managing organizational communities_jean-charles pillet

8/13/2019 Managing Organizational Communities_Jean-Charles Pillet

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Managing organizational communities

Jean-Charles Pillet

Toulouse Business School - IAE Toulouse

A dissertation

in fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Master of Research in Management Sciences

2012


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Acknowledgements

I am especially grateful and would like to thank my academic supervisor on the side of IAE

Toulouse, Dr. Marion Fortin, for her invaluable support and encouragement along this

dissertation journey. Her sharp insights and thought-provoking conversations have greatly

contributed in my understanding of some theoretical and methodological issues that form the

backbone of this study. I was also able to receive advices from Dr. Denis Lacoste, on the

behalf of Toulouse Business School, and would like to thank him for this.

This project would not have been possible without the various forms of support and

encouragement that I was able to receive from the company for which this research was

conducted, and which, I believe, occur only in rare and fortunate circumstances. First, I would

like to thanks my company supervisor, Jan Krans, who has been instrumental in creating the

context and conditions for this study to take place. Moreover, I would like to express my

gratitude to my company manager, Yann Renou, who acknowledged several arrangements in

order for this project to be carried out in the best possible conditions. Finally, I would like to

thank all the participants that directly contributed to this project (users, experts, colleagues),

with a specific mention to Johan Louis and Thomas Goubin for their staunch enthusiasmthroughout this project.


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Abstract

This research intends to clarify the dynamics that underpin intra-organizational knowledge

exchange processes. Theoretical challenges were identified in the literature and resulted in the

formulation of a research question, which can be formulated in these terms: "What factors

stimulate public knowledge exchanges in organizational communities?". Those exchanges

occur in a virtual space and are supported by computer technologies. The research question

does not make direct reference to this aspect because I make the assumption that technology

acceptance factors (e.g. Davis et al., 1989) do not directly impact knowledge exchange

behaviors1. The research question has remained relatively unchanged throughout this study.

I was given the opportunity to directly explore the research question through a six-month

immersion within the research environment. Two sets of psychosocial factors, that may elicit

public knowledge exchange, were identified: "relational" factors and "actualization

opportunity" factors. "Relational" factors directly reflect the social capital of a community,

and "actualization opportunity" factors account for the potential of a community to satisfy the

desire for personal and professional development of its member. Knowledge exchange was

apprehended from a knowledge-seeker and a knowledge-contributor perspective to account

for the two-sidedness of the construct. Based on this, I have developed a set of hypothesis that

led to the development of a research model.

It must be acknowledge that this research is confined within the specificities of its context. In

particular, this study is concomitant to the deployment of the a solution that supports the

development of the communities. Therefore, this dissertation is grounded in the embryonic

nature of its subject.

1Indeed, only 7% of a research conducted by KPMG (2000) mentioned technology as a barrier for the successful

implementation of KM initiatives.


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Table of content

1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1

1.1 Research context .......................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Research strategy ......................................................................................................... 5

2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................... 7

2.1 Knowledge ................................................................................................................... 7

2.2 Knowledge processes .................................................................................................. 8

2.3 Online communities ................................................................................................... 12

2.4 Digital public goods ................................................................................................... 14

2.5 Summary and research question ................................................................................ 17

3 FIELD EXPLORATION .................................................................................................. 19

3.1 Preliminary observations ........................................................................................... 19

3.2 Qualitative pre-study ................................................................................................. 35

3.3 Summary and research direction ............................................................................... 48

4 THE RESEARCH MODEL ............................................................................................. 49

4.1 Summary of the tentative model ................................................................................ 49

4.2 Relational capital ....................................................................................................... 51

4.3 Actualization opportunities ........................................................................................ 68

4.4 Precautions ................................................................................................................. 78

5 DISCUSSION .................................................................................................................. 80

5.1 Limitations ................................................................................................................. 80

5.2 Managerial guidelines ................................................................................................ 82

5.3 Research directions .................................................................................................... 84

5.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 86

6 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................... I7 APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................... XII

7.1 Appendix to the observation .................................................................................... XII

7.2 Interview guide ........................................................................................................ XV

7.3 Interview transcriptions (categorized) ................................................................... XVII

7.4 Questionnaire ........................................................................................................ LVIII


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Glossary of abbreviations and acronyms

CL = Community Leader

CM = Critical Mass

CSP = Community Support Professional

ESN = Enterprise Social Network

KIF = Knowledge-Intensive-Firm

KM = Knowledge Management


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1 INTRODUCTION1.1Research context1.1.1 The organizationThe organization in which the case study was performed is an international information

technology services company with approximately 74,000 employees, operating in 42

countries. The knowledge-intensive-firm (KIF) (Starbuck, 1992) employs globally distributed

employees who generally do not get the opportunity to arrange face-to-face meetings due to

travel expenses and time efficiency. The organizational business is focused on the business

technology that powers progress and helps organizations to create their firm of the future.

Serving a global client base, it delivers hi-tech transactional services, consulting and

technology services, systems integration and managed services. With its deep technology

expertise and industry knowledge, the company works with clients across the following

market sectors: Manufacturing, Retail, Services, Public, Health & Transports, Financial

Services, Telecoms, Media & Technology and Energy & Utilities.

1.1.2 Background of the internal pilotIn February 2011, the Chief Executive Officer of the company announced the replacement of

in-house email usage by social software applications within three years time. By applying

new ways of working using innovative technologies for more efficient communication,

teamwork and team connectivity, the company aims improving communication flows and

knowledge capture. Ultimately, the company expects to improve it sales & delivery pipe,

quicken its decision making process and increase the overall well-being of its employees.

Those are the main drivers for the program. A change management program is conducted to

ensure these objectives are met internally. By the same token, the company hopes it will be

able to capitalize on this pioneer experience2. The company is a KIF dominated by human

capital over other types of capital (e.g. labour of financial) (Starbuck, 1972). An underlying

goal of the program is thus to capitalize on this internal experience for selling purpose. In

brief, this program aims at (a) reducing internal email usage to zero, (b) introducing

2Although similar actions exist, none has been conducted at such a scale (about 74 000 employees).


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collaborative ways of working, (c) implement a new information technology solution and (d)

benefit from the experience acquired in leading the program.

The technology that would ensure that those objectives are achieved is a social media

technology called Enterprise Social Network (ESN). Out of a portfolio of several ESN

solutions, one was selected and implemented as a pilot. The pilot - which constitutes the field

of research - has been set-up in May 2012. Since then, the number of user has grown steadily

and a total of 1000 account within a month. From this pilot, the team in charge of the

deployment of the solution hopes to achieve the following:

Learn how to technically install, manage and administer a social solution Learn how to train and motivate employees to use it Learn how to measure the business impact of social platforms in real live situations Understand group dynamics and social behavior Learn from the experience of end users on the daily usage of such a platform

This research project will focus on answering questions that relate to the three last points.

More specifically, the underlying and initiating questions that are being asked in regards to

this project are the following:

How do people make use of the solution: What is the frequency of participation? Whatis the number of communities they belong to? What is the focus of their main

community? Who do they interact with (strangers or identified colleagues)?

The aim is to understand the concrete user behaviors. It will enable the company tocustomize the solution to align it with the need of its users.

What drives people to participate to the community: How do people feel about publicparticipation and its implications (increased visibility of participation)? Do they enjoy

helping others? Do people feel like they belong to an online collective? Do employees

like the idea of being more visible to the management?

