Posted by Riva Gianluca on July 02, 2002 at 06:22:32:

In Reply to: Goodwill, Collaboration, and Necessary Maintenance Issues posted by BK Ghosh on June 28, 2002 at 12:27:05:

Hi BK Ghosh,
Research shows that of course money is important, but people are more motivated and creative when they can do something they really like and they perceive a good amount of freedom and equality. This can sound trivial, but for istance Oticon managed to get over a seriuos crisis by breaking the functional boundaries, implementing groups with free entry and with the possibility of working for many groups at a time.
The collaboration you quote is the result of several successful social exchanges. Researches show that people begin to exchange resources not really valuable just to chek the trustworthiness of the counterpart. As the exchanges are successful people usually begin to exchange resources that are more valuable and strategic. Collaboration cannot be implemented in a moment, imho, but necessitates a process of successful exchanges. Gradually, as the process develops, the focus can shift from negotiation to kind of friendship, from market to more relational aspects. What can we do here? I think a rationalization of the archives can be helpful. If people find something really useful in them (I don't mean that now are totally unhelpful, but it's just too difficult for an outsider to get a straight answer)they're likely to return in the site and they're likely to feel a desire to contribute. If the contribution get valuable feedback kinda virtual friendship can develop.
Another aspect I feel important is a greater variety of the fields involved. If, as I do really think, knowledge management is a systemic phenomenon which involves organizational structure, HRM, technology and so on, I think we should have experts in all fields. I still have the feeling that too often IT experts have been dominating the issue. There's too little cross-disciplinary discussion (imho obviously).

Is it possible here to develop effective cooperation? There is not an easy answer, as a lot of studies show that trust and cooperation without f2f interaction is more fragile and difficult to develop.
According to some researches,
successful virtual teams try to "socialize" the environment, maybe we could have a second space, more informal, to say hello to welcomers, to thank people for their contribute, and so on. The site could thank officially people who were very active and participative in the last period of time. Community generally shows some form of care for people, and I think it's this form of care, and passion for what you do, that generates cooperation and motivation, more than money. After all, money has no intrinsic value, it's just something used to gain something else, like power, respect, a family, a car, status. As you can't naturally pay a salary to the contributers, you could try to deliver this "something else".
Hope Helps some way

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