Patrick J. Bateman

Arguing the value of virtual worlds: patterns of discursive sensemaking of an innovative technology

With the rapid pace of technological development, individuals are frequently challenged to make sense of equivocal innovative technology while being given limited information. Virtual worlds are a prime example of such an equivocal innovative technology, and this affords researchers an opportunity to study sensemaking and the construction of perspectives about the organizational value of virtual worlds. This study reports on an analysis of the written assessments of 59 business professionals who spent an extended period of time in Second Life, a popular virtual world, and discursively made sense of the organizational value of virtual worlds. Through a Toulminian analysis of the claims, grounds, and warrants used in the texts they generated, we identify 12 common patterns of sensemaking and indicate that themes of confirmation, open-ended rhetoric, demographics, and control are evident in the different types of claims that were addressed. Further, we assert that the Toulminian approach we employ is a useful methodology for the study of sensemaking and one that is not bound to any particular theoretical perspective.

An attraction-selection-attrition theory of online community size and resilience

Online discussion communities play an important role in the development of relationships and the transfer of knowledge within and across organizations. Their underlying technologies enhance these processes by providing infrastructures through which group-based communication can occur. Community administrators often make decisions about technologies with the goal of enhancing the user experience, but the impact of such decisions on how a community develops must also be considered. To shed light on this complex and under-researched phenomenon, we offer a model of key latent constructs influenced by technology choices and possible causal paths by which they have dynamic effects on communities. Two important community characteristics that can be impacted are community size (number of members) and community resilience (membership that is willing to remain involved with the community in spite of variability and change in the topics discussed). To model community development, we build on attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory, introducing two new concepts: participation costs (how much time and effort are required to engage with content provided in a community) and topic consistency cues (how strongly a community signals that topics that may appear in the future will be consistent with what it has hosted in the past). We use the proposed ASA theory of online communities (OCASA) to develop a simulation model of community size and resilience that affirms some conventional wisdom and also has novel and counterintuitive implications. Analysis of the model leads to testable new propositions about the causal paths by which technology choices affect the emergence of community size and community resilience, and associated implications for community sustainability.

Dialectic Tensions of Information Quality: Social Networking Sites and Hiring

The hiring process is challenging as the lack of quality information limits the discovery of the true nature of candidates, potentially leading to adverse impacts. Social networking sites (SNSs) have emerged as a potential source for candidate information with more than one billion profiles online. While abundant, the quality of this information for hiring is questionable. Utilizing qualitative interview data, the paper finds issues of quality to be complex as these technologies provide affordances that contradict one another. Tensions within dimensions of information quality were found to consist of dialectic poles: accessibility (open-restricted), contextual (relevant-unsuitable), and intrinsic (reliable-questionable). Understanding these tensions is necessary to explain the nature of perceptions of SNS information quality in the hiring context.

Productivity and Play in Organizations: Executive Perspectives on the Real-World Organizational Value of Immersive Virtual Environments

Abstract In exploring the productive potential of virtual worlds, one relevant line of inquiry is the degree to which immersive online environments can support the objectives of real-world enterprises. Despite the favorable treatment of virtual worlds in the popular and business press, organizations remain cautious in their acceptance and adoption of virtual environments. Since there is a dearth of academic literature on this facet of the virtual world phenomenon, this research aims to provide an assessment of executive perspectives on the potential impact of virtual worlds on businesses and the challenges that may be encountered in organizational application of such environments. To capture business-oriented perceptions of virtual worlds we analyzed, the reports of twenty-five business executives who recently spent considerable time training in and exploring Second Life, a popular online virtual environment. We identify and discuss seven tensions reflected in their assessment of the organizational role o...

Information from social networking sites: Context collapse and ambiguity in the hiring process

Forming impressions of job candidates is a challenging process, one characterized by ambiguity brought about by the uncertainty associated with making decisions and judgments. To reduce ambiguity, hiring professionals have established policies and procedures to facilitate the sourcing and use of information about a candidate. However, recently, a public source of information is increasingly being used—information from social networking sites (SNSs). While conventional wisdom says more information is better and can help make decisions less ambiguous, this relationship may not be as straightforward as expected when facing assessments of candidates. This paper examines two such aspects, information‐task quality and context collapse, and their collective impact on ambiguity when making an assessment of a job candidate. Using data from an online survey‐based experiment, the findings suggest information from SNSs can be useful, yet can create ambiguity for decision makers because of context collapse made possible by SNS technologies.

The Influence of an Integrated View of Source's Expertise on Knowledge Transfer

Many studies focus on the effect of a source’s expertise, but little attention has been paid to what happens in the event of a misalignment between who is knowledgeable (cognitive expertise) and who is regarded as being knowledgeable (social expertise). The emphasis on expertise alignment in this study suggests the importance not of simply having a transactive memory system, but rather, of having an accurate transactive memory system in place. Using experimental data from a sample of 134 participants, the results indicate that the knowledge transfer is greater in the source’s cognitive-social expertise alignment than in the misalignment, but the source’s cognitive expertise could be a more significant criterion for the knowledge transfer in the expertise misalignment. In the view of source-recipient dynamics, knowledge transfer is greater in the low cognitive expertise gap condition than in the high cognitive expertise gap condition. The results contribute to the understanding of the role of a source’s expertise in knowledge transfer from a socio-cognitive perspective.