The objective is to understand the psychosocial aspects that underpin publicparticipation in a business setting.

What are the benefits of using this new technology: How does it impact individualperformance and efficiency? Do information and knowledge flow more freely between


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individuals? Do people develop working ties with each other? Is it better for the well-

being of the employees?

This will help the company identify the potential gaps between the expected and theactual benefits of an ESN solution regarding various dimensions (group performance,

knowledge flow, social network, climate).

1.1.3 Community structure and governanceTypes of communities

Due to the restricted number of possible users and to the objectives of the pilot, a selection

process took place to identify the communities that would be granted access to the ESN. The

selection process required each applicant community to fill in a form where it will give

information about their goals, size, digital deployment plans and expected business benefits

from participation. It is important to note that access to the test platform was controlled: not

every community could participate to the pilot and not everyone was directly granted access

should they belong to an accepted community.

There are currently two types of communities:

The so-called structured communities that correspond to the formal structure ofthe organization. There are four types of structured communities.

o Organization Units (lead by the manager of the unit)o Clients (lead by the contract manager in Service Line, or the Global

Account manager)

o Projects (lead by the project manager)o Distribution lists (lead by the owner of the distribution list)

The open communities that emerged from the needof the employees.Types of governance

The selection process in place required the community leaders to initiate a basic strategy for

managing their community. Three governance approaches were chosen that differ in the level

of training their leaders have received: the professional-supported communities (CSP), the

ambassador-supported communities, and the self-support communities. Approximately one

third of the communities were attributed to each governance type.


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Community Support Professionals: A team of 8 specialized community managers wasbuilt. They are trained consultants that received a training of 3 days and have received

an internal certification to sell ESNs under the company's brand. 23 consultants

followed this workshop, of which the project team selected 8 people, based on

experience, personality and the grade they received at the test that followed the

workshop. These 8 CSPs received the role of helping new communities to

successfully onboard, build a community and work in a social way using ESN tooling

and supporting a new way of working(company document). The remaining 8 CSPs

took an additional training curriculum on the functionalities of the solution. This

training was given by the ESN solution provider. They would also participate in a so-

called community strategy workshop led by the ESN solution provider as well. The

CSP would get a budget to spend 8 hours a week on this support. The CSPs would be

assigned about a third of the pilot communities (based on community size).

Ambassadors: A team of 23 consultants has volunteered to receive a training andcertification. Each ambassador can support up to 3 communities. They would not get a

formal training on the solution, but where able to do online training. They did not

participate in the community strategy workshop. Unfortunately, many of them did

not follow the formal training, which lead to many cases where the end users had

better knowledge than the ambassador supposed to help them. It also turned out that

due to lack of incentives, there were no as prone to spend time on animating the

community as they initially were.

Self-supporting communities: The self-supported communities did not receive aformal help line. All of them were required to follow the online training on the

platform. If needed, they could rely on the online support that both CSP and

Ambassadors could provide directly on the platform. Most likely, this is a sufficient

coordination mechanism for teams below twenty members.

The role of community leader

A community manager is the voice of the company on the platform. The value of a

community leader lies in his or her ability to serve as a hub to connect managers and


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employees across countries, to instill new ways of working through the use of ESNs and other

collaborative tools and to provide feedback to the internal teams.

The community leader is in charge of the well-being of his or her community. The community

leader is in charge of creating the initial content that will initiate participation. In the longer

run, he or she also has to monitor online conversations and identify valuable user generated

content. The community leader is a part of the formal structure of the company that ensures

that the content emerging from the online community is accurately provided to the appropriate

service line. He or she also has an operational support role for the users of the community that

he or she is in charge of, since the company had decided that there would not be a dedicated

helpdesk for the ESN. The community leader is also part of the change mechanism and must

identify and engage advocates and deliver training when and where needed. Besides, heor

she must take up the role of a representative for the community he manages and participate

in professional networking by interacting with peers and influencers & attending events.

Among the requirements for becoming a community leader stated in the job description is the

need to be a people-oriented person and the need to possess 360 Leadership skills. The

community leader needs to be someone who enjoys working hard and someone who thrives

on the excitement of a goal-oriented team. As implicitly stated in the job description, the

community leader has a role of high visibility with all his or her deeds observable on the

platform though his or her comments and postings. In order to encourage others to share their

views, he or she must love to write and enjoy sharing ideas with others. Lastly, the

community leader needs to be net savvy.

1.2Research strategyThe objective of this dissertation is to come up with a model that could be tested during future

research. The suggested model has been developed following an exploratory phase that

comprised of literature reviews and a qualitative pre-study (Quivy & Van Campenhoudt,

2006). For this research project, I was granted access to pilot solution that supports

knowledge exchange. I was thus able to quickly familiarize with the environment and

therefore discern the core issues that underpin public knowledge exchange activities.

Therefore, this research was conducted under conditions of participant observation (DeWalt

& DeWalt, 1998).


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Fig. 1 - Summary of the research approach (inductive approach)

Research question

Literature review

(knowledge exchange)

Field Exploration

Company documents - Participative

observation - Auto-generated quantitative

data - interviews - literature

Theoretical model

development

Literature review

(construct-specific)

Identification of

measurement items


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2 LITERATURE REVIEW2.1KnowledgeOrganizational theorists view knowledge as an organizational resource that provides asustainable competitive advantage because knowledge cannot be easily replicated (Grant,

1996). Organizational knowledge can therefore be considered as an asset for the firm, in

addition to other forms of capital (Quinn, 1992). In this vein, the term intellectual capitalhas

been coined. It refers to the "knowledge and knowing capability of a social collectivity, such

as an organization, intellectual community, or professional practice" (Nahapiet & Goshal,

1998).

There are three issues that surround the concept of knowledge. The first issue lies in the

distinction types of knowledge. Scholars and practitioners frequently make a distinction

between a practical, or experience-based form of knowledge versus a rather abstract and

reflective view of knowledge. This conceptual distinction aligns with Polanyi's identification

of two sorts of knowledge: explicit and tacit. They differ in the extent to which they can be

communicated and transferred (Polanyi, 1967; Brown & Duguid, 1991). Explicit knowledge

is a codified and can easily be communicated in formal language including grammatical

statements, mathematical expressions, specifications, and manuals. By contrast, tacit

knowledge is embedded in the experiences and the value system of the individual, which

makes it more difficult to articulate. This suggests that explicit and tacit knowledge are

conceptually different forms of knowledge; explicit knowledge does not encompass tacit

knowledge (and vice-versa) and one cannot convert the types of knowledge from one form to

another (Cook and Brown, 1999).

The second issue of interest relates to the most appropriate level of analysis for studyingknowledge processes. Knowledge processes can be studied at the individual level, the group

level or at the organizational level. Simon (1991) advances that organizational learning takes

place in "human heads", which directs the analysis to the individual level. Although the

individual level analysis helps to shed some light on the organizational learning process, it

fails the capture the social aspect of the learning process. Brown and Duguid (2001) proposed

that knowledge processes are dependent on social acceptance rather than individual

preferences. Others have argued that knowledge is a socially embedded concept; the exchange


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of knowledge requires the presence of a shared understanding that may only be achieved

through the collective (Tsouka & Vladimirou, 2001). There also exist studies that analyzed

collective knowledge processes at the organizational level (e.g. Weick & Roberts, 1993). This

study adopts the group level of analysis. The group level of analysis is appropriate because

the study focuses on knowledge processes within communities on the ESN. In addition, the

group level of analysis enables us to study the social dynamics of knowledge processes, which

is an important aspect on the ESN.

