Enabling Knowledge Broker Analysis through Actor Clusters in Organizational Structures in Enterprise Social Media

Knowledge brokers serve as facilitators of knowledge sharing. The extant literature calls for nuanced analyses of different organizational structures as the spaces knowledge brokers operate in. Our interest lies in formal, semiformal, and informal organizational network structures and in how knowledge brokers are positioned in them. In this paper, we outline a collaborative analysis method, with researchers from different disciplines working together in data sprints. The benefit of this process is that it enables analyzing large organizational networks with deep insights. Amplifying social network analysis with field knowledge offers a deeper understanding of the connections in the network. This paper describes the analysis process and proposes interdisciplinary data processing techniques. We applied the proposed method using an extensive empirical data set that includes intraorganizational social media interactions between employees in a global organization. Our analysis transforms enterprise social media data into a network model that describes an organization’s social structure

Identifying Knowledge Brokers in Enterprise Social Media

Knowledge brokers act as a bridge between people and issues; they facilitate knowledge creation and sharing, and connect communities of practice. The extant literature has focused mostly on roles and network positions of knowledge brokers. This paper adds communicative actions to identifying these important actors. In the present study we develop and propose a method to identify knowledge brokering communication in an enterprise social media (ESM) platform. We posit that active knowledge brokers can be identified based on their generic social media communication. We use a large data set containing 124,015 messages among employees, and their network positions by social network analysis to identify knowledge brokers, and further analyze a sample of the communication content qualitatively. We argue that better understanding of the identification of knowledge brokering communication in a collaboration network can benefit employee assignments and help develop communication practices in ESM, leading to improved knowledge sharing and creation

New models for digital government: the role of service brokers in driving innovation

Executive summary Digital Government strategies are being rolled out in many Australian and international jurisdictions, ushering in a fundamentally different approach to the design and delivery of public sector services. Digital Government makes digital services (usually delivered through internet and mobile channels) the default delivery channels for the majority of services, and places them at the centre of innovating, designing and operating government services. Public sector or independent service brokers are increasingly important to delivering and designing these services. Service brokers are organisations or businesses that enable customers to interact with other organisations through easy-to-use and seamless interfaces. In the digital realm, a public sector service brokers example is one that provides a customer-focussed portal, such as the Federal Department of Human Services’ MyGov website. Independent service brokers from the private or community sectors can also provide greater service choice and innovation in how people interact with governments. Models for independent service brokers include Digital Mailboxes and Personal Safeboxes (eg Australia Post); public transport information service brokers (eg TripView, Tripgo and Google Transit), taxation service brokers (eg Xero and MYOB Online), community service brokers (eg HubCare) and access brokers for government services (eg public libraries, online access centres, etc) to assist those unable to access digital services. It is likely that the ambitious goals for large-scale adoption of digital government will only be achieved if governments encourage the involvement of independent service brokers to complement the role of public sector service brokers. However, there is currently little guidance on best practice models for agencies seeking to collaborate with independent service brokers or the other way around. This report addresses this critical knowledge gap by providing a practical guide to the service broker model. It explains the different roles of public sector and independent service brokers and provides case studies of service broker models. This will help to inform digital government strategies and policies to encourage the development of public sector and independent service brokers. It also considers how the emergence of a marketplace of service brokers will raise important issues such as how customer data is managed and protected, identity assured and how research and analysis of the data generated by these digital services can help inform better public policies and service improvement

Sparking Social Innovations

{Excerpt} Necessity is the mother of invention. The demand for good ideas, put into practice, that meet pressing unmet needs and improve people’s lives is growing on a par with the agenda of the 21st century. In a shrinking world, social innovation at requisite institutional levels can do much to foster smart, sustainable globalization. In consequence of successive scientific revolutions, mankind has changed its conditions and capacities with increasing speed. Globalization is a given: today, mankind’s activities are affecting the entire planet—and thereby mankind itself—for good and ill. A select list of the worldwide challenges we face includes alleviating poverty; mitigating and adapting to climate change; ending abuse of natural resources and the environment; cleaning up environmental pollution; dealing with natural disasters; countering medical challenges, e.g., pandemics; encouraging disarmament; coping with security threats; accommodating nonstate power; handling failed states; tapping capacity for social action; allaying frustration among minorities; confronting violence; identifying global rights; building a global rule of law; evolving regulatory and institutional frameworks to contain global financial and economic crises; optimizing international trade; managing mass migrations; employing human resources better; and optimizing knowledge

