Creating and Sustaining Knowledge in Organisational Environments Social Software as a Vehicle for Knowledge Networks Joanne Jacobs Australasian CRC for

Creating and Sustaining Knowledge in Organisational

Environments

Social Software as a Vehicle for Knowledge Networks

Joanne JacobsAustralasian CRC for Interaction Design Brisbane Graduate School of Business,

Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Scope of the presentation

• Background on social software and growing acceptance

• ‘Natural Use’ of social software and orthogonal trust networks

• Evaluating social software for knowledge creation and organisation effectiveness

• Case Study 1: Blogs in graduate studies• Case Study 2: Blogs at the Mater Hospital,

Brisbane• Conclusions for social software deployment

changes in business production

• As enterprise planning and decision support systems have improved, the use of technology solutions for business productivity is no longer a source of strategic competitive advantage (SCA)

• Business now a matter of streamlined activities in departmental silos

• Communication now regarded as the key SCA for business sustainability

• Collaboration tools and social software considered key to achieving intra- and extra-organisational communication

Section1: Background

the rise of web 2.0

• Social software such as blogs and wiki are now familiar

• Nature of these tools is in the development of a natural archive; a continuously developing narrative and public record of change and idea negotiation

• Tool development is dominated by ‘long tail’ and ‘intelligent reaction’ priorities, not communication design


the tools

• Blogs• RSS• Trackbacks• Wiki• Tagging/social bookmarking• Automated tag ranking• Automated tag linking• Instant messaging, VOIP and video

conferencing


difficulties with social software

• Growing faster than the capacity to deploy effectively

• Communication techniques via these tools are under-developed and can be inefficient

• Dominated by textual interactions• Rhetoric of a need for risk management

and innovation sustainability, but no clear social software solutions for improving design processes


limits of current practice

• Insufficient data about the efficiency of social software for inter-organisational communication

• Effective deployment of social software involves cultural change in organisations

• Difficult to quantify the benefits and costs of social software in terms of productivity

• Difficult to quantify the benefits and costs of social software in terms of strategic communication


“Natural use” and social software

• Traditionally, interaction design theory focuses on user experience and consideration of the interface between users and devices. While this is necessary, there is also the need to consider ‘natural use’ of the technologies, and experience based considerations.

• This means that in attempting to apply social software in a series of community and educational applications it is important NOT to try and bootstrap the technologies to current practice but rather to consider how the technologies can be adapted naturally.


Orthogonal trust networks

• One of the natural uses of social software is the creation of a network of links between participants that are coincidental, but come about because individuals are searching for content, or directed to content by trusted sources. These are effetctively orthogonal networks

• Anderson (2005) notes that social software facilitates such orthogonal networks, and these chance encounters (as Udell noted in the opening presentation) can be highly productive and help create new connections between participants.


Evaluating social software

• Assumptions and definitions– Effectiveness versus efficiency– Value versus utility

• Variations of Value– Economic – Social

• Relationships of Value• Non-financial costs of using social software

tools• Proposal for evaluating social software

Section 2: Theory

effectiveness versus efficiency

• Important to note that using social software to increase business effectiveness is about improving core business activities, not about efficiencies of productivity– Ie: effectiveness is an outcome; efficiency is a

ratio of inputs to outputs

• Social software mediated collaboration can improve both business effectiveness (by maximising productive outputs of knowledge workers) and business efficiency (by reducing costs of collaboration)

Section 2: Theory

value versus utility

• When evaluating social software there needs to be some benchmark or metric for understanding the benefits

• There is confusion in accepted metrics between the ‘value’ and the ‘utility’ of social software and networked architecture

• Value needs to refer to cognition of overall benefits and costs of participation. Utility refers to the potential number and complexity of interactions

Section 2: Theory

variations of value

• Economic value (NOT to be confused with financial/accounting value)

• Social value• Productive value (based on collaborative outputs)• Accounting value (absolute and marginal)• Commercial value• Opportunity• Reputation (the influence of ambition on specific

personalities and the development of leadership in a collaborative environment)

• Personal/organisational

Section 2: Theory

economic values• Social production value – the increased level of commitment to a mutual

project, based on the psychological influence of community participation; • Entrepreneurial value – simplified projects, with a small number of users, but

attracting risk-takers in a collaborative environment; • Raw connection value – the number of participants/productive connections in

output production; • Utility value – the maximum possible opportunities to be derived from

integration of all stakeholders in a production process; • Risk value – the functional aspects of an output that render the output less

likely to be subject to litigation, the threat of outputs becoming obsolete, or production inefficiencies;

• Transparency value – the perceived trustworthiness of a collaborative system in comparison with a closed production process;

• Efficiency value – minimisation of duplicated effort; • Time value – minimisation of time to delivery/execution in the production

process; • Functional value – maximum functionality of the outputs for use by a mass

audience; • Quality value – the maximum functionality of the outputs for use by custom or

niche audiences; • Repeat business value – the likelihood of an output to spawn further

projects/sustained application development.

Section 2: Theory

social values

• Community development – increased (or at least the amount of) participation and care for community members;

• Cultural development – the development of distinct languages, practices and ethics of collaborative communities;

• Relationship development – the psychological and social benefits of connectivity between community members;

• Socio-political development – the use of collaborative environments as a channel for public education and activism;

• Interactive value – the correlation between interaction among community members in a collaborative environment as compared with similar interactions in “real life”.

