Organizational Knowledge Sharing with Web 2.0 Collaboration Technologies

This research explores Web 2.0 collaboration technologies, contributor motives, and their organizational roles in collaborative knowledge creation in business organizations. Web 2.0, the use of the web as a collaborative and service delivery platform (O’Reilly, 2005), offers opportunities to collaboratively develop knowledge assets. Ideally, many users share some of their knowledge, jointly creating a rich, valuable asset. Wikis and weblogs both enable a “writeable web”, allowing easy publication of contributions as a collective effort (wiki), or through loosely networked, individual weblogging efforts. Publicly shared wikis (e.g., Wikipedia) and weblogs (e.g., Slashdot) have shown the potential of this approach. Corporations are now seeking to use the same collaboration strategy. In doing so, they face challenges in sustaining their efforts, and in providing incentives for organization members to participate. The project will thus investigate collaborative knowledge management in business organizations using Web 2.0 technologies, to develop a model that explains participation types and levels, based on potential contributor characteristics and knowledge asset characteristics. The research also seeks to determine conditions needed to reach steady-state (sustainability). The study encompasses website analyses, interviews, and a survey of Web 2.0 lead users.