• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.47-64
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• 2000

As the Knowledge Economy grows bigger, studies and practices of knowledge management flourish in almost every organizations. Yet, the studies of fundamental relationships between knowledge and organization have not been sufficiently developed. It is partly because current knowledge management mainly focus on the technical aspects of the theme. This paper tries to find the possible organizing principles and theoretical foundations of knowledge-intensive organizations through the perspective of knowledge market and knowledge community. Based on the differentiation of "knowledge" and "knowing", the author draws several propositions about knowledge creation and knowledge use. Then, the author relates these propositions to the design and implementation of two theoretical models of organizations, i. e. knowledge market and knowledge community. Major claims are: 1) Knowledge use and knowledge creation process are conceptually separable, so that different conceptual models (market & community) need to be applied. 2) Since knowledge use and creation should be integrated, organizations in the Knowledge Economy should be the efficient knowledge market and, at the same time, knowledge community with care and cooperations. 3) The network of independent small KIFs(knowledge-intensive firms) could be considered as the possible organizational model of the future.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.19-38
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• 2014

This study focused on the role of active knowledge seeking (knowledge browsing and knowledge searching) in the context of virtual community of interest. Knowledge seeking is rarely studied as an antecedent in knowledge management (KM) research. Active knowledge seeking is considered as antecedents of sense of virtual community which mediates to knowledge sharing intention and virtual community promotion. Research hypotheses are tested by applying structure equation modeling with survey data from virtual community members in South Korea. Active knowledge seeking behavior was found to be the strong predictor of sense of virtual community, which, in turn, positively affects knowledge sharing intention and virtual community promotion. Implication to practitioners is to understand and accommodate the members' knowledge seeking efforts, who are potential contributors and promoters of the virtual community. Knowledge seeking, knowledge sharing and promoting virtual community are more of human activities than technology and this study extends the understanding of such human activities. By providing a mechanism of how knowledge seeking and sharing could work harmoniously, a virtuous circle with win-win situation could be achieved in virtual communities.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.85-97
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• 2010

Internet communities are a typical space for knowledge creation and use on the Internet as people discuss their common interests within the internet communities. When we define 'Knowledge Communities' as internet communities that are related to knowledge creation and use, they are categorized into 4 different types such as 'Search Engine,' 'Open Communities,' 'Specialty Communities,' and 'Activity Communities.' Each type of knowledge community does not remain the same, for example. Rather, it changes with time and is also affected by the external business environment. Therefore, it is critical to develop processes for practical use of such changeable knowledge communities. Yet there is little research regarding a strategic framework for knowledge communities as a source of knowledge creation and use. The purposes of this study are (1) to find factors that can affect knowledge creation and use for each type of knowledge community and (2) to develop a strategic framework for practical use of the knowledge communities. Based on previous research, we found 7 factors that have considerable impacts on knowledge creation and use. They were 'Fitness,' 'Reliability,' 'Systemicity,' 'Richness,' 'Similarity,' 'Feedback,' and 'Understanding.' We created 30 different questions from each type of knowledge community. The questions included common sense, IT, business and hobbies, and were uniformly selected from various knowledge communities. Instead of using survey, we used these questions to ask users of the 4 representative web sites such as Google from Search Engine, NAVER Knowledge iN from Open Communities, SLRClub from Specialty Communities, and Wikipedia from Activity Communities. These 4 representative web sites were selected based on popularity (i.e., the 4 most popular sites in Korea). They were also among the 4 most frequently mentioned sitesin previous research. The answers of the 30 knowledge questions were collected and evaluated by the 11 IT experts who have been working for IT companies more than 3 years. When evaluating, the 11 experts used the above 7 knowledge factors as criteria. Using a stepwise linear regression for the evaluation of the 7 knowledge factors, we found that each factors affects differently knowledge creation and use for each type of knowledge community. The results of the stepwise linear regression analysis showed the relationship between 'Understanding' and other knowledge factors. The relationship was different regarding the type of knowledge community. The results indicated that 'Understanding' was significantly related to 'Reliability' at 'Search Engine type', to 'Fitness' at 'Open Community type', to 'Reliability' and 'Similarity' at 'Specialty Community type', and to 'Richness' and 'Similarity' at 'Activity Community type'. A strategic framework was created from the results of this study and such framework can be useful for knowledge communities that are not stable with time. For the success of knowledge community, the results of this study suggest that it is essential to ensure there are factors that can influence knowledge communities. It is also vital to reinforce each factor has its unique influence on related knowledge community. Thus, these changeable knowledge communities should be transformed into an adequate type with proper business strategies and objectives. They also should be progressed into a type that covers varioustypes of knowledge communities. For example, DCInside started from a small specialty community focusing on digital camera hardware and camerawork and then was transformed to an open community focusing on social issues through well-known photo galleries. NAVER started from a typical search engine and now covers an open community and a special community through additional web services such as NAVER knowledge iN, NAVER Cafe, and NAVER Blog. NAVER is currently competing withan activity community such as Wikipedia through the NAVER encyclopedia that provides similar services with NAVER encyclopedia's users as Wikipedia does. Finally, the results of this study provide meaningfully practical guidance for practitioners in that which type of knowledge community is most appropriate to the fluctuated business environment as knowledge community itself evolves with time.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.95-115
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• 2019

