Wolfgang Scholl

The future of knowledge management: an international delphi study

The field of knowledge management (KM) is highly estimated in research and practice but at the same time relatively diffuse and scattered into diverging concepts, perspectives and disciplines. On that background, it was the aim of this delphi study to give more structure to the field of KM and to get an outlook on worthwhile developments for the next ten years. International experts of KM from natural/technical and social/business sciences as well as practicians of KM with a similar background were asked some basic questions onto the future of KM in two rounds. According to the experts, the future of knowledge management lies in a better integration into the common business processes, a concentration on the human‐organization‐interface and a better match of IT‐aspects to human factors whereas IT‐aspects rank low on this agenda. There are no broadly agreed theoretical approaches though something can be gained from the related organizational learning field; in general much more interdisciplinary and empirical research is needed. There are also almost no broadly agreed practical approaches besides communities of practice.

The socio-emotional basis of human interaction and communication: How we construct our social world

A review of dimensional research about (the perception of) feelings, non-verbal and verbal communication, behavior and personality reveals in each domain three very similar dimensions. They originated from diverse research areas, often received different names and are conceptually not identical. Yet, the first dimension seems to share in all five areas a general positive versus negative evaluation (e.g. happiness–disgust or friendliness–hostility), the second a strong versus weak characterization (e.g. anger–fear or dominance–submission) and the third dimension an active versus passive impression (e.g. ecstasy–boredom or high–low arousability). These three dimensions are likely to function as fundamental dimensions of interaction and communication as perceived and enacted by humans of all (investigated) cultures. They are interpreted as a universal socio-emotional space that corresponds to an evolutionary need for coordination between individuals. They are implied in the logic of game, exchange or interdependence theory, and manifest themselves in the cultural meanings predicted by affect control theory. The presented overview and reconstruction combines the largely fragmented views of several diverse research domains into a perspective that fosters interdisciplinary understanding and integrative theory-building about human sociality within and between the social sciences with extensions into the natural sciences and humanities.

Restrictive Control and Information Pathologies in Organizations

Although the relation of power to knowledge is an often discussed theme, a psychological and sociological scrutiny of the issue is lacking. A new conceptual and theoretical approach to this issue is presented here that distingushes between restrictive and promotive control. Restrictive control is a form of power exertion in which one actor pushes his wishes through against the interests of another actor. In contrast, if an actor influences the other in line with his or her interests, this is called promotive control. Information pathologies, i.e., avoidable failures of distributed information processing, are introduced as an inverse measure for the quality and quantity of knowledge production. It is hypothesized that restrictive control has negative consequences for the production of new or better knowledge, because it induces information pathologies that in turn lower the effectiveness of joint action. These two hypotheses are tested in a study on 21 successful and 21 unsuccessful innovations with a dual qualitative and quantitative approach. The interpretive analysis of interviews with the main actors of each innovation case as well as the statistical analysis of questionnaire responses by the same actors strongly corroborate both hypotheses. Methodological problems, theoretical perspectives, and practical consequences are discussed. The second half of this century has seen the transition from industrial to informational societies. The coming century will see communication and information processing becoming even more important for the handling of any issue in politics, in the economy, or in private affairs. The amount of information produced is

Affective Dynamics of Leadership: An Experimental Test of Affect Control Theory

Affect Control Theory (ACT; Heise 1979, 2007) states that people control social interactions by striving to maintain culturally shared feelings about the situation. The theory is based on mathematical models of language-based impression formation. In a laboratory experiment, we tested the predictive power of a new German-language ACT model with respect to actual behavior and felt emotions in leadership; 60 subjects managed a computer simulated company by communicating with 3 different virtual employees (within-subjects manipulation). Half of the subjects were primed with the concept of authoritarian leadership using a situational interview technique; the remainder was primed with the concept of democratic leadership (between-subjects manipulation). There were 14 dependent variables (leadership categories like praise, criticize, augment salary, etc.). The German impression-formation model correctly predicted 27 of 42 between-subjects contrasts (p < .05) and 56 of 84 within-subjects contrasts (p < .01). Moreover, Euclidean distances of emotions predicted by the German ACT model correlated negatively with the frequency with which the subjects experienced these emotions (correlations ranged from r = −.18 to r = −.61). These results support Affect Control Theorys proposition that realistic social interaction can be predicted by mathematical models of affective consistency.