The last issue with regards to the concept of knowledge lies in the distinction between itself

and information. There is no consensus over the conceptual difference between knowledge

and information. The mainstream view considers information to be flows of messages but

perceives knowledge as something embedded in the individuals and the collectives"beliefs,

commitment, perspectives, intention and action (Nonaka, 2006). Knowledge management

researchers tend to attach a higher value to knowledge as opposed to information (e.g. Alavi

& Leidner, 2001). The distinction between both is nevertheless limited from a practical point

of view (Wang & Noe, 2010). Information and knowledge will therefore be used

interchangeably in this dissertation.

2.2Knowledge processesA popular classification of knowledge processes within the literature focuses on the lifecycle

of knowledge within the firm (e.g., Alavi & Leidner, 2000; Davenport & Prusak, 1998).

There are essentially four knowledge processes in this classification: knowledge generation

(creation and knowledge acquisition), knowledge codification (storing), knowledge exchange

(knowledge sharing and seeking), and knowledge application. Although there are other

possible classifications of knowledge processes (e.g. see Nonaka, 1995), this one was chosen

for it relates more directly to tangible business practices, and is thus more pertinent to

practitioners.

Knowledge generationinvolves two main processes. The first process involves the discovery

and resolution of opportunities or problems, and the creation of innovation within an

organization (Gray & Chan, 2000; Matusik & Hill, 1998). The second process is knowledge

acquisition, which involves obtaining and integrating knowledge from external sources


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(Davenport & Prusak, 1998). I found in the observations that people largely relied on

knowledge that is created within the confines of the organization. At this stage of maturity of

the pilot, members seldom post contributions from external sources, except for certain articles

that they may come across. This has been expressed by an interviewee: "For instance, I

happen to see an article on the web, a video or anything that may be of interest for some

community members, I might post this information [...]. More importantly, the interviews

confirmed that certain communities supported knowledge generation processes through the

exchange of opinions and views: "Quick answers from the right people [...] just so that the

right people can have an opinion on them." or "It was very beneficial because it's not just my

view and that other person's view, but a balanced view from other people involved".

Knowledge codificationis the translation of knowledge into text, drawings, presentation, etc.

for storage. I found that some communities used the ESN as a knowledge repository. On the

ESN, the knowledge codification process is embedded in other social process such

collaborative creation: "This document has been created, which was addressing how we are

positioning our services in the market. And basically, this was nothing less than an assemble

of Q&As and this is a living document" or "Document sharing [...] really is something that

enable collaboration. People will typically be curious, take a look, and react more easily

because of the ESN. Add a note, a comment, and possibly amend it, add a slide, etc."

Knowledge exchange refers to the sharing of task-related information and expertise and the

collaboration with others for the resolution of issues, the formulation of new concepts, or the

execution of policies and procedures (Cummings, 2004). The concepts of "knowledge

exchange" and "knowledge sharing" differ from one another, although they have been used

interchangeably in the literature (e.g. Cabrera et al., 2006). Knowledge exchange

encompasses knowledge sharing behaviors (or employees providing knowledge to others) as

well as knowledge seeking activities (or employees looking for knowledge from others).

Knowledge sharing by employees (or in the context of this dissertation, the members of a

community) constitutes the main way through which knowledge is generated and codified

(Wang & Noe, 2010). The main feature of the ESN solution is thus to propose a collaborative

space for knowledge exchange. Evidence of knowledge sharing behaviors in the virtual space

the ESN provides is not scarce. For instance, an interviewee mentioned the following: " We

are encouraging the people to post Q&A from their work into this community". The ESN is

an open communication platform that facilitates collective knowledge exchange "You can


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have a consideration between two people and then others can see whats happening. And then

they might go in and say, you might want to know this and this".

Knowledge application refers to the actual use of knowledge that has been captured or created

within the ESN. I found examples of situations where there were direct applications of the

knowledge available within a given virtual space "I am essentially trying to get information

from them that Im using it for business and its about getting feedback and ideas about what

theyre actually doing on the platform."; "So we really have the possibility to quickly identify

how to solve a specific problem. It already happened, and it is interesting to see how the ESN

can support us."; "An ESN would allow [...] us to collaborate on that information creating a

bid document, for example, or preparing the actual proposal document.

The exchange of knowledge resources

The recent literature acknowledges that knowledge is a critical organizational resource that

provides a sustainable competitive advantage in a competitive and dynamic economy (e.g.,

Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Foss & Pedersen, 2002; Grant, 1996; Spender & Grant, 1996). An

individual's willingness to share his or her knowledge is an essential in order for the

organization to benefit from the knowledge he or she possesses. The use of knowledge-

management systems and the resource-based view literature suggests that knowledge is a

resource for the firm for it is valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable (Barney, 1991).

This perspective nevertheless overlooks the value this knowledge has for an employee of the

firm, all knowledge workers. I define knowledge workers as "individuals who use information

or knowledge as a primary input or output of their job" (Ford & Staples, 2006). Through the

interviews I have conducted, I found evidence that knowledge is an individual asset that may

provide a competitive advantage for the individual (McLure & Faraj, 2000). One of these

advantages lies in the reputational asset of the person:

You obviously here think that knowledge is a power, or I don't know. Im quite

open to it I think it is quite important, I think, some people would obviously want to

go to that point where oh I know that, I can help you, look at me, Im brilliant.

When addressing the question about the reasons that may refrain people from sharing

information with other, one of the interviewee raised the likelihood of knowledge hoarding

behavior:


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Because they are intimidated, because they do not see any interest in sharing,

because they do not want to show what they do, because they do not want it to be

used by other, because this is their knowledge and they do not want the rest to

benefit from it.

The discussion so far highlighted the value of knowledge both at the organizational and the

individual level. It can also be argued that knowledge is valuable to a community. The core

argument is that by contributing their personal knowledge to the community, members

incrementally accumulate information and knowledge, which eventually becomes an asset for

the community. With sufficient effort, a community may amass enough knowledge to

overcome issues related to information asymmetries, which in turn, may improve its

performance. Evidence that lend support to this idea exists in the qualitative phase study:

If we were able to answer to one persons questions, we were very sure that those

same problems may be occurring to somebody else and answering it once would

save a lot of time and effort.

There is very little activity in-between seminars, and especially very little vision on

what the rest of the group members are doing. As soon as we started using the ESN,

it prove to be the bond that allows our physical community to continue collaborating

as a virtual community.

[The community] is an element of all countries, all departments, all services, they

are all working in the market of [the community], globally. So in all countries that's

different, in one country the focus will be on consulting, in the other one it will be

on system integration, another one on managed services. Each country has a

different director for the specific service line, then for the country as well. It's very

complex to get everybody in touch with everybody and aligned, so that's the biggest

challenge.

Knowledge seekers may be able to find answers to their questions in the community and,

therefore, attach a certain value to the pool of knowledge available to them. Few empirical

studies have investigated knowledge value from the perspective of seekers; most studies have

focused on the sharing of knowledge by those who possess it (Ford & Staples, 2006).

Provided that knowledge seekers are the ones benefiting from the knowledge available in the

online community, the value of the pool knowledge available in a given community should be

assessed from their perspective. In the study context, the same individual can be both


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knowledge seeker and knowledge contributor. He or she may rely on the community to find

advices in one instance, and contribute his or her own knowledge in another.

