Samer Faraj

Why should i share? examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice

Electronic networks of practice are computer-mediated discussion forums focused on problems of practice that enable individuals to exchange advice and ideas with others based on common interests. However, why individuals help strangers in these electronic networks is not well understood: there is no immediate benefit to the contributor, and free-riders are able to acquire the same knowledge as everyone else. To understand this paradox, we apply theories of collective action to examine how individual motivations and social capital influence knowledge contribution in electronic networks. This study reports on the activities of one electronic network supporting a professional legal association. Using archival, network, survey, and content analysis data, we empirically test a model of knowledge contribution. We find that people contribute their knowledge when they perceive that it enhances their professional reputations, when they have the experience to share, and when they are structurally embedded in the network. Surprisingly, contributions occur without regard to expectations of reciprocity from others or high levels of commitment to the network.

“It is what one does”: why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice

Abstract Advances in information and communication technologies have fundamentally heightened organizational interest in knowledge as a critical strategic resource. However, organizations are finding that members are often reluctant to exchange knowledge with others in the organization. This paper examines why. We review current knowledge management practices and find that organizations are treating knowledge as a private good, owned either by the organization or by organization members. We propose that knowledge can also be considered a public good, owned and maintained by a community. When knowledge is considered a public good, knowledge exchange is motivated by moral obligation and community interest rather than by narrow self-interest. We provide support for the public good perspective by providing results from a survey examining why people participate and share knowledge in three electronic communities of practice. The results indicate that people participate primarily out of community interest, generalized reciprocity and pro-social behavior.

Information Technology and the Changing Fabric of Organization

Technology has been an important theme in the study of organizational form and function since the 1950s. However, organization sciences interest in this relationship has declined significantly over the past 30 years, a period during which information technologies have become pervasive in organizations and brought about significant changes in them. Organizing no longer needs to take place around hierarchy and the collection, storage, and distribution of information as was the case with “command and control” bureaucracies in the past. The adoption of innovations in information technology (IT) and organizational practices since the 1990s now make it possible to organize around what can be done with information. These changes are not the result of information technologies per se, but of the combination of their features with organizational arrangements and practices that support their use. Yet concepts and theories of organizational form and function remain remarkably silent about these changes. Our analysis offers five affordances---visualizing entire work processes, real-time/flexible product and service innovation, virtual collaboration, mass collaboration, and simulation/synthetic reality---that can result from the intersection of technology and organizational features. We explore how these affordances can result in new forms of organizing. Examples from the articles in this special issue “Information Technology and Organizational Form and Function” are used to show the kinds of opportunities that are created in our understanding of organizations when the “black boxes” of technology and organization are simultaneously unpacked.

Coordination in Fast-Response Organizations

Organizational coordination has traditionally been viewed from an organizational-design perspective where rules, modalities, and structures are used to meet the information-processing demands of the environment. Fast-response organizations face unique coordination challenges as they operate under conditions of high uncertainty and fast decision making, where mistakes can be catastrophic. Based on an in-depth investigation of the coordination practices of a medical trauma center where fast-response and error-free activities are essential requirements, we develop a coordination-practice perspective that emphasizes expertise coordination and dialogic coordination. We argue that expertise coordination practices (reliance on protocols, community of practice structuring, plug-and-play teaming, and knowledge sharing) are essential to manage distributed expertise and ensure the timely application of necessary expertise. We suggest that dialogic coordination practices (epistemic contestation, joint sensemaking, cross-boundary intervention, and protocol breaking) are time-critical responses to novel events and ensure error-free operation. However, dialogic coordination practices are highly contested because of epistemic differences, reputation stakes, and possible blame apportionment.

Enabling Software Development Team Performance During Requirements Definition: a Behavioral Versus Technical Approach

As software development projects continue to be over budget and behind schedule, researchers continue to look for ways to improve the likelihood of project success. In this research we juxtapose two different views of what influences software development team performance during the requirements development phase. In an examination of 66 teams from 15 companies we found that team skill, managerial involvement, and little variance in team experience enable more effective team processes than do software development tools and methods. Further, we found that development teams exhibit both positive and negative boundary-spanning behaviors. Team members promote and champion their projects to the outside environment, which is considered valuable by project stakeholders. They also, however, guard themselves from their environments; keeping important information a secret from stakeholders negatively predicts performance.

