Promoting Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities of Practice: Effects of the Cooperative Type and Tie Strength

Abstract

The degree to which people share knowledge has major impacts on the effectiveness of virtual community of practice (VCoP). As an extension to the previous study which investigated the effect of individual cooperative types (cooperator, reciprocator, or free rider) on knowledge sharing, we investigate how much increase in the degree of cooperation will enhance knowledge sharing when there are more knowledge contributors and strong ties exist across the community. We adopt simulation to measure the effect of the cooperative type and tie strength on knowledge sharing. Simulation results reveal that the tie strength positively affects knowledge contribution in VCoP and strongly tied VCoP generates equivalent level of knowledge contribution as that of weakly-tied VCoP with 5% more contributors.