Showing papers by "Euiho Suh published in 2015"

Membership Reconfiguration in Knowledge Sharing Network: A Simulation Study

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to propose a new approach that minimizes the negative impacts of structural barriers to knowledge sharing in the current of knowledge sharing networks by dynamically reconfiguring communities of practice (CoP) memberships. For this purpose, we develop several propositions to determine source CoPs, destination CoPs, rearrangement candidates, and recipient candidates to regulate the process of reconfiguring collaboration networks of source CoPs and reconstructing networks of destination CoPs after reallocating members from source CoPs to destination CoPs. To test the validity and usefulness of the proposed approach, we simulate two reconfiguration strategies that are different in the sense whether or not the distribution of expertise levels of CoP members is considered to determine the destination CoP. Our experimental results confirm that the proposed approach with either strategy effectively decreases potential threats to collaboration among CoP members and improves the structural healthiness of knowledge sharing networks of departments and organization. In particular, the number of CoPs in which knowledge creating is more active than knowledge sharing is significantly increased while the number of inactive CoPs is decreased. We attribute this finding to the fact that both experts and non-experts members are more evenly distributed across CoPs through rearrangement and these experts with light collaboration burden post their knowledge and practical skills to help non-experts in their CoPs.