Miss Monster, Miss Cookie Monster.

As most of you my dear friends may be aware of, last friday I sprained my ankle playing tennis. It was the beginning of my weekend, and what followed is short of mind blowing. 

My complete lack of trust in doctors made me diagnose and treat myself, with the aid of my wonderful mexican co-doctor Sergio. I started by icing the injury and followed by applying cream for sport injuries and taking some deinflamatory pills. To say the least friday evening the swelling was going back down and taking the pain with it. That night I slept like a baby.

Next day my ankle was chubby, which is an understatement, it was actually fat. The events that followed opposed the unpredictable.

I had my cereal for breakfast, after which I set up my study area on the dining table. Lazy to do my homework, I sat back and watched iguanas with my leg up in the air, waiting for gravity to take my swelling. I researched a little bit on this and a little bit on that and then I ate some Oreos. I watched an episode of how I met your mother, followed by some more work and then I ate some Oreos. After realising I was restricted to the chair I decided to take the opportunity and advance my project for class and then I ate some Chips Ahoy. By then, I deserved a break, so I watched an episode of Dexter when suddenly I was greeted by some delicious chilli and sour cream chips. This was followed by an episode of how I met your mother and Grey's anatomy and some oreos. I then continued eating Oreos while people were pre drinking to go to the party, I limped them to the door and opened my new packet of Oreos. I watched and episode of Dexter and then I went to sleep.

      
  On sunday, I woke up. Can't remember what I had for breakfast but I started working on my project, so exciting. I took a break and watched an episode of two and a half men and ate Chips Ahoy. I decided to watch a movie, so I watched "Love at first hiccup" and then I made a grilled cheese sandwich. After which I went to the library (bad decision!) when I came back my foot was fat again so I had some Oreos. A couple of shows and movie later, I went to sleep.

Monday, I woke up ready to seize the day (carpe diem!) when I realised I still couldn't walk like a normal person, so... yeah, I decided to have some Oreos but they were gone!! I had no more Oreos left. It was tragic. In a state of confusion I decided food was my salvation, so I ordered dominos pizza! :)

Blog 2 topic: How is collective intelligence used in your profession?

Introduction

Implementation of adequate resources relating to technology and employee management have been presented as key drivers for success by several researchers.(Berg, 2001; Orlikowski, 1992; Ellingsen & Monteiro, 2006) This blog will aim at analysing motivation for employee participation in an organisational wide network. This analysis, will furthermore explore why collective intelligence is valuable to an organisation. Concluding with an overview of the importance of information managers to the successful harnessing of collective intelligence.

Encouraging Participation

Case Studies often present the case where top level management have taken a technologically deterministic approach (Flew 2008) towards new technological implementation. There is a common misconception that solely an investment in technology will yield organisational change towards a flat, free-communication sharing network. This point of view fails to place importance on the human resource management, in charge of the employees during the new system implementation.

Organisational culture being a strong influential factor on employee work mentality, behavior and work processes, has to be taken into consideration. Moving towards a knowledge economy the employees become the “prosumers”(Marketing Chapter 4), therefore, their participation in the producing “information products” (Orna, 2005, p. 12) is essential for a valuable collective intelligence. This is expressed according to Flew (2008) as “quality of participation increases as the numbers participating increases”(p. 48).

Mainly, organisations attempt to retrieve employees tacit knowledge, and attempt to turn it in to explicit knowledge, available to all. The idea of information discrimination can be presented when the voice of lower level employees is disregarded in the implementation process of ICTs. (Berg, 2001; Orlikowski, 1992; Ellingsen & Monteiro, 2006)

Allowing employees, the future members of the organisational information network, to be part of the system process design and implementation, could in return create a heightened sense of accountability and responsibility for employees as well as a higher enthusiasm to participate through contribution.

A part from the open communication lines at all levels, further motivation for “prosumer” (Chaffey, 2000, p. 185) participation could be sparked by changes in the organisational structure and the organisational culture. Incorporation of organisational values relating to team work, collboration and information sharing could go far in changing individualist and competitive work habits often present in a bureaucratic organisation. Furthermore, changes in the organisational merit structure could have significant effects in increasing participation levels within the network. For example, allocation of incentives towards sharing in the form of bonuses or the provision of time, during working hours, allocated to 'networking'.

