MOTIVES FOR SOCIAL COLLABORATION IN

KNOWLEDGE SHARING PORTALS

Farzad SabetzadehEric Tsui

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

It’s the people who are riding on the technology , NOT the technology riding on the people

Knowledge- Based Society

People Need MOTIVATION

Technology Needs INFRASTRUCTURE

What Motives People to Collaborate Online?

Tangibles

Intangibles

Social Values

Social Reciprocity

Benevolence

Business Innovation

Social Innovation

Technology Innovation

Moving from mechanistic models to complex holistic system analysis

Challenges

Moving beyond teams to knowledge networks and communities of practice

Technologies for codification, organization and integration

Network Pattern

Value

Knowledge

Technology

Adopted from Allee and Taug (2006)’s 3 level innovation model

How do People bring Value to knowledge societies by their participation?

+

=

Personal Benefits

Name Branding

Money Making

What is in it for me? (WIIIF Rule)

Altruism

Impure Pure

Reciprocity and Conditional Cooperation

How Big Are The Others’

Pieces of Knowledge?

How Big Is This

Community?

Social Norms (Culture)

Social IdentityLessons Learned

Research FrameworkPersonal Benefits• Tangible Rewards• Intangible Rewards

Reciprocity Society sizePerceived participation

Benevolence • Intrinsic Rewards• Perceived Efficacy

Knowledge Sharing

Behavior

Social NormSocial IdentityLearned Lessons

Study Group130 Respondents from almost 40 countries

Within first quarter of year 2008 The majority of the studied population has higher education degrees. The studied population is almost equally divided between the genders. The majority of the population is in the age range of 20 to 30 years . Almost half the population has basic job experience with a minimum 2 years. The majority of the population has internet usage history of more than 4 years. The majority of the population has a high internet connection frequency per day. The majority of the population owns a computer device, and almost half of the

population has their own laptops showing a high connection mobility. The majority of the population are registered with at least one of the social networking

sites, and most of the studied population check their emails on first connecting to the internet.

Chatting and VOIP is the preferred communication tool for the greater portion of the population, followed by email in the second place.

The majority of the studied population use Email forwarding as a preferred tool to share online content with others.

Hypothesis Testing Conditions

Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree

Normal Test (NT) : µ ≤ 2

1 2 3 4 5

Positively Neutral Test (PNT) : μ ≤ 2.5

ResultsHypothesis Tested Factors NT PNT

H1. Personal Benefit influences knowledge sharing behavior positively

Tangible Rewards R NR

Intangible Rewards R NR

H2. Voluntary (Benevolent) behavior creates positive impact on knowledge sharing behavior.

Intrinsic Rewards NR NR

Perceived Efficacy NR NR

H3. Favorable social reciprocal expectancy influences knowledge Sharing behavior positively

Society Size R NR

Perceived Participation

NR NR

H4.Favorable social norms expedite knowledge sharing behavior positively

Social Identity R NR

Learned Lessons R NR

More than 60% of the motives are Rejected within Normal Test!!!!

Findings1. Altruism is a key factor as it inherits the social nature of the

shared benefits under ubiquitous participation.2. Reciprocity in the form of perceived participation from

others is needed for knowledge sharing reinforcement.3. Social norms (culture) finds its meaning as a sharing catalyst

when people are directed from neutral position into agreement.

4. Last but not the least, people are potentially optimistic about what they can benefit from the online world, yet this needs proper policy and strategies that can move them from neutral position into an acceptance level.

Conclusion1. Identifying the motives alone does not

guarantee their usefulness for online communities.

2. There are a lot of motives that encourage people to share but not all of them work for communities all the time.

3. Many motives might be potential (ulterior) that can only work when proper context is provided through appropriate policy and strategies

Future WorkPreviously researchers have tried to identify

many of the social motives (WHATs)We’re trying to identify the ways these motives

work and benefit the online communities (HOWs)

There is a huge uncovered space under so-called “Social Complexity” to identify the reasons behind these motives (WHYs)