili ◽  
Martin Maurer ◽  
Tim Wentling ◽  
Reed Stuedemann
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Multinational Organization ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Virtual Communities Of Practice ◽  
Unexpected Findings ◽  
Online Communities Of Practice ◽  
High Degree

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how national (Chinese) cultural factors influence knowledge sharing behavior in virtual communities of practice at a large U.S.-based multinational organization. The data in this study come from interviews with the company’s employees in China, and managers who are involved in managing knowledge-sharing initiatives. The study results suggest that overall the influence of the national culture could be less pronounced in online knowledge sharing than what the literature has suggested. Although Chinese employees’ tendency to draw sharp distinctions between in-groups and out-groups, as well as the modesty requirements were barriers to knowledge sharing online, the issue of saving face was less important than expected, and attention paid to power and hierarchy seemed to be less critical than what the literature indicated. A surprising finding was that in the initially assumed collectivistic Chinese culture, the high degree of competitiveness among employees and job security concerns seem to override the collectivistic tendencies and are the main reasons for knowledge hoarding. The reasons for unexpected findings could be associated with differences between face-to-face and online knowledge sharing environments, the influence of the company’s organizational culture, and the recent rapid changes of the overall Chinese cultural patterns.

Virtual Communities of Practice

2009 ◽  
pp. 339-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Gammelgaard
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Virtual Communication ◽  
Physical Proximity ◽  
Geographically Dispersed ◽  
Knowledge Transfers ◽  
Virtual Communities Of Practice

In geographically dispersed organizations, like multinational corporations (MNCs), contextual gaps exist between senders and receivers of knowledge. Employee socialization resulting from physical proximity facilitates contextualization of the transferred knowledge. However, in MNCs most knowledge transfers take place through virtual communication media. We investigate the phenomenon of virtual communities of practice, and propose them to be efficient for individual’s knowledge retrieval as participation in such communities reduces the contextual gaps between senders and receivers of knowledge. However, the organization must provide a knowledge-sharing friendly culture, and an institutional protectionism, in order to establish the required level of swift trust within the virtual community.

scholarly journals Designing virtual communities of practice for informal caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients: An integrative review

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 2976-2991
Author(s):  
Montse Romero-Mas ◽  
Beni Gómez-Zúñiga ◽  
Andrew M Cox ◽  
Anna Ramon-Aribau
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Informal Caregivers ◽  
Integrative Review ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Older Person ◽  
Sustainability Ethics ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Virtual Communities Of Practice

The main aim of this study is to review the literature to show how ideas around virtual communities of practice (VCoP) offer a model for supporting informal caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients (caregivers) to learn how to deal with caregiving demands. Caregivers are individuals who have a significant personal relationship with and provide a broad range of unpaid assistance to an older person or an adult with a chronic or disabling condition outside of a professional or formal framework. This review will examine the current evidence on the needs of caregivers, identify dimensions to be considered in VCoP design and suggest further directions of research. The investigation is an integrative review that builds a bridge between different areas of work. The outcome is eleven dimensions for the design of successful VCoPs for caregivers: Network Structure, Technology, Moderator, Scale, Alignment, Community Design, Sense of Trust, Knowledge Sharing, Sustainability, Ethics and Evaluation. In addition, we propose a Tree Metaphor to present our research results. Well-designed interventions based on VCoP principles have the potential of addressing caregivers’ needs.

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