How different connectivity patterns of individuals within an organization can speed up organizational learning
Authored by Somayeh Koohborfardhaghighi, Dae Bum Lee, Juntae Kim
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.1007/s11042-016-3348-8
Sponsors:
No sponsors listed
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Knowledge sharing within a cooperative organization is an important
issue since the power of its outcome has been the principal source of
competitive advantage over the competitors in the market. However,
without a proper collective knowledge management, its utilization as a
strategic weapon or competitive advantage becomes difficult and
inefficient. From an organizational perspective, the most important
aspect of knowledge management is to transfer knowledge. In this
regards, organizations must adopt structures that allow them to create
and transfer more knowledge. Organizational communication structure
affects the nature of human interactions and information flow which in
its own turn can lead to a competitive advantage in the knowledge
economy. However, in addition to that, social relationships between
individuals in an organization can also be utilized to produce positive
returns. In this article we emphasize the role of individual structural
importance within an organizational informal communication structure as
a mechanism for knowledge flow and speeding up organizational learning.
Our experimental results indicate the fact that structural position of
individuals within their informal communication networks can help the
network members to have a better access to ongoing information exchange
processes in the organization. The results of our analyses also show
that organizational learning through an informal communication network
of people in the form of scale-free connectivity pattern is faster
comparing to the small-world connectivity style.
Tags
Agent-based modeling
Knowledge sharing
networks
Exploitation
Exploration
Search
organizational learning
Centrality
Knowledge management system
Centrality measures
Informal communication network topology