Factors affecting shapers of organizational wikis

Abstract

Abstract New Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis permit any organizational member of a virtual community of practice (CoP) to dynamically edit, integrate, and rewrite content (what we call knowledge shaping ) as well as contribute personal knowledge. Previous research on factors that motivate contribution in virtual CoPs has focused exclusively on factors explaining why people contribute their personal knowledge, with no research focused on why people make the knowledge‐shaping contributions (rewriting, integrating, and restructuring pages) which are possible with wikis. We hypothesize that factors that explain frequency of contribution will be different for those who shape from those who contribute only their personal knowledge. The results support our hypotheses. In addition, we find that shapers are not more likely to be managers or members of a community's core group who might typically serve in an administrator role, contrary to prior expectations. The implications of using Web 2.0 tools to encourage this shaping behavior are discussed.