Knowledge Sharing and Trading on Electronic Marketplaces

A lack of motivation to share knowledge is one of the biggest problems in introducing knowledge management systems. My dissertation Knowledge Sharing and Trading on Electronic Marketplaces addressed this problem in two ways.

First, it presents a theory of knowledge sharing that explains possible causes of opportunistic behaviour in knowledge management systems and provides testable hypotheses on the effects of incentive systems and cultural factors. The theory was tested empirically against the actual knowledge-sharing behaviour in a multinational company.

Second, it develops a model of electronic knowledge markets that arranges the elements of a knowledge market in a layered framework. Different market mechanisms were tested experimentally in the laboratory for their effect on knowledge transfer, and a web-service-based IT architecture for knowledge markets was implemented as a prototype.

Road map of the thesis in four parts: Part I knowledge assets and their transfer mechanisms; Part II knowledge sharing with the theory of knowledge sharing and the empirical analysis of incentives and culture; Part III knowledge trading with the layered model for knowledge trading and the experimental evaluation of market mechanisms; Part IV KnowMarket, the IT infrastructure for electronic knowledge markets; arrows show the interdependencies between chapters — Road map of the thesis: its four parts and the interdependencies between chapters.

The thesis was supervised by Prof. Hans-J. Lenz and Prof. Myra Spiliopoulou, graded summa cum laude and nominated for the GI Dissertation Award and the Ernst Reuter Prize. The work on multi-criteria matching in knowledge markets still informs my teaching on optimisation and decision making.