2.3Online communitiesThe concept of communities is of growing interest in the management literature since the

beginning of the 1990s. Communities are defined as a gathering of individualswho accept to

exchange voluntarily and on a regular basis about a common interest or objective in a given

field of knowledge (Amin and Cohendet, 2004). Several forms of communities have been

identified in the literature: communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991), epistemic

communities (Cowan et al., 2000), communities of creation (Sawhney and Prandelli, 2000),

communities of innovation (Lynn et al., 1997), open source communities(von Hippel and von

Krogh, 2003), virtual cognitive communities (Bogenrieder & Nooteboom, 2004). The

conceptual definitions of community differ depending on the aspect of knowledge on which

they focus (Burger-Helmchen & Cohendet, 2011). For instance, epistemic communities

(Cowan et al., 2000) mostly focus on knowledge creation processes, while communities-of-

practice(Lave & Wenger, 1991) are concerned with the combination of existing knowledge.

In the following discussion, the concept of community-of-practice, or CoP, will first be

introduced. Next, some specificities of the study that the concept does not aptly capture will

be highlighted. Finally, to conclude the discussion, an introduction to alternative

conceptualizations will be provided.

A CoP is a work-related group of individuals who frequently participate in sharing and

learning activities that are built upon shared interest and issues (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Lesser

& Storck, 2001). Indeed, the communities that are studied in this dissertation are not direct

transpositions of the formal organizational structure; instead, they are organized around the

practices of the members who collaborate in them. This observation is consistent with the way

CoPs have been conceptualized in the literature. Further, CoPs have been distinguished in the

literature with regards to three aspects, which have direct implication for this research project:

They focus on a domain of shared interest. This implies that members of thosecommunities freely join and withdraw. Further, this presupposes that CoPs rely on the

intrinsic motivation rather than on extrinsic incentives to stimulate the participation of

their members.


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Members engage in joint activities such as discussions, provision of help and sharingof information, through which they build relationships. This suggests that CoPs provide a

fertile ground for relational capital to develop. The concept of relational capital can be defined

as "the kind of personal relationship people have developed with each other through a history

of interactions" (Nahapiet & Goshal, 1998).

Over time, they develop a collection of experiences, stories, best practices, and waysof solving problems on which their members can rely when needed (Gray, 2004). This

element indicates that knowledge is collectively and dynamically created through the ongoing

interaction of community members. Therefore, the concept of CoP potentially provides an apt

framework for one to understand socially embedded knowledge exchange processes

(Nahapiet & Goshal, 1998, p. 246).

Important differences nevertheless exist between the concept of CoP (as defined in the

literature) and the practical observation I make of it throughout this study. First, Brown and

Duguid (1991; 2001) suggested that CoPs form networks that may extend beyond the confines

of the organization. The authors drew on findings from Orr (1990), who found that

communities are made of both suppliers and customers. In contrast, the communities I

investigate are confined within the boundaries of the organization. Second, Brown & Duguid

(2001) emphasized on the regular interactions that occur between communities, which

allowed for the information to freely flow within the organization. In contrast, in the context

of this study, it was observed that communities seldom interact with each other. This has been

confirmed in several interviews although most people adhere to several communities, they

focus their participation on one. This indicates that the boundaries in the virtual space are not

as permeable as the literature suggests. Third, CoPs have been conceptualized as emerging

social systems largely disengaged from the formal structure of the organization (Orr, 1990;

Brown & Duguid, 1991). More fundamentally, the investigated communities have been

created with the purpose of carrying out business tasks more efficiently (e.g. projects, bid

management), and their form and membership did not result from the process of the activities

(Brown & Duguid, 1991, p. 49). In addition, it appears that the role of community leader

sometimes overlaps with the function of the person in the organization. This slightly differs

from Orr's view that "the only real status is that of members" (Orr, 1990, p. 33).


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The concept of CoPs was developed at a time when communication technologies were not

common in the company setting. An underlying assumption of the concept is that community

members are in the same physical location, and face-to-face communication is the form for

interaction. The concept of electronic network-of-practice extends the concept of CoP to

knowledge exchange processes that take place mainly through computer-mediated

communication technologies (Wasko & Teigland, 2004; Wasko & Faraj, 2005; Wasko et al.,

2009). It attempts to integrate the concept of virtual communities and the concept of CoP

(Rheingold, 1993). The concept is of interest because it accounts for the dynamics that

underlie participation in public good situations. For example, the concept takes into

consideration free-riding behaviors: "Knowledge contributors have no assurances that those

they are helping will ever return the favor, and lurkers may draw upon the knowledge of

others without contributing anything in return" (Wasko, 2005). Similar to virtual

communities, electronic networks-of-practice concern interactions taking place on the

Internet. In particular, it is assumed that members typically do not know each other in

electronic networks-of-practice. This greatly contrast with what I observed and with that

confirmed by the interviews.

To conclude, there seem to be a conceptual gap in the field in accounting for organizational

communities that use social technologies to coordinate and exchange knowledge. The term

online community will be used throughout this dissertation to refer to geographically

distributed workers from various organizational units, whose desire to connect in a common

virtual space is primarily motivated by the benefits they expect to derive from their

membership.

2.4

Digital public goodsWe previously supported the view that online communities constitute a collective pool of

knowledge on which they can rely for future needs. They achieve this outcome by aggregating

the participations of dispersed individuals in a virtual public space. The participation process

occurs when members respond to enquiries or exchange information with each other. It is

made available to other members, regardless of their level of participation. In fact, one is

typically unable to exclude other community members from benefitting from its information

pool. The pool of knowledge, therefore, shares the non-excludable attribute of classical public


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goods. It also exhibits the characteristic of non-rivalry because the value of the pool of

knowledge does not decrease as more members access it. In the economics literature, public

goods are goods that yield the same benefit to all members of a community regardless of who

pays to produce these goods. Two important features distinguish a public good from a private

one: non-rivalry and non-excludability. The non-rivalrous nature of the public good means

that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce the total amount that is

available for consumption (Shmanske 1991). Non-excludability implies that once the good is

provided, it is not possible to exclude anyone from consuming it (Head, 1962).

The main challenge that one faces in the production and maintenance of public goods, and

more generally in any collective action, is to provide enough incentive to make people

participate. Indeed, assuming the user of a public good is rational (i.e. seeks to maximize his

or her net benefit), there is little incentive for contributing to the provision of the good: access

to the content of the public good is not contingent on participation in its provision because of

the non-excludable nature of the good. This situation where an individual benefits from

others contribution to provision and maintenance of the good, is commonly known as "free-

riding" (Sweeney, 1973). As an individual can benefit from the public good whether or not he

contributes to it, and since contribution is costly to the individual, it is in his or her best

interest to free-ride. Therefore, under the assumption of pure rationality of its members,online communities are deemed to failure. Indeed, online communities rely on the

participation of their members to provide the collective pool of knowledge that is assimilated

to a public good.

In reality, however, I do observe situations where public goods are privately provided and

maintained. In order to explain the provision of public goods in such situations, scholars have

proposed alternative theories. The theory of collective action relaxes the assumption of

individualism rooted in classical public goods theories in order to better reflect the reality of

public good provision3. In his analysis, Olson (1965) provides a typology of groups. He

distinguished between the privileged, the intermediate and the latent type of groups. The

distinction lies in the level of coordination required to achieve collective action. On one end

3Specifically, Olson (1965) builds his theory on the assumption that an individual's decision is influenced by the

decisions made by others (sequential interdependence), whereas initial public goods theories assume that the

agents make their decision without the interference of others (independence).


