Enabling knowledge sharing : a multi-theory perspective on knowledge sharing in new product development consortia

Productontwikkeling wordt in steeds vaker georganiseerd in de vorm van consortia. Het organiseren van productontwikkeling in consortia is iets wat uitdagingen met zich meebrengt omdat de specialistische kennis van verschillende domeinen die nodig is voor het ontwikkelen van een nieuw product is verspreid over de participerende organisaties. Om optimaal gebruik te maken van de specialistische kennis in de consortia, om de productontwikkelingstaken te kunnen uitvoeren en om nieuwe kennis te creëren is kennisdeling tussen de projectleden noodzakelijk. Des te beter de projectleden in staat zijn kennis te delen, des te beter zij in staat zijn te anticiperen op interfaces, tot nieuwe oplossingen te komen en problemen te kunnen voorzien. Effectieve kennisdeling verhoogt de kans dat de projectleden hun taken succesvol uitvoeren en voldoen aan de kwaliteitseisen, aan de tijdsrestricties en aan de financiële randvoorwaarden. In andere woorden: de manier waarop de professionals kennis delen in deze consortia is van groot belang voor het succes ervan. Echter, in de praktijk is kennisdeling juist een knelpunt en dit zorgt er voor dat de projecten hun budget overschrijden, hun planning overschrijden en de gestelde kwaliteit niet halen. Een aantal van deze problemen kunnen naar waarschijnlijkheid voorkomen worden als kennisdeling effectiever gestuurd wordt. Helaas is er nog weinig tot niks bekend over hoe kennisdeling bevorderd kan worden in productontwikkelingconsortia. Het doel van dit proefschrift is om inzicht te verwerven in de variabelen die kennisdeling in de productontwikkelingconsortia beïnvloeden en bevorderen,. Deze variabelen noemen we ‘enablers’ voor kennisdeling. Uitgangspunt hierbij zijn vier variabelen die de context creëren waarin kennis gedeeld wordt: expertise overlap, collocatie, betrokkenheid in meerdere projecten en taakafhankelijkheid. De effecten van deze enablers op drie kenmerken van kennisdeling worden bestudeerd. Deze kenmerken zijn: de wederkerigheid, de frequentie en het aantal gedeelde inhoudstypes. De effecten van de variabelen op kennisdeling worden bestudeerd op twee niveaus van kennisdeling; kennisdeling binnen teams (intra-team) en tussen teams (inter-team). In dit onderzoek is een multitheoretische sociale netwerk analyse benadering gekozen. Onderzocht is hoe expertise overlap, collocatie, betrokkenheid in meerdere projecten en taakafhankelijkheid invloed hebben op de wederkerigheid, de frequentie en het aantal gedeelde inhoudstypes van kennisdeling tussen twee teamleden of tussen twee teams. Door het adopteren van een multitheoretische benadering, kunnen er ook uitspraken gedaan worden over in welke mate de Transactive Memory theory, de Social Exchange theory en de Proximity theory kennisdeling in productontwikkelingconsortia verklaren en onder welke omstandigheden zij verklarende waarde hebben. Door bovendien twee niveaus van kennisdeling te onderscheiden geeft dit onderzoek inzicht in de mate waarin de effecten van de variabelen en de verklarende waarde van de theorieën verschillen tussen het intra-team niveau en het inter-team niveau. Zie verder: Samenvatting.

