This paper examines motivations of knowledge workers to contribute expertise to online knowledge repositories that support informal learning, and presents findings from both a survey and an experimental study. Results indicate that younger workers and those new to an organization, are more motivated by ‘self-interest’ factors such as gaining name recognition and impressing management, while older workers, and those with a longer tenure, are motivated by more altruistic factors such as sharing and mentoring. These findings point to a need for designers of expertise-sharing systems to emphasize attributes that rapidly build a sense of community, as well as structuring rewards that appropriately motivate those that are new to the community who will not be satisfied by the intrinsic values alone.
By: David Huffaker; Jennifer Lai
Published in: RC24440 in 2007
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