Community Governance Mechanisms Research Assignment - 1925 Words

Community Governance Mechanisms Research Assignment (Essay Sample) Content: Online User Communities and Governance MechanismsClient First Name SurnameInstituteMany scholars have stressed the importance of knowledge mobilization within a user community, which includes knowledge creation, sharing and reuse. Recent organizational literatures are also emphasizing on effective management of knowledge mobilization, emerging as a crucial component for business innovation and establishment. This essay opens discussion with these two areas of concern. In doing so, this paper particularly gives emphasize on online user communities involved in open source projects as these kind of projects offer highest freedom of communication, user-specific free knowledge sharing and prioritization of products. New age online business giants are also using open participation of user communities to systematically arrange and upgrade their own organizational knowledge database. Thus, this essay gives insights to such online business models and their adoption of knowled ge governance strategies to effectively manage user-created knowledge acquisition.Virtual User Communities: The E-AssociatesUser Communities are characterized by individual groups using similar kind of products and learning to use them superiorly by regular interactions CITATION Wenger \l 1033 (Wenger, 1998). These user groups with a common purpose offer advantages for their affiliates through the exchange of ideas, appreciation and feelings with each other. As one can rightly assume while searching for a product-related solution, individuals save hours by entering into public network and accessing its file-database CITATION Hippel2005 \l 1033 (Hippel, 2005).Rapid internet espousal has significantly stimulated the global recognition of active virtual communities. Remarkably, active virtual groups symbolizes an important swing from the conventional read-only Websites to an user centric, interactive, closely-knitted, participatory, activity based, appealing, new age web-platforms, technically termed as Web 2.0 (i.e., socialmedia). According to recent Alexa ranking, Wikipedia and Facebook CITATION Alexa \l 1033 (Alexa, 2017) are among the top ten global sites which attract the most user traffic on the Internet. Community building and user contribution are the two prominent factors on which these websites are based on.Tim OReilly specified the symptoms of these new wave of web-platforms, namely: Google AdSense, BitTorrent, Flickr, Napster, Blogs, Wikipedia, Upcoming.Org, Search Engine Optimization, Cost Per Click, Participation, Web Services, Wikis, Tagging and Syndication CITATION OReilly2005 \l 1033 (OReilly, 2005). Some common characteristics of all these new generation web features are user participation, openness and network effects. Features like user involvement form the basis of the new age socially interactive version of the web. The collective, cooperative, democratic approach of sharing enterprising ideas of online communities is attracting the m ajor attempt of recent e-commerce developments.By speedily disseminating information, consumer groups as user communities practice a commanding impact on business market CITATION Prahalad_Ramaswamy \l 1033 (Ramaswamy, 2000). As an example, closely connected, networked consumer communities can imperatively prove to be vital for the espousal and circulation of knowledge and innovations. Business models following open and distributed innovation process can purposively use these socially interactive virtual user communities as a source of external ideas CITATION Chesbrough \l 1033 (Chesbrough, 2006). Businesses can systematize and prioritize huge user knowledge data concerning their requirements, response to already marketed products along with suggestions for upcoming products. Numerous studies have revealed that incorporation of such user-generated knowledge has contributed considerably to product improvement CITATION LBJ06 \l 1033 (Frederiksen, 2006) CITATION Prugl2006 \l 1033 (S chreier, 2006)The Process of Knowledge MobilizationKnowledge mobilization process within a community, the diffusion/broadcast and possession/attainment of knowledge (implicit and disposed: tacit and codified) is happened to be complicated as well as expensive; and this is the primary principle on basis of which user communities survive. Polyani coined the terminology of tacit/ implicit knowledge to propose that expression of individuals, often unaware of the knowledge they possess, cannot always equates to what they know CITATION Polyani1966 \l 1033 (Polyani, 1966). Thus, unlike codified/explicit knowledge, there remains a chance that tacit knowledge goes unnoticed/ ignored for its inherent not-communicated, un-expressed, un-recorded and un-transferable nature CITATION Cowan_Davis_Foray \l 1033 (Cowan, Davis, Foray, 2000) CITATION