Continued Use of IT: An Emotional Choice

Information technology (IT) is ubiquitous in modern workplaces. Achieving the business benefits of an IT system is intimately tied up with the continued incorporation of the system into the work practices it is intended to support. What makes people incorporate IT into their practices and how do they do it? While much is known about different use behaviors, the social, cognitive and technical factors that influence use, less is known about non-use behaviors as well as the role of emotional factors in users’ choices on how to continue using a new technology post adoption. Through a longitudinal field study and a survey conducted in two universities, we examine how and why specific use patterns emerge and what the role of emotions is in this process. We find that based on emotional experiences around IT, people develop personal valuations towards an IT artifact, which are expressed in various (non-)use patterns

Proceedings of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School Student Session

This volume contains the papers presented at the Student Session of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) held on 2nd of September 2009 at Educatorio della Providenza, Turin, Italy. The Student Session, organised by students, is designed to encourage student interaction and feedback from the tutors. By providing the students with a conference-like setup, both in the presentation and in the review process, students have the opportunity to prepare their own submission, go through the selection process and present their work to each other and their interests to their fellow students as well as internationally leading experts in the agent field, both from the theoretical and the practical sector. Table of Contents: Andrew Koster, Jordi Sabater Mir and Marco Schorlemmer, Towards an inductive algorithm for learning trust alignment . . . 5; Angel Rolando Medellin, Katie Atkinson and Peter McBurney, A Preliminary Proposal for Model Checking Command Dialogues. . . 12; Declan Mungovan, Enda Howley and Jim Duggan, Norm Convergence in Populations of Dynamically Interacting Agents . . . 19; Akın Günay, Argumentation on Bayesian Networks for Distributed Decision Making . . 25; Michael Burkhardt, Marco Luetzenberger and Nils Masuch, Towards Toolipse 2: Tool Support for the JIAC V Agent Framework . . . 30; Joseph El Gemayel, The Tenacity of Social Actors . . . 33; Cristian Gratie, The Impact of Routing on Traffic Congestion . . . 36; Andrei-Horia Mogos and Monica Cristina Voinescu, A Rule-Based Psychologist Agent for Improving the Performances of a Sportsman . . . 39; --Autonomer Agent,Agent,Künstliche Intelligenz

Authoring Multi-Actor Behaviors in Crowds With Diverse Personalities

Multi-actor simulation is critical to cinematic content creation, disaster and security simulation, and interactive entertainment. A key challenge is providing an appropriate interface for authoring high-fidelity virtual actors with featurerich control mechanisms capable of complex interactions with the environment and other actors. In this chapter, we present work that addresses the problem of behavior authoring at three levels: Individual and group interactions are conducted in an event-centric manner using parameterized behavior trees, social crowd dynamics are captured using the OCEAN personality model, and a centralized automated planner is used to enforce global narrative constraints on the scale of the entire simulation. We demonstrate the benefits and limitations of each of these approaches and propose the need for a single unifying construct capable of authoring functional, purposeful, autonomous actors which conform to a global narrative in an interactive simulation

Essays on diffusion and categories

Essay’ derives from the French ‘to try’. Accordingly, in this book, I try three new interpretations of diffusion and categories. That is, I try to divide observations into groups in a new way. Some ways of dividing lead to confusion and frustration. For example, people’s default division seems to be ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘like’ and ‘dislike’. Observations such as, for instance, high rates of domestic violence in marriages of American football players are confusing given this division, because people like football but dislike violence. The fact that the same person is in both of these opposing categories causes cognitive dissonance. In contrast, a meaningful division, such as ‘aggressive people’ and ‘timid people’, leads to consistency and peace of mind; football players are selected for their aggressiveness and domestic violence is an expression of aggressiveness. Likewise, each chapter tries a new way of grouping observations about organizations. Trying an interpretation involves describing what that interpretation means. The meaning of an interpretation is anchored in less abstract observations that are associated with it (e.g. examples). Practically, this means I make hypotheses about what we would observe if the interpretation were true. For example, in the third chapter I try to interpret industries as being divided into two groups: ‘generic categories are salient’ and ‘specific categories are salient’. Observations such as high correlation between subcategory density and entries in industries with many subcategories are consistent with the associations of the grouping; many subcategories makes specific categories more salient and specific category saliency is expressed in subcategory density’s correlation with entries. If the observations are in line with what the interpretation means, then the interpretation I try is meaningfu