Deputized Brokers: A Technique for a Case Study of Conservative Think Tanks in 1990s Welfare Reform

This study proposes a novel analytical technique in a case study of think tank brokerage. As brokers, think tanks structurally link foundations and media, yet they do so as representatives of a policy network consisting of corporate funders and affiliated think tanks. Print media sought their policy analysis regarding the welfare system and prescriptions for reform. Network and content methods are the bases for the presentation of the technique. The coupling of results from each of the technique\u27s components shows how resources tie actors, as well as how their conversion from one form to another is the basis for a newfound understanding of structural brokerage. Taken together, the findings demonstrate the significance of representative brokerage that deepens the meaning of the policy advocacy mission of these organizations

Missing the target: Lessons from enabling innovation in South Asia

This paper reflects on the experience of the Research Into Use (RIU) projects in Asia. It reconfirms much of what has been known for many years about the way innovation takes place and finds that many of the shortcomings of RIU in Asia were precisely because lessons from previous research on agricultural innovation were "not put into use" in the programme's implementation. However, the experience provides three important lessons for donors and governments to make use of agricultural research: (i) Promoting research into use requires enabling innovation. This goes beyond fostering collaboration, and includes a range of other innovation management tasks (ii) The starting point for making use of research need not necessarily be the promising research products and quite often identifying the promising innovation trajectories is more rewarding (iii) Strengthening the innovation enabling environment of policies and institutions is critical if research use is to lead to long-term and large-scale impacts. It is in respect of this third point that RIU Asia missed its target, as it failed to make explicit efforts to address policy and institutional change, despite its innovation systems rhetoric. This severely restricted its ability to achieve wide-scale social and economic impact that was the original rationale for the programme.Research Into Use, Innovation Management, Agricultural Research, Innovation, Development, Policy, Value Chain Development, South Asia, Innovation Trajectory

Knowledge Broker Bots in Enterprise Social Media: An Exploratory Study

Enterprise social media (ESM) platforms are a central hub for team collaboration. While they can effectively facilitate communication among distributed individuals and teams, promoting knowledge sharing remains a major challenge. ESM users are often unaware of others’ knowledge and therefore are unable to seek experts or share knowledge with those who need it. A potential solution could be the use of knowledge broker bots that automatically connect knowledge seekers with knowledge providers to facilitate knowledge sharing. However, given the focus of existing literature on the human element of knowledge brokering, our understanding of the use and impact of such bots on knowledge sharing in ESM is limited. Therefore, we conducted a two-month, exploratory study with five student teams on Slack. Our findings provide initial insights into how users interact with a knowledge broker bot and how the bot establishes connections between users as a critical conduit to successful knowledge brokering

Managing Intellectual Property to Foster Agricultural Development

Over the past decades, consideration of IPRs has become increasingly important in many areas of agricultural development, including foreign direct investment, technology transfer, trade, investment in innovation, access to genetic resources, and the protection of traditional knowledge. The widening role of IPRs in governing the ownership of—and access to—innovation, information, and knowledge makes them particularly critical in ensuring that developing countries benefit from the introduction of new technologies that could radically alter the welfare of the poor. Failing to improve IPR policies and practices to support the needs of developing countries will eliminate significant development opportunities. The discussion in this note moves away from policy prescriptions to focus on investments to improve how IPRs are used in practice in agricultural development. These investments must be seen as complementary to other investments in agricultural development. IPRs are woven into the context of innovation and R&D. They can enable entrepreneurship and allow the leveraging of private resources for resolving the problems of poverty. Conversely, IPRs issues can delay important scientific advancements, deter investment in products for the poor, and impose crippling transaction costs on organizations if the wrong tools are used or tools are badly applied. The central benefit of pursuing the investments outlined in this note is to build into the system a more robust capacity for strategic and flexible use of IPRs tailored to development goals