Foray2004 \l 1033 (Foray, 2004).However, user communities motivate members to share this tacit as well as codified knowledge by regular and timely co mmunications. Access to the prospective knowledge hub within networked communities can radically trim down the considerable investment/ economic risks a business has to incur while launching new products CITATION Hippel2005 \l 1033 (Hippel, 2005).Individual members, spending free hours frequently with a community support, breed innovations, build up models, estimate designs and play on each others contribution make signature contributions to product developments which a business can seriously consider as a part of their future product evolution CITATION LBJ06 \l 1033 (Frederiksen, 2006). Enterprising ideas coming from external sources (user communities) can save a lot from product development expenditure. Additional benefits can also be assumed in terms of new product launch risks. Usually communities, using similar kind of products, construct the potential market of a business network. Thus, new/improved product ideas coming from a those communities, primarily emerge from their genuine requirements, difficulties or preferences and incorporating those ideas in different stages of product development decrease the threat of product failure.Community Governance: An IntrospectionIn user communities, frequent cognitive exchanges promote the formation of common knowledge societies and general collective norms CITATION Cohendet2006 \l 1033 (Cohendet, 2006). In order to permit helper communities to manage their participation to facilitate the sharing of blueprint and developmental appropriation of a service or product, open source projects often involve some basic governance/ controlling factors. Open source community members being the donor and the receiver of governance, the subject and object of governance are self-governed. Collective ideas and goods, produced by user communities, preside over their members. In a community each member agrees upon the collaborative prescribed authority while restrict it with participatory mechanisms. These democratic partici patory mechanisms, in turn, govern the very idea of community authority and help to change its map over time.Sharing knowledge, acting as a medium of community governance, within self-governed groups relies on its collective configuration CITATION LBJ06 \l 1033 (Frederiksen, 2006). In many studies, this configuration has been described as a marketplace symbolizing decentralized, disordered, unrestricted, zero-order-of-rank group situation where information flows and communication takes place liberally within members CITATION Raymond1999 \l 1033 (Raymond, 1999). It creates the perfect condition of effective communication in terms that when a solution is found it readily and freely flows among project members. Thus, in zero-order-of-rank group situation, lack of hierarchical ladder helps to share knowledge freely and surf information liberally available to all comers.Later writings also emphasize on a more centrality-based social structure of open source communities regarding commun ication. Hence, centrality or user involvement level determines the task a member will undertake in a project CITATION Lakani2005 \l 1033 (Lakhani Wolf, 2005). Moreover, these studies also highlight the concept of task specialization through which division of labour and division of knowledge exist among user communities. Task specialization separates users in two large groupings: actively participating/ core member group and passively participating/ peripheral member group.These self-governed user communities facilitates the creation of entrepreneurial opportunity among its users. Therefore, investigation of the community governance mechanisms to propose an integrated perspective of organizational management of this type of knowledge sharing has to be initiated. Hence the participatory, collaborative, and dynamic collective intelligence or knowledge sharing approach of online user communities is where most serious e-business models are heading their efforts and development.Governa nce Mechanisms of Free Knowledge SharingWith an Alexa traffic rank of 16, Reddit.com is one of the most important examples of successful e-business model that exploit free knowledge sharing/ collective intelligence in determining the story value of any news. Google Search and strong network effect are pronounced in the same breath. Google Search works on the principle of network effect where back links decide the importance of a webpage. Relying on user-volunteer-work or user generated data is the less costly way to build up a strong network effect. Till date, Wikipedia has over 5,376,947 articles with a submission of approx. 800 new articles per day; and all of those articles are written by volunteer users CITATION Wikipedia \l 1033 (Wikipedia, 2017).OReilly put special emphasis on collective intelligence and kno...