Elahe Javadi

Collaborative Knowledge Creation and Problem Solving: A Systems Design Perspective

The current paper builds on the assumptions that creativity occurs in a social context that fosters collaborative behavior and that group creativity support mechanisms are essential for building a collaborative group environment. Applying a situationalist view of creativity we believe that group collaboration is an evolutionary process that encompasses ideation, integration, evaluation and selection. Individuals cooperate to share and integrate their ideas on a particular task, and compete to maximize their objectives. We hypothesize that, as with genetic algorithms, there should be a balance between competition and cooperation among members so that the fittest ideas survive and the inferior ones fade. We use a series of simulation studies and laboratory experiments to examine these factors and their joint effect on the quality of group collaboration processes. The paper is based on theories of group decision support systems and genetic algorithms, and incorporates previous studies on creative tasks.

Attribution Apprehension, Automated Attribution, and Creative Integration

Some online communities are better than others in standardizing and automating the attribution process. This study examines how automated attribution can alleviate attribution apprehension and thus facilitate creative integration in open communities. Attribution apprehension, i.e., a users anxiety over proper attribution of reused artifacts, adversely impacts the tendencies to engage in the integration process. Because open communities thrive on the basis of fairness, automated attribution features are essential in fostering creative integration. This study draws upon task-technology fit to craft a theoretical framework for explaining this phenomenon, reviews current tools for automated attribution in different communities and describes findings of a pilot survey on how those tools can encourage creative integration.