KM-Master Course, 2005
Module: Communautés virtuelles,
Agents intelligents
C3: Collaborative Knowledge
construction & knowledge sharing
Thierry NABETH
INSEAD CALT – The Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies,
Fontainebleau, France
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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?
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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)
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
Addressing the knowledge sharing
& capitalization issues
• motivation
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–
–
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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?
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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)
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
Digital environments for Collaborative
knowledge construction and sharing
• The different categories of tools:
– Description
•
•
•
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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?
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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).
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
Social exchange theory
• Description
Social 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.
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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.
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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.
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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 / consistency
tendency to act in a similar way than in the past
– friendship / liking
– scarcity
– authority
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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.
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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, …
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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, …
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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?, …
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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)
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
Principles & guidelines in a Wiki
•
Principles, processes, policies and guidelines defined in Wikis.
•
Issues:
•
Policies:
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How to enforce the policies
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.
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Creating high quality content
resolving disputes
addressing vandalism
Access policies (open, close)
Level of control of the content (Loose or strict)
Explicit definition of guidelines
Implicit definition of guidelines (Netiquette)
Definition of Roles (for instance in Wikipedia)
Easy fix of errors
Exclusion
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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.
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005
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.
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Example of guidelines: (Wikipedia)
•
•
•
•
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Style guidelines (Manual of Style),
How to structure the content
How to write a great article
correcting errors,
disambiguating terms, naming convention
«MASTER MANAGEMENT ET INGENIERIE ECONOMIQUE»
Spécialité: Projet innovation conception, option gestion de la connaissance
Module: Communautés virtuelles, Agents intelligents
Thierry Nabeth, 2005