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of the spectrum, there are theprivilegedgroups, which are characterized by the willingness of

some - if not all - members to bear the burden associated with the provision of a public good.

On the other end, there are the latentgroups, which are too large to be able to provide enough

incentives for individuals to contribute to the public good provision because individual

actions are not noticeable to others. In the middle, there are the intermediategroups, which

may be able to attain public good provision through some form of group coordination.

Privileged groups were considered as unusual exceptions (most public goods required

coordinated action) until the advent of online interaction.

Our discussion so far brings support to the relevance of the framework provided by public

goods theory. The term digital public good may thus be introduce to account for the public

goods dynamics that underlie the provision of the knowledge pool in the virtual space. Indeed,

important similarities exist between physical public goods a digital public goods; in contrast,

noticeable differences may also be raised (Kollock, 1999). The following table account for

some of these aspects:

Tab. 1 - Similarities and differences between physical and digital public goods

Similarities Differences

There is a lack of visibility over members'

contributions

The cost for coordinating and contributing are

drastically reduced in the online space (Gurak, 1997)

Contributions are not forced but based on the free will

of the members

Psychological and technological barriers may exist at

the individual level that may impede public

participation (e.g. confidence in expressing one-self in

public)

Participants differ in the amount of resource they are

willing to contribute

Individuals participate for a variety of reasons that

may not directly be linked to the completion of the

public good (e.g. reputational gain)

Participants have heterogeneous interest in

contributing the public good

Even if they are willing to contribute, some may not be

able to due to their lack of knowledge on the subject

matter of the community

Digital public goods are highly mobile and can be

replicated indefinitely at almost no cost

Empirical studies have tested the relevance have tested the relevance of the framework

provided by public goods theories in situations similar to those one may encounter in an

online community. Overall, findings were highly supportive. In the late 80's, Thorn and


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Connolly (1987) organized a series of lab experiments consisting of several rounds during

which 4 to 8 students were to share information on a centralized electronic platform. They

found that discretionary information was undersupplied to the detriment of the participants

under public good circumstances (i.e. contribution is costly; participation is not mandatory;

information is freely available to all). In a similar vein, Rafaeli and La Rose (1993) applied

theories of public good and mass communication to the online context offered by electronic

bulletin boards (the precursors of the forums). The results indicate that the diversity of content

between participants were the most important predictors of the bulletin board system's

success. These factors were found to be more critical than the management policies

implemented by system operators (i.e. time and contribution restrictions). Constant et al.

(1994) made an additional critical step towards establishing the contribution to an information

pool as a social dilemma rather than a personal preference by introducing the logic of

knowledge ownership in their experiments on knowledge sharing. The study shows that when

the information shared is perceived to be owned by the organization, people tend to give more

weight to the collective benefit that the information sharing generates and less weight to the

personal cost they incur from doing so. The changes in attitude that Constant et al. (1994)

highlight in their experiment are another step towards linking the public goods and online

community knowledge.

2.5Summary and research questionThe discussion in the preceding sections has shown that the challenges faced in the provision

of a public good are relevant to knowledge processes in online community. In particular, two

different challenges have been identified. The first challenge relates to the issue of

motivation: what can one do to get individuals contribute their knowledge to the community

when it is rational to free-ride? The second challenge concerns the coordination within thecommunity: assuming that all members are willing to contribute their knowledge to the

community, who will bear the costs of coordinating their actions efficiently? Those two

questions provide the theoretical foundations of this research project. Some of the challenges

that present themselves in addressing the two questions include:

Motivational challenge: What are the mechanisms that drive members participation?How do people feel about publicly sharing their valuable knowledge? Are there


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business-specific factors that may hinder or enhance the provision of the collective

pool of knowledge?

Coordination challenge: Do online communities coordinate naturally or do they relyon the organization for doing so? What is the role of the community leader/manager in

this process? Are coordination costs still relevant in the online context?

Ultimately, the research question can be formulated as: "What factors stimulate public

knowledge exchanges in organizational communities?".


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3 FIELD EXPLORATIONThe exploration phase seeks to achieve a better understanding of the subject of study, as well

as identify the best way to approach it (Quivy & Van Campenhoudt, 2006). This phase

combines:

The analysis of several company documents (e.g. community requests for joining); A participative observation through a presence on the pilot; The analysis of a set of quantitative data reflecting the activity on the pilot; The examination of a set of 10 exploratory interviews.

3.1Preliminary observationsNota: The figures provided in this chapter date from 23 of July, 2012 - on average one monthafter community opening.

3.1.1 Introducing the communitiesAmong the communities on [esn], six of them were identified, with the help of the company

tutor. These communities are namely the Global Cloud Solution Community, the UK&I Zero

Emails Ambassadors, the Juniors Group, the Zumtobel Service Support Team, the UK mobile

BYOD Trial and the Global Markets & Sales Financial Services community. These virtual

communities have been identified within the pilot based on two distinguishing features.

Firstly, these communities provide platforms that are conducive for knowledge and

information sharing. Secondly, they support operational needs and/or idea generation and

therefore have a direct value for the company. In this section, I conduct a preliminary analysis

in order to provide a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of these communities.

Before commencing the analysis, I would like to provide an overview of the six successful

virtual communities in terms of the type activity they support and content they provide. Tab. 2below summarizes the key characteristics of these communities.


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Tab. 2 - Community overview

Global

Cloud

Solution

Community

UK&I Zero

email

ambassador

s

Juniors

Group

Zumtobel

Service

Support

Team

UK Mobile

BYOD Trial

Global

Markets &

Sales

Financial

Services

Opening date 29-may 15-june 18-june 04-june 12-july 13-june

Size* 53 20** 39 50** 137 202

Community

type

Organization

al unit

Distribution

list

Organization

al unitClient Project

Organization

al unit

Support type Ambassador AmbassadorNot

supported

Not

supported

Not

supportedCSP

Access rights PrivateMembers

onlyPrivate

Members

onlyPrivate Private

* as of 23rd of July / ** Estimated

Global Cloud Solution Community (53 members): The main objective of the Global Cloud

Solution community is to provide a platform for its members to exchange information and to

collaborate on Cloud Computing offers and services. It is driven by the business need to

increase sales revenues through innovating in the products and services that relate to the

Cloud Computing technology. Besides acting as a platform for the exchange of ideas and

collaboration, the community also provides members with an avenue for sharing documents.

A number of documents, such as client presentations and proposals, are made available in the

community. The community members are then able to reuse these documents by adapting

them to their clients context. A summary of the biweekly meetings of the Global Cloud

Business team is also made available solely on the platform. Other items that can be found in

the community include valuable tools, such as an excel price calculator. Employees can obtain

membership for this community via approval/invitation. The viewing of content and

participation in discussions is limited to only members of the community.

Content example [type of knowledge]: MASS storage capacity and IOPS calculatorv11 [explicit], Collaboration With University College of XXX. Cloud innovation

programs [tacit], Cloud offering -Presentation for a Chinese company [explicit].

UK&I Zero email ambassadors (20 members estimated): This community aims to facilitate

communication between the members of the Zero Email program in the UK-Ireland region.