In recent years, social media that has emerged with the development of network technology has changed the channels of information dissemination. The social Q&A community is a platform for knowledge-sharing activities in a question-and-answer manner based on Web 2.0. In knowledge-sharing activities, valuable new knowledge continues to be produced and will surely bring great benefits to individuals or businesses. In the social Q&A community, the user's subjective factors play a crucial role in influencing the user's continued use and participation in knowledge-sharing activities. In order for users to actively participate in knowledge-sharing activities in the community, it needs to grasp their subjective ideas. This study explores the issue of sharing knowledge by users of the social Q&A community "Zhihu", or how to drive community revitalization efforts from these. The three factors self-efficacy, self-development motivation, and social comparison tendencies were derived, and identify their relationship with knowledge-sharing activities and community-boosting efforts through empirical analysis. In addition, the influence of knowledge acquisition on knowledge provision was investigated through sense of reciprocity. Implications of the study findings and the future research directions were also discussed.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.183-200
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• 2014

Online brand communities have become a major component of marketing strategy given that these communities encourage participation and share the culture of Web 2.0 core concepts to Internet users. This study investigated the effects of social capital and knowledge quality on the success of online brand communities. A research model suggests that trust among members and the identification derived from social capital theory and knowledge quality influence individual community participation; knowledge quality also influences brand trust. In turn, community participation and brand trust develop brand loyalty. The model was empirically analyzed using structural equation modeling with data from online brand community members in Korea. The results indicate that identification and knowledge quality significantly affects brand trust and brand loyalty through community participation. This study provides a basis for developing a success model for online brand communities. Also, this study identifies a new role of knowledge quality in an online brand community context.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.71-86
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• 2014

This study investigated knowledge browsing behavior as the factor affecting the increase of knowledge sharing intention. To conduct this study in the specific context of knowledge seeking and sharing behavior of virtual community members, literature on knowledge seeking behavior, meta-knowledge, and knowledge sharing intention was reviewed. Structural Equation Modeling was conducted to analyze survey data to test the research model of this study. The result showed that knowledge browsing have positive effects on creating of virtual community members' subject knowledge and meta-knowledge, which, in turn, affected positively their knowledge sharing intention. One of the main contributions of this study is that knowledge seeking behavior influence one's knowledge sharing intention in a virtual community. Organization managers should consider knowledge seeking behavior as not only a self-interested, consuming activity, but also a productive one through its function of constructing subject knowledge and meta-knowledge.

• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2005

In high education, knowledge is the very important resource and output. Knowledge management is the art of creating additional value from academic knowledge assets. The e-community is the network community, newly created by information communication technology, and the critical place that share and transfer people's the various knowledge and thinking and the effective space that can apply knowledge management. If we construct a convenient and useful e-community in our university, we will be able to increase the student's intellectual needs, and create new knowledge. Web-portal will promote the activity of e-community providing easy to access and personalized web circumstance. The emergence of Internet and Web access to all university services will force institutions to rethik everything. We should reconfigure our academic environment in order to adapt information technology and educational change, and must do change management based on their structure and culture.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.41-72
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• 2019

Purpose Virtual communities (VCs) are becoming ever more important in these days, sometimes more than offline communities. Notably, they have become significant sources of knowledge sharing. Therefore, in order to foster a VC, it is very important to understand why people share their knowledge in the VC. Under this background, this paper aims at proposing the behavioral model best explains knowledge sharing activities in VCs. Design/methodology/approach We basically design our behavioral model for knowledge sharing in VCs based on theory of reasoned action (TRA). However, to understand knowledge sharing in VCs better, we specify knowledge sharing by dividing it into knowledge contribution and knowledge use. Also, instead of 'subjective norm', we adopt 'sense of virtual community (SOVC)' as a main social factor, which has been found to be important in the literature. We also include the antecedents such as 'quality of the shared knowledge', 'trust in community members', 'passion of the community leader', 'reciprocity', and 'self efficacy', which affect VC users' attitude towards knowledge sharing and SOVC. To test the hypotheses in our proposed model, we collected 253 valid surveys from the VC users. Structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS 23 is employed to assess the relationships proposed as the hypotheses. Findings Major findings are as follows. SOVC positively affects both intention to contribute knowledge and intention to use knowledge. And, trust in community members positively affects the attitude towards knowledge use and SOVC. The attitude towards knowledge use is also affected by the quality of the shared knowledge. Reciprocity is found to strongly positively affect the attitude towards knowledge contribution. However, passion of the community leader and self efficacy are found to have insignificant effect on SOVC and the attitude towards knowledge contribution respectively. Our study sheds a light on how to foster VCs from the perspective of knowledge management.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.12-15
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• 2010

Learning community is one of the important pillars of the education in knowledge-based society. How to encourage students' spontaneous participation to the learning community is one of the actual problems to solve for the revolution of the education scheme. In this paper we introduce a strategy to boost the activity of the learning community, which works in the on-line space. The keys for the on-line supporting system for the learning community are to have communication space, trading space and connection with industry. To support activities of each space, we provide an on-line web site which includes a community module, a knowledge market module and an industrial commentary module. Students can start their self-leading study in the communication space, and they can also practice skills for the knowledge management in the knowledge trading space. Through the connection space, they can learn more from the real world critics with help of industry.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.5097-5105
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• 2014

Knowledge of health and community psychology in health professionals influences psychosocial and community determinants of health and promoting participation in disease prevention at the community level. This paper appraises the potential of knowledge on psychology in health care professionals and its contribution to community empowerment through individual behavior change and health practice. The authors proposed a schematic model for the use of psychological knowledge in health professionals to promote participation in health interventions/disease prevention programs in developing countries. By implication, the paper provides a vision on policies towards supporting breast cancer secondary prevention efforts for community health development in Asian countries.