Understanding and improving collective attention economy for expertise sharing

Abstract

The importance and benefits of expertise sharing for organizations in knowledge economy are well recognized. However, the potential cost of expertise sharing is less well understood. This paper proposes a conceptual framework called collective attention economy to identify the costs associated with expertise sharing and provide the basis for analyzing and understanding the cost-benefit structure of different communication mechanisms. To demonstrate the analytical power of the conceptual framework, the paper describes a new communication mechanism-Dynamic Mailing List (DML)-that is developed by adjusting certain cost factors. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.