This community provides a space where members can give their views and exchange ideas on
https://jazzplt.atos.net/thread/1954https://jazzplt.atos.net/thread/1954


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topics related to the introduction and use of the ESN. An example of such a topic would be

how ESN will impact the workplace in the future. Although the formation of this group is

not driven by business requirements, the creation of a pool of people who possess some level

of knowledge and expertise in the field of Enterprise 2.0 is always valuable for a knowledge

intensive firm that derive revenues from selling related technologies and services. Unlike the

Global Cloud Solution community, viewing of the content posted on the UK&I Zero email

ambassadors community is not restricted to the ambassadors4. This means that everyone that

has an account on [esn] can potentially view the discussions on the community. Participation,

however, is restricted to people who have joined the community.

Content example [type of knowledge]:How Zero Email has been helping me workbetter...[tacit], Some basics to get started [tacit].

Juniors Group (39 members): The Juniors Group is restricted to the 40 young employees that

have been identified as the talents who will serve as the future leaders of the company. An

important purpose of this group of employees is to work together on small international

projects that generate direct benefits to the business. Thus, the main objective of the

community is to provide them with an environment where they can work collaboratively. An

additional objective of the community is to create a strong global Talent Community in order

to attract and retain the talents of the company.

Zumtobel Service Support Team (50 members estimated): Zumtobel is a major customer of

the company. This community space aims to enable the exchange of knowledge, creation new

ideas and the facilitation of global collaboration regarding the Zumtobel Services. Technical

or quality issues are openly discussed. Membership to open to anyone on the platform.

Similar to the UK&I Zero email ambassadors community, non-members can view the content

posted in the community; however, users would have to become members of the community

before they can participate.

Content example [type]: GZ:I2751179 - SAPGUI 720 and Dual Monitors [tacit],WLAN problems with EliteBook 2560p - lost WLAN profiles [tacit], Service quality

issues July 2012 [tacit].

UK Mobile BYOD Trial (137 members): This community reflects the desire from project

leaders to pioneer the transposition of workflows on an ESN platform. Indeed, this virtual

4For more information on the role of community ambassador, see 1.1.3. Community structure and governance.
https://jazzplt.atos.net/groups/uki-zero-e-mail-amabassadors/blog/2012/07/30/how-zero-email-has-been-helping-me-work-betterhttps://jazzplt.atos.net/groups/uki-zero-e-mail-amabassadors/blog/2012/07/30/how-zero-email-has-been-helping-me-work-betterhttps://jazzplt.atos.net/groups/uki-zero-e-mail-amabassadors/blog/2012/07/30/how-zero-email-has-been-helping-me-work-betterhttps://jazzplt.atos.net/message/4418#4418https://jazzplt.atos.net/message/4418#4418https://jazzplt.atos.net/message/6075#6075https://jazzplt.atos.net/message/6075#6075https://jazzplt.atos.net/message/6075#6075https://jazzplt.atos.net/thread/2411https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-3392https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-3392https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-3392https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-3392https://jazzplt.atos.net/thread/2411https://jazzplt.atos.net/message/6075#6075https://jazzplt.atos.net/message/4418#4418https://jazzplt.atos.net/groups/uki-zero-e-mail-amabassadors/blog/2012/07/30/how-zero-email-has-been-helping-me-work-betterhttps://jazzplt.atos.net/groups/uki-zero-e-mail-amabassadors/blog/2012/07/30/how-zero-email-has-been-helping-me-work-better


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community is part of a broader project that aims to provide users of their own mobile device

(smartphone) with a formal framework of appropriate work usage. As there were no existing

policies that regulate the use of personal mobile devices for work purposes, staff from

different departments (HR, legal, business) drafted a new policy. This new policy was then

posted on the community in order to obtain feedbacks from the community members. Users

had to like the preliminary version of the policy before they were allowed in the virtual

community. The policy was refined, over the course of a month, based on the feedbacks

provided by the members of the community. The policy is targeted for official release three

months after the first round of feedback collection. The project leader chose to use the ESN

over other communications tools for this purpose, as it is the only platform that provides a fast

and interactive space of communication. Apart from collecting feedbacks on the new policy,

the community also acts as a sort of help desk; the community provides members with access

to several technical guides that help users with the installation applications on their

smartphones.

Content example [type]: Apple Setup Guide [tacit], Android Email Setup Guide[tacit], Applying an upgrade to an Andriod phone [tacit]

Global Markets & Sales Financial Services (202 members): Similar to the Global Cloud

Solution Community, this group aims to create a faster and more efficient organization. By

connecting people on the ESN, duplicative work can be reduced. Also, the community

facilitates the identification of experts, or knowledge carriers, among the 15 000 people that

constitute this service line. The community aims to create a common space where employees

from 15 countries can gather and interact. The community leader grants access to the

community on demand, after examining the individuals motivation to join the community.

Profiles of the community members range from account executives to anyone that works for a

client in the financial industry. It is important to note that the community access settings were

shifted from public to private due to free-riding behaviors.

Community focus

Having looked at some of the basic characteristics of the communities, I will now discuss the

community focus. Seven typical types of activities were identified in order to clarify the

overall orientation of the community. These activity types have been developed jointly with a
https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1882https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1882https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1986https://jazzplt.atos.net/docs/DOC-1882


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Tab. 3 - Community focus

Global

Cloud

Solution

Community

UK&I Zero

email

ambassadors

Juniors

Group

Zumtobel

Service

Support

Team

UK Mobile

BYOD Trial

Global

Markets &

Sales

Financial

Services

Community

type

Organization

al unit

Distribution

list

Organization

al unitClient Project

Organization

al unit

Operational

focus4 4 5 4 5 4

Communication

focus5 2 3 5 3 5

Collaboration

focus5 2 4 1 4 4

Knowledge

sharing focus4 4 1 2 5 5

Innovation

focus4 5 3 2 5 4

Collective

intelligence

focus

2 3 3 5 2 3

Socialization

focus3 2 5 1 1 3

As can be observed in Tab. 3., the selected communities have very diverse orientations. This

is because each of them pursues diferent aim(s) and objective(s). As a result, the activity that

the ESN supports is very different in each community.

Although the communities differ in their community focus on the whole, they do display

some level of similarities. One similarity in the community focus is that all the communities

have a strong operational focus (with a rating of 4 or 5).

Another observation that can be made is that most communities, with the exception of the

Juniors Group, have moderate or low focus on socialization. The high socialization focus of

the Juniors Group may be a result of the groups objective to create a strong global talent

community that will help to attract and retain new talents. In fact, the Junior Groupseeks to

intensify the interaction between its members in order to create a high sense of community

between them. The Junior Group meets two times a year during seminars, but its members

have difficulties keeping in touch aside from those physical encounters. An underlying benefit

of the ESN for this community is therefore to enhance the sense of belonging of its members

by increasing their level of interaction.


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In addition to the aforementioned, the communities are also somewhat similarly in terms of

their collective intelligence focus. Besides the Zumtobel Service Support Team, all

communities indicate a moderately weak focus on collective intelligence (a rating of 2 or 3).

The strong focus on collective intelligence may be due to the purpose of the community to

provide service support to a major client. Given the importance of the client, the group would

likely need to leverage on the collective expertise of all its members in order to formulate the

best solution for its client.

