Group items tagged

A Google book from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (only part of the content is displayed)

Summary: "Although groups are initially "wise," knowledge about estimates of others narrows the diversity of opinions to such an extent that it undermines the wisdom of crowd effect in three different ways. The "social influence effect" diminishes the diversity of the crowd without improvements of its collective error. The "range reduction effect" moves the position of the truth to peripheral regions of the range of estimates so that the crowd becomes less reliable in providing expertise for external observers. The "confidence effect" boosts individuals' confidence after convergence of their estimates despite lack of improved accuracy. Examples of the revealed mechanism range from misled elites to the recent global financial crisis."

Summary: "The scores of successful virtual teams the authors examined didn't have many of the psychological and practical obstacles that plagued their more traditional, face-to-face counterparts. Team members felt freer to contribute--especially outside their established areas of expertise. The fact that such groups could not assemble easily actually made their projects go faster, as people did not wait for meetings to make decisions, and individuals, in the comfort of their own offices, had full access to their files and the complementary knowledge of their local colleagues. Reaping those advantages, though, demanded shrewd management of a virtual team's work processes and social dynamics. Rather than depend on videoconferencing or e-mail, which could be unwieldy or exclusionary, successful virtual teams made extensive use of sophisticated online team rooms, where everyone could easily see the state of the work in progress, talk about the work in ongoing threaded discussions, and be reminded of decisions, rationales, and commitments. Differences were most effectively hashed out in teleconferences, which team leaders also used to foster group identity and solidarity."

What is better: more or less freedom to work where and when people want

"But there are tools now: wikis, blogs, microblogging, ideation tools, jams, next-generation project management, what I call collaborative decision management. These are social tools for decision making. These are the new operating systems for the 21st-century enterprise in the sense that these are the platforms upon which talent-you can think of talent as the app-works, and performs, and creates capability."

How to create innovation in the organization

Die Autoren dieses Artikels gehen der Frage nach, wie Organisationen im Jahr 2020 mit Wissen umgehen werden. Dazu haben sie in einem ersten Schritt nationale und internationale Wissensmanagementkonferenzen, Publikationen und Internetveröffentlichungen analysiert, um Wissensmanagement-Visionäre aufzufinden. Dabei sind vier Visionäre aufgrund Ihrer Keynotes und ihrer Veröffentlichungen zu Wissensmanagement-Trends aufgefallen: David Griffiths, Dave Snowden, David Gurteen und Norbert Gronau. Sie werden hier zusammen mit ihren Thesen und Visionen zum Umgang mit Wissen vorgestellt. 

Im Artikel werden auf Basis von aufgestellten Grundanforderungen gängige WikiLösungen vorgestellt, die für den Einsatz in Unternehmen oder anderen  Organisation geeignet sind. Anhand bestimmter Features werden sie verglichen und bewertet, inwieweit sie für die Anwendung im Bereich Wissensmanagement geeignet sind. Die Wikis werden in Bezug auf Benutzerfreundlichkeit, Recherche, Strukturierung und Validierung von Wissen verglichen

Study on productivity gain of 25% by using social media. 

Technology has changed working habits not all for the better. Here are some thoughts on how people get affected and what could be done. Leslie Perlow suggests predictable Time Off (PTO) without gadgets. She claims that people are more satisfied and effective if using PTO system.