• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.119-129
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• 2013

The degree to which people share knowledge has major impacts on the effectiveness of virtual community of practice (VCoP). As an extension to the previous study which investigated the effect of individual cooperative types (cooperator, reciprocator, and free rider) on knowledge sharing, it is investigated how much increase in the degree of cooperation will enhance knowledge sharing when there are more knowledge contributors and strong ties exist across the community. Simulation method is adopted to measure the effect of the cooperative type and tie strength on knowledge sharing. The results reveal that the tie strength positively affects knowledge contribution in VCoP and strongly tied VCoP generates equivalent level of knowledge contribution as that of weakly-tied VCoP with 5% more contributors.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.53-74
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• 2012

A challenge in fostering virtual communities is the continuous supply of knowledge, namely members' willingness to contribute knowledge to their communities. Previous research argues that giving away knowledge eventually causes the possessors of that knowledge to lose their unique value to others, benefiting all except the contributor. Furthermore, communication within virtual communities involves a large number of participants with different social backgrounds and perspectives. The establishment of mutual understanding to comprehend conversations and foster knowledge contribution in virtual communities is inevitably more difficult than face-to-face communication in a small group. In spite of these arguments, evidence suggests that individuals in virtual communities do engage in social behaviors such as knowledge contribution. It is important to understand why individuals provide their valuable knowledge to other community members without a guarantee of returns. In virtual communities, knowledge is inherently rooted in individual members' experiences and expertise. This personal nature of knowledge requires social interactions between virtual community members for knowledge transfer. This study employs the social capital theory in order to account for interpersonal relationship factors and identity theory for individual and group factors that may affect knowledge contribution. First, social capital is the relationship capital which is embedded within the relationships among the participants in a network and available for use when it is needed. Social capital is a productive resource, facilitating individuals' actions for attainment. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1997) identify three dimensions of social capital and explain theoretically how these dimensions affect the exchange of knowledge. Thus, social capital would be relevant to knowledge contribution in virtual communities. Second, existing research has addressed the importance of identity in facilitating knowledge contribution in a virtual context. Identity in virtual communities has been described as playing a vital role in the establishment of personal reputations and in the recognition of others. For instance, reputation systems that rate participants in terms of the quality of their contributions provide a readily available inventory of experts to knowledge seekers. Despite the growing interest in identities, however, there is little empirical research about how identities in the communities influence knowledge contribution. Therefore, the goal of this study is to better understand knowledge contribution by examining the roles of social capital and identity in virtual communities. Based on a theoretical framework of social capital and identity theory, we develop and test a theoretical model and evaluate our hypotheses. Specifically, we propose three variables such as cohesiveness, reciprocity, and commitment, referring to the social capital theory, as antecedents of knowledge contribution in virtual communities. We further posit that members with a strong identity (self-presentation and group identification) contribute more knowledge to virtual communities. We conducted a field study in order to validate our research model. We collected data from 192 members of virtual communities and used the PLS method to analyse the data. The tests of the measurement model confirm that our data set has appropriate discriminant and convergent validity. The results of testing the structural model show that cohesion, reciprocity, and self-presentation significantly influence knowledge contribution, while commitment and group identification do not significantly influence knowledge contribution. Our findings on cohesion and reciprocity are consistent with the previous literature. Contrary to our expectations, commitment did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This result may be due to the fact that knowledge contribution was voluntary in the virtual communities in our sample. Another plausible explanation for this result may be the self-selection bias for the survey respondents, who are more likely to contribute their knowledge to virtual communities. The relationship between self-presentation and knowledge contribution was found to be significant in virtual communities, supporting the results of prior literature. Group identification did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in this study, inconsistent with the wealth of research that identifies group identification as an important factor for knowledge sharing. This conflicting result calls for future research that examines the role of group identification in knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This study makes a contribution to theory development in the area of knowledge management in general and virtual communities in particular. For practice, the results of this study identify the circumstances under which individual factors would be effective for motivating knowledge contribution to virtual communities.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.183-203
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• 2006

Firms are increasingly adopting online communities-of-practice (CoPs) with strong managerial support in hopes of promoting knowledge sharing and creation within the organization. Excessive managerial concern and sponsoring, however, could harm the spontaneity of CoP participants, which is one of the pivotal characteristics of virtual communities, and in the end, have negative impact on their smooth operation. In this regard, this study examines the factors which affect the stimulation of CoPs and explores the difference in their operating mechanisms under two differing organizational structural settings by the existence of a sponsor. By analyzing 133 samples of CoPs in a globally leading company, this study found that the existence of a sponsor designated by the organization, has serious influence on the working of CoPs, That is, leaders' enthusiasm and the level of off-line activities are critical factors for the stimulation of CoPs which have no sponsor, while in case of CoPs that have their sponsors, neither leaders' enthusiasm nor the level of off-line activities are significantly related to the stimulation of CoPs. At the same time, the performance of CoPs which have their sponsors was found significantly higher than that of CoPs which have no sponsor. These results indicate that firms need to pay special attention to organizational sponsorship when introducing CoPs within their organizations.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.360-369
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• 2010

The objective of this research examines the relationships among privacy concerns, self discrepancy, and sense of virtual communities. According to the relevant literature review, we considered information privacy concerns factor as information collection, control, and awareness of privacy practice, and sense of community factor as membership and immersion on virtual communities. This research surveyed for the online community user and employed hierarchical regression model for the moderating effect test. The results of empirical analysis turns out that awareness of privacy concerns practice has negative impact on the self discrepancy, on the other hand, information collection and control factors do not affect. The next finding is internet use duration has moderating effect on the self discrepancy with information control and awareness of privacy concerns practice. The last findings are self discrepancy affect on the community membership and does not affect on the community immersion. It could be a good guide line for the operational direction on virtual community.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.89-108
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• 2015