Apart from the similarities that are apparent across all the communities, there also exist some

similarities between specific communities. For example, the Global Cloud Solution

Community, the Zumtobel Service Support Team and the Global Market & Sales Financial

Servicesall possess very strong communication focus, while the other three communities have

moderately weak communication focus. One reason for the strong communication focus of

these communities is the physical dispersion of the team members. Both the Global Cloud

Solution Communityand Global Market & Sales Financial Serviceshave employees located

all across the globe. [esn] provides an excellent communication platform; it ensures that

everyone in the community has the same information, regardless of the individuals

geographical location. In addition, both the Global Cloud Solution community and the

Financial Services community aim to reduce duplicative tasks over geographical units inorder to improve the performance of the overall organizational unit. The ESN enables them to

reduce the asymmetries of information inherent to simultaneous operations on a global scale.

Another example of similarities between groups can be found in terms of the knowledge

sharing focus. The Global Cloud Solution Community, UK&I Zero email ambassadors, the

UK Mobile BYOD Trialand the Global Market & Sales Financial Servicesall display a high

level of knowledge sharing focus. This is not surprising because all of these communities

make use of the ESN as a platform for sharing of both explicit knowledge (in terms of

documents, manuals etc.) and tactic knowledge (through sharing of experiences and

discussions) as I have discussed earlier. These four communities also share a high innovation

focus, which may have possibly resulted from the nature of the issues that they are concerned

with. Both the UK Mobile BYOD Trialand the UK&I Zero email ambassadors communities

are embedded in larger projects that will lead to something new for the company: a new

policy and a new way of working. Given the unprecedented nature of these projects, members


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would most likely need to be innovative in developing the projects and addressing the

possible issues.

Community profile

Having looked at the community focus, I will now analyze the community profiles. In this

analysis, community profile comprises of three aspects degree of specialization of topics

discussed, geographical diversity of the community and job scope diversity of the community

members.

Degree of specialization: The topics being discussed within the communities were assessed in

terms of their degree of specialization. The coding resulted - whenever possible5 - from a

thorough observation of the contents that were made available on the community and of thetopics that were discussed. Some communities collaborated around the technical topics that

relate to the field of information systems and members would need to be highly specialized in

the field to understand the discussion. Other groups exchanged views on topics, such as how

the workplace is likely to change with the arrival of the ESN solutions, which do not require a

specific expertise (coded as low degree of specialization community).

Geographical diversity:In order to measuregeographical diversityof the community,a proxy

was created. This proxy was constructed based on the office location of the five most active

participants. When there was only one country represented among those people, the

geographical diversity was coded as low. When the five most active participants had their

offices located in two or three different countries, the geographical diversity was coded as

medium (mid). If there are more than four countries represented, thegeographical diversityis

high.

Job Scope Diversity: A proxy forjob scope diversity was constructed in a similar fashion. The

proxy was created based on the profiles of the five most active participants of each

community. The functions of these participants within the company were then compared in

order to evaluate the extent to which they overlap. When the roles were similar (different), the

job scope diversitywas rated as low (high).

5Although I might be part of the Talent group one day, I was not granted access to the Juniors Group due to thehighly restricted access of this community.


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Although there are issues in generalizing the attributes of five members to the whole

community, it may be argued that those people reflect the orientation of the community rather

accurately. Indeed, they are the ones that, through their contributions, shape and determine the

direction the entire community. Tab. 4 provides an overview of the community profiles.

Tab. 4 - Community profile

Global

Cloud

Solution

Community

UK&I Zero

email

ambassador

s

Juniors

Group

Zumtobel

Service

Support

Team

UK Mobile

BYOD

Trial

Global

Markets &

Sales

Financial

Services

Degree of

specialization Mid-High Low Low High Low Mid-High

Geographical

diversity High Low High Mid Low-Mid High

Job scope

diversity Mid High High Low High High

The degree of specialization of a community is a function of both the topic that is being

discussed in the community, and its purpose. For instance, whereas the Cloud Computing

topic can get quite technical, the purpose of the Global Cloud Solutioncommunity is not todiscuss the IT aspects but rather the services that the technology can provide. The low level of

technicality in the purpose of the community mitigates the high level of technicality of the

topics. A lower degree of specializationreduces the barrier to join the community because it

can potentially interest a broader audience. Moreover, members of these communities do not

need to be specifically knowledgeable on the subject matters that are being discussed;

therefore, they may feel more inclined to participate. Both the UK Mobile BYOD Trialand the

UK&I Zero email ambassadors communities fall into this category. On the other end of the

spectrum, there are communities within which specialized topics that are being discussed.

This de factoconfines active participation to employees with technical profiles, which will be

discussed in the later when I talk aboutjob scope diversity.

Certain communities enjoy the participation of active members whose offices are scattered

across different countries. Because they are exposed to different environments (clients,

culture, practices), the members of geographically scattered communities are more likely to

have different views and opinions on the topics that are being discussed. By definition, the


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UK Mobile BYOD Trialand the UK&I Zero email ambassadorscommunities do not involve

many individuals beyond the Great Britain region. On the other hand, the most active

members of both Global Cloud Solutionand theFinancial Servicescommunities come from

various part of the world.

The job scope diversityof a community reflects the heterogeneity of roles among the most

active members of the community. As noted above, this variable is negatively correlated with

the degree of specialization of the community. Technical discussions tend to attract

individuals with similar job profiles. The Zumtobel Service Support Team community

epitomizes this type of community: active participants are either desk members or server team

leader. On the contrary, the UK Mobile BYOD Trialand the UK&I Zero email ambassadors

communities attract a broader population with more diverse profiles (Heads of, Principles,

HR, BD Managers, etc.). Lastly, the aim of theJuniors Groupis to enable young people with

heterogeneous backgrounds to work together on projects that do not require a specific level of

expertise. By definition, the members of this group have very diverse profiles.

Activity level

In order to understand the dynamics of participation within the communities, it is essential to

take a look at how active it is. Activity in the online context can take several forms. Some of

them are described below:

Size: only takes into account the active users that browsed the content of thecommunity.

Average daily connections: average daily active member count from starting date -aside from the weekends.

Total contributions: amount of content available in the community Average user participation: total number of contributions divided by the number of

active users.


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Tab. 5 - Activity level

Global

Cloud

Solution

Community

UK&I Zero

email

ambassador

s

Juniors

Group

Zumtobel

Service

Support

Team

UK Mobile

BYOD

Trial***

Global

Markets &

Sales

Financial

Services

Size* 53 20** 39 50** 137 202

Average

daily

connections

5 10 12 17 37 15

Total

contributions85 26 19 112 30 110

Average user

participation1,6 1,3** 0,5 2,2** N.A. 0,5

* as of 23rd of July / ** Estimate / *** based on one week of activity

Communities greatly differ in their sizes. There are 85 active members in them on average,

but the Financial Services community accounts for 10 times the amount of people in the

UK&I Zero email ambassadors community. It is interesting to note that the size of a

community is not necessarily reflected in the average number of daily connections: there are

as many people who connect to the Zumtobel Service Support Team and the Financial

Servicescommunities, although the latter accounts for four times the size of the former. The

average user participation is below one for certain communities. This, however, cannot be a

proxy of community success. The community focus must also be taken into account. For

instance, both the Global Cloud Solutioncommunity and the Zumtobelgroup emphasize on

the communication aspect of the tool (communication focus= 5). This is likely to lead to a

higher number of posts with fewer content. In that regard, the UK&I Zero email ambassadors

community stands out for it maintains a high participation ratio while the contributions are not

prompted by communicative purposes (communication focus= 2).