Value of Collective Intelligence

Investing in ICTs and encouraging participation of employee “prosumers”(Chaffey, 2000, p. 185) will allow for the harnessing of valuable collective intelligence by creating for example a common platform, where collaboration and sharing could take place through the use of blogs, tag clouds, twitters, etc.

Successful implementation and launching of an organisation wide information sharing and collaboration network would increase employee satisfaction, as access to relevant information in a simple manner would reduce frustrations and time wasted searching in the case disparate information sources. These positive experiences in the network could lead to further contribution from the employee and other employees. Resulting in a more valuable collective intelligence.

Collective intelligence is a positive externality, where the benefit to the organisation is greater than the benefit to the individual employee. Underlying reasons, could be a more efficient workforce, since information is more accessible and accurate. The increased work efficiency could be a factor affecting organisational productivity. (Flew, 2008)

Dedrick, Gurbaxani, & Kraemer (2003) conducted a study to find the correlation between investment in ICTs (and complementary human resource investment) and a firms productivity. Results found that organisation that invested in ICTs experienced an incremental change in their productivity levels.

Conclusion

In conclusion, growing interest of organisations to maximize the benefits of collective intelligence opens the doors for information management as a profession. An information manager is involved in studying the organisation dynamics and planning a process for organisational change accordingly, in order to achieve a seamless and successful transition towards the goal harnessing collective intelligence.

Bibliography

Berg, M. (2001). Implementing information systems in health care organizations: myths and challenges. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 64(2-3), Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org.esc-web.lib.cbs.dk/10.1016/S1386-5056(01)00200-

Chaffey, D. (2000). Internet marketing; strategy implementation and practice. New York, NY: Financial Times/Prentice.

Dedrick, J., Gurbaxani, V., & Kraemer, K.L. (2003). Information technology and economic performance: a critical review of the empirical evidence. ACM Computing Surveys, 35(1), Retrieved from http://doi.acm.org.esc-web.lib.cbs.dk/10.1145/641865.641866

Ellingsen, G., & Monteiro, E. (2006). Seamless integration: standardisation across multiple local settings. The Journal of Collaborative Computing, 15(5-6), Retrieved from http://esc-web.lib.cbs.dk/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10606-006-9033-0

Flew, T. (2008). New Media: An Introduction (3rd). Sydney: Oxford University Press.

Orlikowski, W.J. (1992). Learning from notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation. Proceedings of the Cscw'92: proceedings of the conference on computer-supported cooperative work (pp. 362-369). New York: ACM Press.

Orna, E. . (2005). making knowledge visible: communicating knowledge through information products. Aldershot, UK: Gower.

Google invoked Identity Crisis

I prefer Brazilian

I will first give a slight introduction to my interest or more specifically, the particular kind of knowledge that has been put at my disposition (very generously and interestingly!) the last 5 weeks. I am taking two 'technology' oriented subjects here at Bond, one being,digital media and society and the other, internet marketing. 

Here, I will refer mainly to internet marketing knowledge - (but you should thank my DMS class for being able to read this blog!). 

Being the internet and involving marketing means that a lot of information about search engine optimization, adwords, etc. is covered. From personal interest, I have researched the subjects further. Meaning that I have come to grasp a general understanding of how it works. How the information you search on google, or information from your emails and facebook are used for "target marketing"(I have to show off my new vocab *wink* ;-)).

My personal opinion on the matter is that I like reading relevant advertising, although discomforting knowing that google probably knows more about me than I probably do (meant as a joke - but who knows??)! - I said this and realised, that my next point probably contradicts this statement completely (or so I hope!). 

Lately I have received advertising(obviously!). 90% of which has been in dutch. This morning I somewhat translated something about hiring a brazilian belly dancer and then I have seen tons of coffee ad's. Some perfume and make up here and there (=D). 

I hope google is wrong about me, I thought I knew that I wasn't dutch. That I lived in denmark not Holland. As far as I know, I haven't showed special interest in belly dancers and I rarely drink coffee! At decided to rejoice in the fact that I like to smell good and look pretty and it was working until this ad popped up in my screen:

For the record: I have dates, ok?

I have been categorized a geek, I wonder what I was searching in google!

So, all you guys who thought you knew me. Think again! I am a nice smelling dutch belly-dancer-watching geek!

:)