The sharing of knowledge about valuable innovations is a fundamental prerequisite to the effective operation of an organization. The public sector in the US offers some special challenges to the sharing of knowledge because of the federal nature of the government and because of tendencies for functions to be distributed geographically across our large country.
It is sometimes hoped that various information and communication technologies (ICT) could make geography nearly irrelevant, making it as easy to communicate with someone across the country as next door. Of course, technology merely creates the outer bounds of what is possible. Simply because communication is cheap does not mean that it occurs. There are numerous societal, institutional, individual, and situational factors that limit the use of any modalities of communication (although often differentially). Individuals may be reluctant to reveal their ignorance through their questions; organizations may discourage sharing of information because of competitive concerns; or community-level norms of self-sufficiency may discourage asking questions. There is a need to understand how the particular modality of communication interplays with how people tap into different sources of knowledge, why they ask and answer questions the way they do, and where and how technology is helpful in improving knowledge sharing, paticularly knowledge about effective innovations.
This study focuses on two fundamental questions: First, what search strategies do individuals adopt when looking for information; what determines the sequence of their search? Second, what motivates some individuals to share their knowledge, while other members of the community barely participate in an exchange, free riding on the information provided by others? The research team will explore these issues in DNA labs involved in the analysis of crime scene samples. This is a particularly innovation-intensive and a well-defined but geographically dispersed community. The knowledge-intensive nature of this work combined with the manageable, closed universe of participants, make this community an ideal laboratory for the study of impact of information technology on Knowledge sharing in a geographically dispersed community.