Social networking communities (SNCs) are media designed to facilitate social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. SNCs can constitute individuals' their own profiles in the online environment and share texts, images and photos in a variety ways. In other words, one of the other motivators is knowledge sharing. Various sites, such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, and Hi5 are categorized as SNCs. SNCs have become increasingly popular in recent years among youths, especially students, who use them to build social networks. This study examines whether this usage of SNCs inculcates a sense of community among their members. Several studies have examined the role of a sense of community through increased usage in the context of virtual communities. Although this result may be true of virtual communities, this paper contends that the opposite relationship prevails in the case of SNCs because members interact to build networks and are not obliged to interact. The results reveal that maintaining long-term interactions in the SNCs is helpful in building a sense of community in SNCs. Although short-term usage may not boost the development of a sense of community in SNCs, it does matter if the premise is for a long-term commitment to SNCs. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.83-98
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• 2021

Research collaboration is an important strategy to improve research output, and virtual academic communities (VACs) have become an important platform to collaborate on. This paper reveals the influencing factors of researchers' collaboration intention in VACs from two attributes: individual, and inter-members. On the basis of the Social Cognitive Theory, Social Exchange Theory, social network theory, and Five-Factor Model, this paper constructed a model demonstrating the influencing factors of VACs researchers' collaboration intention. A self-administered questionnaire was employed on members of four VACs in China to collect data; subsequently, 558 usable responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The result showed that openness, conscientiousness, reciprocity, trust, and the social network characteristic had a significant influence on the collaboration intention of researchers in VACs, while self-efficacy, agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism, and experience had no significant effects on the collaboration intention of researchers in VACs. This model plays a positive role in promoting the research collaboration intention of Chinese VACs researchers and in guiding the construction of VAC platforms.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.107-116
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• 2018

The aim of this study is to delve deeper into the online brand community study. This study tests (a) the effects of online brand community on its outcomes, (b) the impact of value creation practice construct as a whole, (c) the effects of value creating practice construct on the two types of loyalty, loyalty toward the brand and the community. Participants of this study (N=353) are members of four types of online brand communities (e.g., business-to-consumer virtual product support community, firm-hosted online community, user-generated online community, peer-to-peer problem-solving community, and social media based brand community). Data were collected online using Amazon Mechanical Turk from April 10, 2016 to May 10, 2016. The data were analyzed through structural equations modeling using AMOS 20. The three community markers (e.g., consciousness of kind, rituals and traditions, and moral responsibility) and the four value creation practices (e.g., social networking, impression management, community engagement, and brand use) are proved to be significant indicators of online brand community and value creation practice constructs, respectively. Test results showed that strong and effective online brand communities generate value creation practices, and value creation practices enhance brand loyalty. The mediating effects of community loyalty between value creation practices and brand loyalty were revealed.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.149-168
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• 2005

Owing to the limits of IT System-driven knowledge management(KM) for innovation processes, alternative KM methods has been suggested such as: (1) the knowledge network of experts or (2) communities-of-practice. This study analyzes two cases in terms of on-line expert knowledge networks for problem-solving, with the dimensions of analysis based on a theoretical framework. By analyzing the cases of S company's expert network and Naver's Ji-sik-iN, we found that system quality(e.g., ease of use, accessibility, and searching function), information/knowledge quality(e.g., usefulness, accuracy, and timeliness), knowledge-sharing culture, social capital and relevant reward systems are important for stimulating a Q&A-based problem-solving knowledge network. Implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.217-241
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• 2015

One of the challenges in online community management is what level of perceived anonymity can be granted to encourage active participation from members while discouraging unhealthy activities. Few studies developed a scheme of anonymity and investigated how different levels of anonymity influence community activities. This study develops a classification scheme of anonymity encompassing the following three different levels : (1) real name(no anonymity), (2) nickname (partial anonymity), and (3) random assignment of a temporal ID (complete anonymity). Then, it examines how different levels of anonymity influence trust and perceived risk, which in turn affect virtual team performance. A series of laboratory experiments were performed, manipulating the levels of anonymity, in the context of well-structured communities that allow prior interactions among community members. The data was collected from 364 laboratory participants and analyzed using ANOVA and PLS. The results indicate that the difference of anonymity between (2) and (3) had not be significant and the only (1) could not guarantee the anonymity. The impact of anonymity on trust and perceived risk could not be significant in this situation. These findings could contribute to make more beneficial member identification strategies in online community practice.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.6502-6508
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• 2014

The concept of Communities of Practice (CoPs) has been highlighted as an effective method for knowledge sharing in Knowledge Management (KM) and has been utilized strategically by many organizations. Therefore, the need to diagnose knowledge sharing activities in CoPs has increased. Previous studies of CoP strategies has generally suggested broad guidelines without diagnosing the current knowledge sharing status of individual CoPs. Furthermore, diagnosis methodologies are not connected to the strategic direction and require considerable time and effort to conduct regularly. The purpose of this paper was to develop a sustainable diagnosis framework for identifying knowledge sharing activities in virtual CoPs and to suggest strategies for CoPs-based on the proposed diagnosis framework. Finally, the proposed diagnosis framework was applied to an educational service case.