Is Reward always effective as Incentive in Electronic Knowledge Repositories? A Game-Theoretical Perspective
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: This paper is based on the context of electronic knowledge repositories (EKR).There are many problems in people using EKR to share knowledge.We can classify these problems into three types: 1) Free-riding situation, 2) Non-use situation, 3) Dormant situation.Many organizations use rewards to motivate people to contribute knowledge into EKR, but there has been no conclusive evidence of the role of reward.We designed two game-theoretical models: 1) to explain why and how the different knowledge sharing problems occur in EKR and, 2) to promote a better understanding of the effect of rewards in EKR.We found that a reward is misleading if it concentrates only on quantity of knowledge, that is, participants will contribute more quantity but lower quality of knowledge into the network.Our suggestion is that organizations not only add rewards, but also apply some knowledge review systems.The strategy of adding review systems can motivate people to contribute high quality knowledge.
Authors: Xi Zhang, Doug Vogel, Zhenjiao Chen, Minghui Yuan
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems and Management
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1605971015