Introduction to Trust, Identity, and Trusted Systems in Digital Environments Minitrack

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MANAGING INFORMATION OVERLOAD; EXAMINING THE ROLE OF THE HUMAN FILTER

With the increasing processing power and plummeting costs of multimedia technologies, our ability to ubiquitously access and disseminate information continues to become indefinitely easier. However, emerging research shows that we are struggling to process information as fast as it arrives. The problem of information overload is a significant one for contemporary organisations as it can adversely affect productivity, decision-making, and employee morale. To combat this problem, organisations often resort to investing in technical solutions such as business intelligence software or semantic technologies. While such technical approaches can certainly aid in making sense of information overload, less attention has been directed at understanding how social behaviours within inter-personal networks – the primary conduit of information – have evolved to deal with the surge of digital information. Using social network analysis and interview evidence from two information intensive firms, this study finds a small number of information specialists who emerge to filter useful information into and around the intra-organizational network. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our findings

The Challenges of Knowledge Combination in ML-based Crowdsourcing – The ODF Killer Shrimp Challenge using ML and Kaggle

Organizations are increasingly using digital technologies, such as crowdsourcing platforms and machine learning, to tackle innovation challenges. These technologies often require the combination of heterogeneous technical and domain-specific knowledge from diverse actors to achieve the organization’s innovation goals. While research has focused on knowledge combination for relatively simple tasks on crowdsourcing platforms and within ML-based innovation, we know little about how knowledge is combined in emerging innovation approaches incorporating ML and crowdsourcing to solve domain-specific innovation challenges. Thus, this paper investigates the following: What are the challenges to knowledge combination in domain-specific ML-based crowdsourcing? We conducted a case study of an environmental challenge – how to use ML to predict the spread of a marine invasive species, led by the Swedish consortium, Ocean Data Factory Sweden using the crowdsourcing platform Kaggle. After discussing our results, we end the paper with recommendations on how to integrate crowdsourcing into domain-specific digital innovation processes

The substitution of labor: From technological feasibility to other factors influencing the potential of job automation

Artificial intelligence, machine learning (a subcategory of AI), and robotics are three technologies that perform an increasingly wider variety of routine and even non-routine job tasks. This chapter provides an overview of digitalization and automation along with the three underlying technologies and explores the potential of these technologies to replace human capabilities in the workplace. Subsequently, it discusses a set of factors beyond technological feasibility that influence the pace and scope of job automation. Some of the chapter’s key findings include the following: (1) The majority of jobs will be affected by the automation of individual activities, but only a few have the potential to be completely substituted; (2) the automation potential for non-routine tasks seems to remain limited, especially for tasks involving autonomous mobility, creativity, problem-solving and complex communication; (3) the nature of jobs will change as mundane tasks will be substituted and people will work more closely together with machines; and (4) industries that have a large potential for labor substitution are food and accommodation services, transportation and warehousing, retail trade, wholesale trade and manufacturing

The Provision of Online Public Goods: Examining Social Structure in a Network of Practice

Networks of practice (NOPs) are social spaces where individuals working on similar problems self-organize to help each other and share perspectives about their occupational practice or common interests, and exist primarily through computer-mediated exchange. This exchange of knowledge through message postings produces an online public good, where all participants in the network can access the knowledge, regardless of their contribution. Thus, this research builds upon theories of collective action and public goods to better understand the provision and maintenance of knowledge in a network of practice. We use social network analysis to examine the following research questions: (1) What is the pattern of contribution that produces and sustains the public good? (2) Are NOPs maintained by a critical mass? (3) How does the heterogeneity of resources and interests of participants impact the collective action of the NOP? We find that the network of practice is sustained through generalized exchange, is supported by a critical mass of active members, and is shaped as a star. The critical mass is significantly related to tenure in the occupation, expertise, availability of local resources, and desire to enhance oneís reputation

Creative Ties and Ties That Bind: Examining the Impact of Weak Ties on Individual Performance

