Description
Research on online professional communities has increasingly gained prominencein management literature as organizations, entrepreneurs and professionals
implement online platforms for knowledge exchange. These communities provide a
work-related social platform for knowledge and expertise exchange to be attended
by knowledge workers, such as the employees of organizations or entrepreneurs.
One of their distinguishing features is the ability to self-organize, without using
formal rules and procedures, or an explicit hierarchy. Instead, social norms act as
alternative governance mechanisms. However, a thorough review of the literature
on the role of social norms as governance mechanisms is still lacking. We provide
an illustrative overview that answers the question how social norms govern
organization within online professional communities. We derive three social norms
- sociality (to be social to each other), support (to support each other), and sharing
(to openly share knowledge with each other) - from research on online professional
communities. We conclude by explaining how these three social norms influence
distinct organizing processes within online professional communities.
| Period | 12 Aug 2011 |
|---|---|
| Event title | 71st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management |
| Event type | Lecture |