Characteristics of the critical mass of active users

It is commonly agreed that the critical mass of active users represents those users who are the

most actively contributing to the community. In other words, they are members that account

for most of the content created within a group. Two variables were used to evaluate the

impact of the critical mass of active users for each of the communities:


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CM 90%: This variable commutes the number of users who account for about 90% ofthe content that is created within the community. A CM 90%ratiowas then computed

in order to see what proportion of active users this critical mass represents. CM 90%

Ratio= CM 90% / Size.

CM Top 3: For this variable, the critical mass corresponds to the three most importantcontributors of the community. This variable accounts for the proportion of content

that is created within the community by those three people solely. It reflects the impact

of the three most active participants on the community activity.

Tab. 6 - Critical mass of active users

Global

CloudSolution

Community

UK&I Zero

emailambassador

s

JuniorsGroup

Zumtobel

ServiceSupport

Team

UK Mobile

BYODTrial***

Global

Markets &

SalesFinancial

Services

Size* 53 20** 39 50** 137 202

Total

contributions85 26 19 112 30 110

CM 90% 10 17 8 28 19 26

CM 90% ratio 19% 85%** 21% 56%** 14% 13%

CM Top 3 44% 27% 53% 36% 27% 23%

* as of 23rd of July / ** Estimate / *** Based on one week of activity

The UK&I Zero email ambassadorsaccounts for the smallest critical mass. Indeed, 90% of

the content created in this group resulted from the joint effort of 17 people, or 85% of the

members. This surprising result may be due to the specificity of this community which

gathers individuals who share the characteristic of being committed to the ESN program.

The Global Cloud Solution, the Juniors Groupand the UK Mobile BYOD Trialhave nearly

20% of their users accounting for 90% of the content generated in their group. Yet,

interestingly, the three most active participants of both the UK Mobile BYOD Trialand the

Financial Services community only account for a fourth of the total contributions. This

proportion rises to a half for the Global Cloud Solution and the Juniors Group. These two

communities, therefore, prove to be the least balanced of all the communities in terms of

activity distribution across members.


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Knowledge orientation

There are three types of content that can be found on the platform, each with a distinctive set

of characteristics. Each and every contribution that has been made falls into in one of those

three categories. These three content types and how they are likely to be used are discussed

below.

Documents: One important type of documents that can be found in these communities is

PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint presentations are a major tool for consulting firms like

the one in which this research is being conducted. Depending on the community, they may

represent a large proportion of the uploaded content. Other types of documents from the

Microsoft Office suite, such as Word and Excel, are also disseminated on the platform. In

addition, one can find PDF versions of the instruction manuals for using the ESN and Wikis -

documents created collaboratively. Regardless of their types or nature, these documents are

readily available to all community members, who are then able to utilize them to meet their

needs. Documents share the major characteristics of the explicit form of knowledge.

Discussion messages: Whenever a user posts a question, it will take the form of a discussion.

Subsequent interactions will also take this form. The posting of a document may also trigger

comments from users. These discussion messages may seek clarification on the document, or

offer clarifications on a query. In other words, discussions messages attempt to verbalize what

is not said explicitly in the document or previous message. There may also be discussions

around ideas and topics of interests, whereby knowledgeable community members would

share their personal experiences with others. Discussions, therefore, share the major

characteristics of the tacit form of knowledge.

Blog posts: Some users on the platform seize the unique opportunity to express their view

through blog posts. These members make the effort to articulate their ideas in order to shed

the light on topics they are interested in. Expert users may ideally use this functionality as a

means of sharing their knowledge on a certain subject. Blogs are inherently interactive,

allowing visitors to leave comments and messages. Like documents, blogs generally produce

topic-specific discussions. They can, therefore, be affiliated to a rather tacit form of

knowledge.

As discussed, the content produced within a community can be classified as either an explicit

form of knowledge (Documents), or a tacit form of knowledge (Discussion messages and


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Blog posts). Each piece of contribution was coded in this fashion, leading to the creation of

the following variables:

Knowledge pool (or Total Contributions): This variable measures the amount ofcontent available in the community. It is directly extracted from the platform's

statistics.

Knowledge orientation: This ratio accounts for the proportion of tacit knowledge overexplicit knowledge. Formula = (Discussion messages count + Blog posts count) /

Documents count. A value of 1 means that there are as much discussions and blogs as

documents in the community. A value of 2 means that there are twice as much

discussions and blogs as documents in the community.

Knowledge trend: The knowledge orientation of the community was calculated againone month after it was first captured in order to see if there was any change in it. The

knowledge trendreflects changes in the knowledge orientation of the community over

a month. = knowledge orientation remained stable; = knowledge orientation leant towards the

tacit form of knowledge; = knowledge orientation leant towards the explicit form of knowledge.

Tab. 7 - Knowledge orientation

Global

CloudSolution

Community

UK&I Zero

emailambassador

s

JuniorsGroup

Zumtobel

ServiceSupport

Team

UK Mobile

BYOD

Trial (one

week of

activity)

Global

Markets &

Sales

Financial

Services

Knowledge

pool85 26 19 112 30 110

Knowledge

orientation0,2 12,0 2,8 10,2 2,3 0,3

Knowledge

trend NA

There are important differences between the communities in terms of the type of content they

post. The UK&I Zero email ambassadors and the Zumtobel Service Support Team make

extensive use of discussions messages and blog posts, as opposed to documents, to exchange

knowledge. There are approximately 10 times more discussions than documents within these

communities. Further analysis is required to understand why those communities are

conducive for the creation of tacit forms of knowledge. The Juniors Group and the UK

Mobile BYOD Trialcommunities prove to be more balanced in their knowledge repartition:


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2,5 discussions for 1 document on average. Finally, the Global Cloud Solution and the

Financial Servicescommunity have produced more documents than discussions messages and

blog posts. This is potentially because of their focus in reducing asymmetries of information,

which requires the sharing of a large number of documents that concern the activity of the

organizational unit.

3.1.2 Summary of the preliminary observationsThe sample of 6 communities that has been studied is highly heterogeneous in essence. Their

focus differs greatly from one to another; this affects the actual behavior of its members in

terms of participation patterns.

Some communities prove to be highly diverse in terms of their pool of members. This

diversity was analyzed in terms of geographical locations and job profiles of members coming

from various parts of the organization. Previous research has shown that crossing

geographical and organization boundaries are likely to allow for exposure to diverse sources

of information and knowledge (Cummings, 2004). This is because they operate in a different

culture and rely on different formal requirements, industry requirements, or standard

operating procedures. From a theoretical perspective, innovation arises from the novel

combination of disparate information and work practices (Burt, 2004). If properly managed,

the sharing of views and work practices that are assumed to be different across geographies

and departments is likely to lead to innovative ideas. The ESN allows for this sort of

interactions to take place on a regular basis. All other things being equal, heterogeneous

communities therefore possess higher potential for innovation than communities where

members have similar profiles backgrounds and office locations; heterogeneous communities

provide less redundant sources of information and knowledge. However, the assimilation ofinformation can be too complex a process when this information is too diverse (Molm, 2010).

In the context of the study, this situation is likely because participants work for the same

organization and therefore have a common language of communication (Boisot, 1995).

Therefore, promoting profile and geographical diversity withi