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Lund UniversityInformatics
Collaborative Business
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The effects of Wikis oncollaboration practices in organizations
©Osama Mansour © Sahar MonavariMaster thesis, presented June 2008Size: 80 pagesSupervisor: Mia Sassén
Abstract
Wikis and other web 2.0 technologies are increasingly used in business. In this sense, theoverall purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of wikis on collaborationand the impact of collaboration on organizational innovation. Four interviews have beenconducted with IS managers as well as regular Wiki users in different organizations toshow how can wikis affect collaboration and exploit innovation. The results showed thatthe Wiki is used as a shared platform for collaboration and the ability to participate in the process of knowledge creation in an iterative manner helped in generating more ideaswhich leads to more innovation. We concluded that the Wiki affects the nature andcontext of collaboration.The research showed that the use of the wiki for internalcollaboration purposes helped organizations to benefit from collective intelligencethrough allowing everyone within a team or a project to contribute and share ideas andexperiences. Also, it showed the use of wikis for external use might be associated with problems such as the reluctance of collaborators to participate in the group work andother problems related to data qualityand organizations won’t use it for more open usewhere information is opened for people outside the organization.
Keywords
Wikis, Collaboration, Collective Intelligence, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Peer Production,Organizations, Innovation, Creativity.
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