Factors affecting shapers of organizational wikis

  • Authors:

  • Dave Yates;Christian Wagner;Ann Majchrzak

  • Affiliations:

  • College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, 4117J Hornbake South, College Park, MD 20742;Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong;Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089–1421

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

New Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis permit any organizational member of a virtual community of practice (CoP) to dynamically edit, integrate, and rewrite content (what we call knowledge shaping) as well as contribute personal knowledge. Previous research on factors that motivate contribution in virtual CoPs has focused exclusively on factors explaining why people contribute their personal knowledge, with no research focused on why people make the knowledge-shaping contributions (rewriting, integrating, and restructuring pages) which are possible with wikis. We hypothesize that factors that explain frequency of contribution will be different for those who shape from those who contribute only their personal knowledge. The results support our hypotheses. In addition, we find that shapers are not more likely to be managers or members of a community's core group who might typically serve in an administrator role, contrary to prior expectations. The implications of using Web 2.0 tools to encourage this shaping behavior are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.