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.