The Role of Intermediaries in the Development of Trust on the Www: the Use and Prominence of Trusted Third Parties and Privacy Statements

Developing trust between suppliers and consumers is critical for the continued growth of Internet commerce. This article presents an empirical investigation into how firms promote trust by exploring the use and prominence of Trusted Third Parties (TTPs) and privacy statements. The Web sites of 102 publicly held firms with predominantly Internet based businesses were examined for their use of TTPs and privacy statements, the number of links, currency of the Web site, length of time the Web site had been operating, traffic, and financial performance. Surprisingly, only 17 of the firms utilized trusted third parties and only 45 had privacy statements. The article presents a methodology for the analysis of four propositions that explore the relationship of embeddedness and a firms length of time online to the use and prominence of TTPs and privacy statements. The exploratory data in this article clearly supports the proposition that the use of TTPs and privacy statements increase with the embeddedness of the Web site. This article then discusses the potential reasons for this finding including how TTPs strategically solicit firms and why trusted firms may be more likely to be embedded. The remaining three propositions show mixed results but provide insight into the strategic use of TTPs and privacy statements. One key insight is that TTPs and privacy statements are actually used quite differently by firms to promote trust in Internet commerce.

The Contradictory Influence of Social Media Affordances on Online Communal Knowledge Sharing

The use of social media creates the opportunity to turn organization-wide knowledge sharing in the workplace from an intermittent, centralized knowledge management process to a continuous online knowledge conversation of strangers, unexpected interpretations and re-uses, and dynamic emergence. We theorize four affordances of social media representing different ways to engage in this publicly visible knowledge conversations: metavoicing, triggered attending, network-informed associating, and generative role-taking. We further theorize mechanisms that affect how people engage in the knowledge conversation, finding that some mechanisms, when activated, will have positive effects on moving the knowledge conversation forward, but others will have adverse consequences not intended by the organization. These emergent tensions become the basis for the implications we draw.

The provision of online public goods: Examining social structure in an electronic network of practice

Electronic networks of practice are computer-mediated social spaces where individuals working on similar problems self-organize to help each other and share knowledge, advice, and perspectives about their occupational practice or common interests. These interactions occur through message postings to produce an on-line public good of knowledge, where all participants in the network can then access this knowledge, regardless of their active participation in the network. Using theories and concepts of collective action and public goods, five hypotheses are developed regarding the structural and social characteristics that support the online provision and maintenance of knowledge in an electronic network of practice. Using social network analysis, we examine the structure of message contributions that produce and sustain the public good. We then combine the results from network analysis with survey results to examine the underlying pattern of exchange, the role of the critical mass, the quality of the ties sustaining participation, the heterogeneity of resources and interests of participants, and changes in membership that impact the structural characteristics of the network. Our results suggest that the electronic network of practice chosen for this study is sustained through generalized exchange, is supported by a critical mass of active members, and that members develop strong ties with the community as a whole rather than develop interpersonal relationships. Knowledge contribution is significantly related to an individuals tenure in the occupation, expertise, availability of local resources and a desire to enhance ones reputation, and those in the critical mass are primarily responsible for creating and sustaining the public good of knowledge. Finally, we find that this structure of generalized exchange is stable over time although there is a high proportion of member churn in the network.

Boundary work in knowledge teams.

The purpose of this article is to promote an open systems perspective on team research. The authors develop a model of team boundary activities: boundary spanning, buffering, and reinforcement. The model examines the relationship between these boundary activities and team performance, the moderating effects of organizational contextual factors, and the mediating effect of team psychological safety on the boundary work-performance relationship. These relationships were empirically tested with data collected from 64 software development teams. Boundary spanning, buffering, and boundary reinforcement were found to relate to team performance and psychological safety. Both relationships are moderated by the teams task uncertainty and resource scarcity. The implications of the findings are offered for future research and practice.

Contingent Leadership and Effectiveness of Trauma Resuscitation Teams

This research investigated leadership and effectiveness of teams operating in a high-velocity environment, specifically trauma resuscitation teams. On the basis of the literature and their own ethnographic work, the authors proposed and tested a contingency model in which the influence of leadership on team effectiveness during trauma resuscitation differs according to the situation. Results indicated that empowering leadership was more effective when trauma severity was low and when team experience was high. Directive leadership was more effective when trauma severity was high or when the team was inexperienced. Findings also suggested that an empowering leader provided more learning opportunities than did a directive leader. The major contribution of this article is the linkage of leadership to team effectiveness, as moderated by relatively specific situational contingencies.