Knowledge management

1. Knowledge management Group decision making

2. “Common information” or “common knowledge“ effect • occurs when the group only recognizes and prioritizes information that is shared and available for all group members. This is what experts call the “Common Knowledge Effect”, • where a group tends to reject or ignore information or data that is only in the hands of a few members with novel viewpoints. To be more graphic, it is as if statistics determine an idea’s reputation: “if everybody has this bit of information than it is more valuable than information in the hands of just a few”, in other words, “we don’t know what you know, therefore it’s worthless”.

3. One of the biggest problems in teams is the so called common information effect. And it works like this. Team mate A comes across some information, team mate B comes across some information, and team mate C comes across some information. Some of this information will be unique to them, but some will be known to one or both of the other team mates, that is common information. Which information do you think gets talked about more?  Common or unique?

4. Opinion aggregate mechanisms • Face to face interaction • Brainstorming • Nominal group technique • Delphi method • Electronic meeting • Effective leadership ?

5. When face to face discussion doesn’t work • Social loafing • Social conformity • Evaluating apprehension • Domination/Production blocking • the tendency for one individual during a group discussion to block or inhibit other people from offering ideas • Criticism encouraged creativity?

6. Creative abrasion • Focuses on knowledge building at the work-group level within an enterprise as a result of arguments that occur when people with diverse backgrounds, experiences and skill sets come together to work on real business problems

7. Brain storming • Come up with as many ideas as you can • Do not criticize one another’s ideas • Free-wheel and share wide ideas • Expand and elaborate on existing ideas

8. Brainstorming • 1. Criticism is completely forbidden. Ideas are to be generated, not evaluated. Negative feedback is only allowed after all alternatives have been generated. • 2. Piggybacking or using others' ideas is encouraged. All ideas belong to the team. • 3. Quantity of ideas is the key, not quality. • 4. Freewheeling discussion is encouraged. No idea is to be considered too far out.

9. Criticisms on brainstorming • The rule not to criticize may actually inhibit creativity • A persistent minority dissenter sparks more flexible, open-minded, and multi-perspective thinking which, in turn, produces less conformist and more creative outcomes • The dissent compels those in the majority to search for possible explanations; force people to think on all sides of the issue • Why the dissenter is willing to openly disagree and suffer the rejection that often accompanies such disagreement? • Permission to criticize and debate may encourage an atmosphere conducive to idea generation

10. Team creativity experiment • Minimal • Brainstorming: ‘Most research and advice suggest that the best way to come up with good solutions is to come up with many solutions. Freewheeling is welcome; don’t be afraid to say anything that comes to mind. However, in addition, most studies suggest that you should rule out criticism. You should NOT criticize anyone else’s ideas.’ • Debate: ‘Most research and advice suggest that the best way to come up with good solutions is to come up with many solutions. Freewheeling is welcome; don’t be afraid to say anything that comes to mind. However, in addition, most studies suggest that you should debate and even criticize each other’s ideas.’ Nemeth, C. J., Personnaz, B., Personnaz, M., & Goncalo, J. A. (2004). The liberating role of conflict in group creativity: A study in two countries. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34(4), 365-374.

11. Empirical testing of brainstorming hypothesis • Three conditions • No-criticism ground rules • Debate condition • No instruction • Dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints Debate > brainstorming > no instruction Debate condition generates nearly 20 percent more ideas

12. Experiment results

13. Nominal group technique • STEP 1: Each group member writes down individual ideas on the decision or problem being discussed. • Silent generation of ideas • STEP 2: Each member presents individual ideas orally. The ideas are usually written on a board for all other members to see and refer to. • STEP 3: After all members present their ideas, the entire group discussed these ideas simultaneously. Discussion tends to be unstructured and spontaneous. • STEP 4: When discussion is completed, a secret ballot is taken to allow members to support their favorite ideas without fear. The idea receiving the most votes is adopted and implemented.

14. When some group members are much more vocal than others. • When some group members think better in silence. • When there is concern about some members not participating. • When the group does not easily generate quantities of ideas. • When all or some group members are new to the team. • When the issue is controversial or there is heated conflict. • When there is a power-imbalance between facilitator and participants or participants

15. Delphi method • DELPHI • a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator or change agent[5] provides an anonymized summary of the experts' forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a predefined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results.[6] FOR DUMMIES PART1PART 2

16. Delphi method • STEP 1: A problem is identified. • STEP 2: Group members are asked to offer solutions to the problem by  providing anonymous responses to a carefully designed questionnaires. • STEP 3: Responses of all group members, along with their rationales, are compiled and sent out to all group members. • STEP 4: Individual group members are asked to generate a new individual solution to the problem after they have studied the individual responses of all other group members. • STEP 5: Step 3 and 4 are repeated until a consensus problem solutions is reached.

17. Electronic meeting • The group is responsible as a whole • Individual contribution not immediately visible • Anonymization and parallelization • In an electronic brainstorming, the group creates a shared list of ideas. In contrast to paper-based brainstorming or brain-writing methods, contributions are directly entered by the participants and immediately visible to all, typically in anonymous format. By overcoming social barriers with anonymity and process limitations with parallelized input, more ideas are generated and shared with less conformity than in a traditional brainstorming or brain-writing session. The benefits of electronic brainstorming increase with group size.

19. Enabling context for knowledge creation • Mutual trust • Active empathy • Access to help • Leniency in judgment • Courage