Meta-Governance Framework to Guide the Establishment of Mass Collaborative Learning Communities

The application of mass collaboration in different areas of study and work has been increasing over the last few decades. For example, in the education context, this emerging paradigm has opened new opportunities for participatory learning, namely, “mass collaborative learning (MCL)”. The development of such an innovative and complementary method of learning, which can lead to the creation of knowledge-based communities, has helped to reap the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the creation and development of knowledge. In other words, MCL allows for enhanced connectivity among the people involved, providing them with the opportunity to practice learning collectively. Despite recent advances, this area still faces many challenges, such as a lack of common agreement about the main concepts, components, applicable structures, relationships among the participants, as well as applicable assessment systems. From this perspective, this study proposes a meta-governance framework that benefits from various other related ideas, models, and methods that together can better support the implementation, execution, and development of mass collaborative learning communities. The proposed framework was applied to two case-study projects in which vocational education and training respond to the needs of collaborative education–enterprise approaches. It was also further used in an illustration of the MCL community called the “community of cooks”. Results from these application cases are discussed.

Moderating role of leadership between mass collaboration and quality of knowledge: a case of Iraq’s pharmaceutical sector

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating role of leadership between mass collaboration and quality of knowledge in the pharmaceutical sector of Iraq. Design/methodology/approach The approach that has been taken for conducting the following study is through a questionnaire survey where it has been mainly distributed among the employees of the pharmaceutical sector in Iraq that has been accessed through social media platforms. The total number of individuals that have participated in the study consists of 334. As per the analysis, the Smart PLS tool has been used for analyzing the data where structural equation modeling has been applied. Findings The results revealed that email, virtual meetings and professional virtual community have a significant and positive influence on the quality of knowledge, whereas discussion board is found to have an insignificant effect. Moreover, in terms of the moderating effect of leadership, it was indicated from the results that leadership moderates on email and professional virtual community concerning the quality of knowledge. Research limitations/implications The sample of this study was limited to the pharmaceutical industries in the context of developing countries, specifically Iraq, and therefore, the results could not be generalized to other sectors in other countries because different cultures may lead to different results. Originality/value The following study is considered to be the first research that addresses the importance of mass collaboration for the quality of knowledge in the organization of Iraq where the pharmaceutical industry is selected. This study also determines the importance of leadership for mass collaboration where its moderating role has not been analyzed in any previous studies.

Association between mass collaboration and knowledge management: a case ofJordan companies

Purpose The key purpose of this research paper was to identify the association between mass collaboration and knowledge management in the context of Jordanian companies. Apart from that, this study also aims to examine the moderating effect of trust and leadership on the association between mass collaboration and knowledge management. Design/methodology/approach In this study, the researcher has followed theprimary quantitative method. For data collection, the researcher has conducted a survey questionnaire, whereas the sample was based on 323 participants from the manufacturing sector of Jordan specifically for data analysis; the technique of structural equation modeling was implemented. Findings All the independent variables, including organizational structure, adoptedtechnologies in mass collaboration and collaborative learning techniques, have a significantimpact on knowledge management and leadership. Moreover, leadership was also found to be significantly moderating the association between adopted technologies in mass collaboration and knowledge management. Similarly, trust also significantly moderates the association of organizational structure and adopted technologies in mass collaboration significantly with knowledge management. Research limitations/implications All study respondents were from Jordan, which might limit the generalizability of the findings. The researchers also invited for more researchers in the incorporation of the time sequence in the proposed causal relations and in the organization level through which mass collaboration and knowledge management. Originality/value This study promises to make a valuable contribution to the existing literature, as there was a lack of evidence in the previous studies regarding the impact of mass collaboration on knowledge management within the context of Jordan.

Impact of mass collaboration on knowledge sharing process using mediating role of innovation capability

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of mass collaboration on the knowledge-sharing process in the manufacturing sector of Iraq in the mediation of innovation capability. Design/methodology/approach This study is quantitative in nature in which the data has been gathered from the primary sources of information through a survey questionnaire from 225 respondents. The structural equation structural equation modeling technique has been used to analyze the data along with the path assessment and confirmatory factor analysis confirmatory factor analysis. Findings The results of this study determined that in the context of the interactive system and mutual adjustment, the mediation of innovation capability is partial whereas, in the context of shared understating, the mediation is full. In addition to this, an interactive system and mutual adjustment had a significant effect on the knowledge sharing process, while the shared understanding was determined to have an insignificant effect on the knowledge sharing process. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study are limited to the manufacturing sector of Iraq. In addition to this, the study includes a limited sample size which must be increased by future researchers. Originality/value This paper ensures originality in the context of Iraq, as the associations tested in this study have not been tested previously considering Iraq.