Interpersonale Adjektivliste (IAL)

Zusammenfassung. Der interpersonale Circumplex (IPC) ist eines der am besten erforschten und ausgearbeiteten Modelle zur Beschreibung und Messung von Personlichkeit. Die hier vorgestellte Interpersonale Adjektivliste (IAL) bildet eine empirische Umsetzung des theoretischen IPC-Konzeptes zur Messung individueller Unterschiede im interpersonalen Stil. In vier Studien (N1 = 216, N2 = 202, N3 = 353, N41 = 334 & N42 = 314) wurden acht Skalen mit jeweils acht Adjektivmarkern konstruiert, mit exploratorischen und konfirmatorischen Analysen auf ihre Circumplex-Struktur gepruft sowie an den revidierten deutschen und englischen Interpersonalen Adjektiv Skalen (IAS-R[dt.]; Ostendorf, 2001; IAS-R; Wiggins, Trapnell & Phillips, 1988) validiert. Ihre strukturelle und psychometrische Gute und bedeutsame konvergente und divergente Beziehungen weisen die IAL als verbessertes Parallelinstrument der IAS-R(dt.) aus.

The Discussion Coding System (DCS)—A New Instrument for Analyzing Communication Processes

The Discussion Coding System (DCS) is a new instrument for coding face-to-face communication processes. The DCS was developed with several goals in mind: a well-grounded theoretical background, economical coding, the inclusion of nonverbal behavior into the coding, the ability to code different sized groups engaged in a variety of task types, and high ease of use. Important aspects of communication behavior are covered: the directly observable aspects of who speaks to whom, the functions of a statement for the interaction process, and the interpersonal meaning of an act on the two basic behavioral dimensions of affiliation and dominance. Furthermore, coding software was developed that greatly enhances the efficiency of coding as well as the creation of data files. The reliabilities are strong if video is used. The reliabilities for real-time coding are considerably lower but still satisfactory if special measures are taken. The validity of the DCS was established in several studies.

The Affective Structure of Stereotype Content: Behavior and Emotion in Intergroup Context.

Affect control theory and the stereotype content model share explanatory goals and employ compatible measurement strategies but have developed in largely separate literatures. The present article examines the models’ commensurability and discusses new insights that can be gained by comparing theories. We first demonstrate that the unique measurement dimensions used by each theory (evaluation/potency/activity vs. warmth/competence) describe much of the same semantic content. We then show how simulation techniques developed by affect control theorists can be applied to the study of interactions with stereotyped groups. These simulations indicate broad consistencies between the theories’ predictions but highlight three distinctive emphases of affect control theory. Specifically, affect control models predict that actors are motivated to behave in ways that (1) are consistent with self-meanings, (2) maintain cultural norms about the suitability of behaviors and emotions to role relations, and (3) account for behavior and emotion in prior interactions.

Editorial: The Information Processing Approach as a Perspective for Groups Research

Neither of these predictions came true. Groups research did not experience a resurgence 8 to 10 years later as Steiner believed, nor did the scientific community forget his prediction. Steiner himself raised the issue again several years later, noting with disappointment that the ‘new day’ had not come (Steiner, 1983, 1986). Other articles dealing with the destiny of groups research have been published since, and many attempts have been made to analyze its sad decline and hopes for a renewal (cf., Abrams & Hogg, 1998). We will briefly outline this discussion before turning to the topic of this special issue, Information Processing in Groups. Decline and Rise of Groups Research

Perceptive Agile Measurement: New Instruments for Quantitative Studies in the Pursuit of the Social-Psychological Effect of Agile Practices

Rising interest on social-psychological effects of agile practices necessitate the development of appropriate measurement instruments for future quantitative studies. This study has constructed such instruments for eight agile practices, namely iteration planning, iterative development, continuous integration and testing, stand-up meetings, customer access, customer acceptance tests, retrospectives and co-location.

Complex Problem Solving after Unstructured Discussion: Effects of Information Distribution and Experience

This study analyzes the effect of information overlap in groups discussing a complex problem on individual post-discussion complex problem solving (CPS). We hypothesize that information distribution among group members has an inverse u-shaped effect on individual post-discussion performance, favoring groups with a medium informational heterogeneity. As CPS is presumably correlated with experience, we also assume that exposure to the problem before the actual task leads to higher performance than less or no exposure. Experimental results support the first hypothesis: A medium overlap of instructional text paragraphs in dyads led to higher performance in a computer-simulated complex problem than complete or no overlap. The second hypothesis is not supported. Limitations of the study and practical implications are discussed.