| |
| title |
Building Knowledge Networks to Enable Electronic Governance in Developing
Countries |
| |
| speaker |
Prof. Noshir Contractor |
| |
| affiliation |
Department of Speech Communication, Department of Psychology, and the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| |
| abstract |
Recent advances in digital technologies invite consideration of
organizing as a process that is accomplished by global, flexible,
adaptive, and ad hoc transnational networks that can be created,
maintained, dissolved, and reconstituted with remarkable
alacrity. However, despite their best efforts to design technologies
to support the creation and sharing of knowledge via point-to-point
channels or databases, these technologies often remain largely
underutilized. The "If we build it, they will come" adage has little
currency in the design, deployment, and adoption of knowledge
management systems. Yet there are some success stories that suggest
the need to look beyond the design of the technology to understand the
factors that shape the use of technologies to create and sustain
organizational and inter-organizational knowledge networks. In this
presentation, Professor Contractor describes a multi-theoretical
multilevel (MTML) model of why we create, maintain, dissolve, and
reconstitute knowledge and social networks. This model is illsutrated
using examples from his research on knowledge networks involving
profit and non-profit organizations, government agencies, and NGOs
addressing public interest issues such as environmental engineering,
emergency response, and public health. Based on this research,
Professor Contractor describes how knowledge networks can enable
electronic governance in developing countries In particular he
discusses how information technology can be used to make electronic
governance more effective by helping us discover, diagnose, and design
our knowledge networks. |
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| slides |
download |
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| bio | Noshir
Contractor is a Professor in the Departments of Speech Communication
and Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He
is a Research Affiliate of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science
and Technology, Director of the Science of Networks in Communities
(SONIC) Research Group at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, and Co-Director of the Age of Networks Initiative at the
Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. His research program is investigating factors that
lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically
linked knowledge networks among communities involved in emergency
response, food safety, public health, and environmental
engineering. His research, funded continuously for the past decade by
major grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, has been
published in Academy of Management Review, Communication Research,
Computational and Mathematical Organizational Theory, Decision
Science, Human Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting &
Electronic Media, Journal of Cultural Economics, Organization Science,
Small Group Research, and Social Psychology Quarterly. His papers have
received top-paper awards from both the International Communication
Association and the National Communication Association. His book
titled "Theories of Communication Networks" (co-authored with
Professor Peter Monge and published by Oxford University Press)
received the 2003 Book of the Year award from the Organizational
Communication Division of the National Communication Association. He
is the lead developer of IKNOW (Inquiring Knowledge Networks On the
Web), a web-based social networking software and Blanche, a software
program to simulate the dynamics of social networks. For more
information, see: http://sonic.ncsa.uiuc.edu |