Critical assessment of success factors of mass collaboration: a case of Jordanian retail companies

Purpose This study aims to carry out the critical assessment of success factors of mass collaboration in the context of retail companies operating in Jordan. Design/methodology/approach This study is quantitative in nature in which data has been gathered from the primary sources of information through a survey questionnaire. The employees and managers from the retail sector of Jordan have been considered. Confirmatory factor analysis has been carried out to determine the reliability and validity of the factors that are included in the research model. Quality of model and predictive prevalence has been tested with the help of determining the R-square of the model. Path assessment has also been done as a part of data analysis to assess the statistical significance of the association between different factors and the success of a mass collaboration. Findings The analysis determined that organizational structure, the mechanism in collaborative learning along with technologies adopted in collaborative learning, evaluation of learner’s performance and quality of knowledge has a significant effect on mass collaboration within the context of the retail sector in Jordan. Research limitations/implications The context of this research is the Jordanian retail sector; hence, it is very concise and cannot be necessarily applied within the context of other industries. This research has adopted a quantitative design where the data was collected with the help of a survey questionnaire based on the close-ended questionnaire. This has limited the answers to the available options given. Originality/value The originality of this study has been ensured by carrying out a primary survey with the employees and managers belonging to the Jordanian retail sector to the promising approach to create agile knowledge and share to enhance the organizational context.

Successful collaboration between smart city consortium and Hong Kong Government in Covid-19 dashboard: the case of leadership in practice

Purpose This paper aims to discover why such a public partnership project had been successful with a non-profit third-party alliance such as a smart city consortium (SCC) promoting smart city development. Design/methodology/approach This descriptive case study is primarily based on analysing data collected from various texts, public statements, media interviews and three semi-structured interviews with key members involved in the Covid-19 dashboard project. Findings The data and analysis reviews that both interpersonal and interorganisational trust, dedication and proactiveness of the leaders at SCC were major contributing factors to why SCC was able to partner with the Hong Kong Government in the Covid-19 dashboard in the first place and that the success was also a direct outcome of effective mass collaborative knowledge management activities. Research limitations/implications The research in leadership attributes and activities in the non-profit alliance has been few and this collaborative partnership between the alliance and the government is an example of the importance of further research in smart city leadership. Practical implications In deploying projects for mass collaboration and knowledge sharing in smart city development (which is multi-disciplinary in nature). there are still many new and evolving organisational practices and leadership matters that many business leaders and city managers can learn from. Social implications Smart city development projects involve the notion of sharing data in an open environment enabled by software and mediating tools. Successful projects such as this Hong Kong Covid-19 dashboard which serves a diverse audience can further promote the importance of an open data policy regime for the benefit of the public. Originality/value This case study covers a highly original and unique case study with the leaders at the SCC and representatives from the Hong Kong Government.

Building social media-based knowledge ecosystems for enhancing business resilience through mass collaboration

Purpose The outbreak of COVID-19 is one of the most serious health events in recent times. In the business landscape, its effects may be more detrimental to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) because they tend to have limited financial and human resources to manage the challenges caused by COVID-19. To help MSMEs enhance their resilience, this paper aims to discuss how they can leverage mass collaboration to build social media-based knowledge ecosystems to manage interactions among internal and external stakeholders for knowledge creation and innovation. Design/methodology/approach The paper proposes a model for MSMEs to build an online knowledge ecosystem and a standalone text analytics tool to use the advanced data analytics, e.g. topic modeling, to analyze and aggregate collective insights. Design science research methodology is used to develop the model and the tool. Findings Through mass collaboration using social media and advanced data analytics technology, MSMEs can generate new business ideas, leading to enhanced resilience to meet the challenges caused by COVID-19 or other unexpected or extraordinary circumstances, such as natural disasters and financial crises. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first papers in social media adoption for knowledge creation and innovation research, providing detailed approaches for MSMEs to build a knowledge ecosystem on social media and to use advanced data analytics to mine the meaning of the generated data.

Predicting Design Performance Utilizing Automated Topic Discovery

Increasingly complex engineering design challenges requires the diversification of knowledge required on design teams. In the context of open innovation, positioning key members within these teams or groups based on their estimated abilities leads to more impactful results since mass collaboration is fundamentally a sociotechnical system. Determining how each individual influences the overall design process requires an understanding of the predicted mapping between their technical competency and performance. This work explores this relationship through the use of predictive models composed of various algorithms. With support of a dataset composed of documents related to the design performance of students working on their capstone design project in combination with textual descriptors representing individual technical aptitudes, correlations are explored as a method to predict overall project development performance. Each technical competency and project is represented as a distribution of topic knowledge to produce the performance metrics, which are referred to as topic competencies, since topic representations increase the ability to decompose and identify human-centric performance measures. Three methods of topic identification and five prediction models are compared based on their prediction accuracy. From this analysis, it is found that representing input variables as topics distributions and the resulting performance as a single indicator while using support vector regression provided the most accurate mapping between ability and performance. With these findings, complex open innovation projects will benefit from increased knowledge of individual ability and how that correlates to their predicted performances.