This paper examines whether the information sources used by knowledge workers have an impact on individual performance and creativity. Although it is widely recognized that new knowledge is created through the combination and exchange of existing knowledge, there is a large variety of knowledge sources available to individuals. In this study, we examine whether individual performance varies as a result of (1) individual factors, (2) usage of a variety of information sources, (3) reliance on colocated colleagues, or (4) participation in an organizational electronic community. Results indicate that experience and education predict general performance, regardless of the type of information sources used. However, the type of information sources used by individuals relates significantly to creativity. Reliance on colocated colleagues results in less creativity while participation in an electronic community leads to higher creativity. Additional analysis reveals that participation in the electronic community does not have a direct effect on creativity, rather participation has a direct impact on the acquisition of new knowledge, which in turn influences creativity. Group tenure and type of participation (posting questions vs. responses) are also important predictors whose effects are fully mediated through knowledge acquisition. Finally, professional commitment did not contribute toknowledge exchange in the electronic community, rather professional commitment had a direct effect on creativity

Public Goods or Virtual Commons? Applying Theories of Public Goods, Social Dilemmas, and Collective Action to Electronic Networks of Practice

Electronic networks of practice are self-organizing, open activity systems focused on a shared practice that exist primarily through computer-mediated communication. These networks create a public good of knowledge that is available to anyone in the network, making it easy for individuals to free-ride on the efforts of others. Theories of collective action are reviewed to explain why individuals choose to actively participate in collective activities when the rational individual decision would be to free-ride on the efforts of others. These theories are applied to examine participation in electronic networks of practice, suggesting that participation in these networks is dependent upon 1) the attributes of the individuals in the collective, 2) the relational structure of social ties between individuals in the collective, 3) the norms of behavior of the collective, 4) the affective factors of the collective, and 5) the development of sanctions for noncompliance with network norms. This paper discusses how the ability of a network to leverage these factors to promote collective action is dependent upon the openness of the network, the extent to which the relationships in the collective are based on computer-mediated communication, and the extent to which the critical resources in the network are characterized by public or private goods

Creating Innovation Systems through Virtual Communities

The current rationale is that geographic regions provide the best context for innovation systems to emerge and thrive because of localized learning processes and the need to transfer “sticky” knowledge through social interaction. The core idea is that innovative activity relies upon an entire system composed of a variety of institutions and infrastructures interacting to create a learning-conducive environment that is geographically bound. The benefits associated with establishing regional innovation systems is that physical proximity facilitates the necessary underlying social capital essential for the creation of new intellectual capital. However, this concept of promoting innovation by restricting researcher and private firm mobility to specific geographic regions has real limitations, for instance, there may not be enough developed land, housing or amenities to attract the top scientists and organizations to a specific region. This begs the question, can regional innovation systems designed in a virtual world generate the same dynamics? In this paper, we consider whether the term “regional” in the sense of innovation systems is limited to geographic proximity in the real world, or whether or not this concept extends to geographic proximity in a virtual world. The purpose of this paper is to present our design ideas about how to create a virtual regional innovation system in the virtual world Second Life. We base our community design on the theoretical foundation underlying the primary and support activities of innovation systems. We then present our ideas about how these activities may be translated to a virtual community. We end with a discussion of why this research is relevant in terms of both practice and research

Creating Innovation Systems through Virtual Communities

The current rationale is that geographic regions provide the best context for innovation systems to emerge and thrive because of localized learning processes and the need to transfer “sticky” knowledge through social interaction. The core idea is that innovative activity relies upon an entire system composed of a variety of institutions and infrastructures interacting to create a learning-conducive environment that is geographically bound. The benefits associated with establishing regional innovation systems is that physical proximity facilitates the necessary underlying social capital essential for the creation of new intellectual capital. However, this concept of promoting innovation by restricting researcher and private firm mobility to specific geographic regions has real limitations, for instance, there may not be enough developed land, housing or amenities to attract the top scientists and organizations to a specific region. This begs the question, can regional innovation systems designed in a virtual world generate the same dynamics? In this paper, we consider whether the term “regional” in the sense of innovation systems is limited to geographic proximity in the real world, or whether or not this concept extends to geographic proximity in a virtual world. The purpose of this paper is to present our design ideas about how to create a virtual regional innovation system in the virtual world Second Life. We base our community design on the theoretical foundation underlying the primary and support activities of innovation systems. We then present our ideas about how these activities may be translated to a virtual community. We end with a discussion of why this research is relevant in terms of both practice and research