Section 2: Theory

relationships of value

Ec = Economic Value; So = Social Value; Pr = Productive Value; Acc = Accountancy costs; Com = Commercial Value

Business collaboration premised on commercial value

Section 2: Theory

non-financial costs of collaboration

• Social communications– Time spent in collaborative environments can

appear largely social and not “real work” or “real study” (Kane)

• Evolving ‘accuracy’ of business information• Risk of information contamination and in

appropriate idea negotiation (including liability for slander, etc)

• Development of sub-cultural groups (niche industries – the ‘Long Tail’) and new silos

• Insufficient understanding of the best means of implementing tools to maximise collaboration

Section 2: Theory

a process for evaluation

• Cross disciplinary approach required to adequately assess value against implementation costs

• Commercial value needs to be articulated as being cognizant of collaboration costs

• Communication outputs of collaboration should be expressed in terms of opportunity (and failure to collaborate should be recognised as an opportunity cost)

Section 2: Theory

evaluations: blogs

• Accumulated economic values associated with – Engaging stakeholders in decision making– Time/space saving in collaboration

• Accumulated social values associated with– A culture of critical debate and engagement– Idea negotiation

• Costs bearable (software free and deployment now less risky)

- Appropriate for decision making and marketing

Section 3: Evaluations

evaluations: wiki

• Accumulated economic values associated with – Wisdom of crowds concept – Allocating tasks based on skill sets and expertise

rather than as a role in an employment environment

• Accumulated social values associated with– Relationship development

• Costs bearable (software free and deployment now less risky)

- Appropriate for idea generation and knowledge sharing


evaluations: tagging and RSS

• Accumulated economic values associated with – Knowledge management – Timely and targeted information dissemination

• Accumulated social values associated with– Cultural development

• Costs require user data management- Appropriate for all news feeds


evaluations: VOIP

• Accumulated economic values associated with – Reduced costs of telecommunications – Increased communication of accessibility

• Accumulated social values associated with– Relationship maintenance– Interactive communications

• Costs low- Appropriate for replacing standard

communications and conferencing


Case Study 1: Blogs in Education

• Introduced blogs with whole class authorship (blogger write access)

• Optional partipication• 77% of students either agreed or strongly

agreed that the MBA blog increased the level of meaningful intellectual exchange between students

• The most interesting experiences identified among students and staff engaged with the experiment was the unsolicited involvement of international representatives in economic debate

Section 4: Case Studies

Case Study 1: EvaluationRelationships Dimensions Questions

Social participants / participants Who are the participants of the sites?

participants / facilitators What cultures, practices and ideas do they share?

participants / independent readers

What relationships develop with each other and the supporting faculty?

How do these relationships develop?

Pedagogical participants / ideas How do participants interact with content and ideas from their own experiences of the classroom or in research?

participants / activities

Cultural participants / participants What kinds of expectations do the participants have relating to the engagements with the blog? How might they want to use the blog as a means of supporting an ideas-oriented cultural cohort?

participants / facilitators

Spatial participants /virtual site How do they currently relate to the virtual space as a separated space from their occupational and learning environments?

participants /actual site

Technical participants /ICT What relationships do they currently and potentially have to the technology and the interaction it can provide?

Temporal Mobility, Duration, Rhythm of Stay

How much time do participants spend with the interactive space and why? Do they return and why?

How do they allocate sufficient time to accommodate participants into their daily lives?


Case Study 1: Lessons Learned

• Blogs probably were not the best software to use for the purpose of learning – wiki would have been more efficient and easier to moderate

• Nevertheless blogs were more likely to elicit unsolicited comments as external commenters found the blog in blog indexes

• Need to recognise time component of participation to ensure value is maintained


Case Study 2: Blogs in Mater Hospital

• Introduced blogs with limited authorship (6 representatives or ‘network stars’ drawn from doctors, nurses, orderlies, maintenance staff, patient reps, marketing)

• Compulsory, recognised workflow participation from bloggers. Optional commenting in kiosks and online.

• Public displays with Word Press implementation, operating on morphing posts

• Posts limited to 100 words. • Focus group initial responses indicating increased

understanding of success stories and communication between divisions


Case Study 2: Lessons Learned

• Most difficult aspect of implementation was nominating the participants.

• Second most difficult aspect of implementation was governance issues.

• Public displays raised awareness. Kiosks and posters educated potential commenters to the blog.

• Need to ensure initial responses are not just ‘novelty’ positives, but Hospital is still happy with the appearance of addressing previously identified communication concerns.


Conclusions 1

• Inappropriate deployment of social software can annul the value to be gained from the inherent archival characteristics of the technology

• Understanding the ‘Natural Use’ of the technology can assist in ensuring appropriate deployment

• Understanding the purpose and context for knowledge creation through the use of social software is key to successful communication, preservation and propagation of knowledge among a network of participants.

Section 5: Conclusions

Conclusions 2

• Applying an evaluation method for social software in organisational contexts can assist in ensuring appropriate deployment of social software

• There needs to be adequate validation of tool value in economic terms as well as in broader social terms in order to ensure appropriate deployment

• Business effectiveness should increase SCA, regardless of the impact on business efficiency – this should be incentive enough for deployment of social software

Section 5: Conclusions

Questions?

Joanne Jacobs Program & Project Manager, StrategistAustralasian CRC for Interaction DesignSeconded from the Brisbane Graduate School of

Business Queensland University of TechnologyContact:

Ph: +61 419 131 077email: [email protected]: http://joannejacobs.net/

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Creating and Sustaining Knowledge in Organisational Environments Social Software as a Vehicle for Knowledge Networks Joanne Jacobs Australasian CRC for