A Framework for Evaluating Knowledge Sharing Behavior Enabled by Good Practice Repositories: An Application to openBest

Abstract

[BACKGROUND] The traditional way of running a company is outdated. Businesses realize that they must take steps to become more responsible. This involves identifying topics of interest, assessing performance on these topics, planning improvement where necessary, and implementing these improvements. This project focuses on planning improvement steps. Here, organizations determine and plan the actions required to improve performance on ethical, social, and environmental (ESE) topics. The challenge in this phase is to close the gap between high-level goals and concrete actions. The treatment of (interorganizational) knowledge sharing using good practices in good practice repositories is suggested to address this challenge. By sharing good practices, organizations can reuse the knowledge and experience of other organizations to determine steps to become more sustainable. Research reported in the scientific literature has often focused on describing good practice repositories and other knowledge-sharing tools, claiming their expected impact on the knowledge-sharing behavior of the stakeholders. However, evaluating such behavior and validating the knowledge-sharing impact of good practice repositories remains challenging. [OBJECTIVE] This research aims to provide a framework to assess the knowledgesharing behavior enabled by good practice repositories. [METHODOLOGY] We design a knowledgesharing behavior measurement framework to evaluate knowledge-sharing enabled by a good practice repository (GPR). The framework is implemented in an existing model-driven good practice repository proof of concept called openBest. The implemented measurement framework is applied in a laboratory setting using students as surrogate end users. During this empirical test, we collect knowledge-sharing behavior data by monitoring the activity in openBest and collect measured KS activity using the implemented knowledge-sharing behavior measurement framework. These are compared to assess the quality of the measurement framework. We then analyze the measured KS data and investigate how it allows the assessment of knowledge-sharing behavior. Moreover, we investigated the extent to which knowledge-sharing behavior occurs in openBest during the empirical test using measured and monitored activity data. [RESULTS] The measured knowledge sharing behavior reflects the monitored knowledgesharing behavior that we could observe. Furthermore, the measured data are of high quality since no (unexplainable) inconsistencies were observed between the monitored and measured activity data. Additionally, the measured data did not show (unexplainable) flaws in completeness and order. Furthermore, the measured data are suitable for frequency and time analyses involving activities related to KS. It is not suitable for qualitative analysis and, for this, manually monitored data can be used. KS activity measured during the test is mostly limited to the execution of tasks, as only limited additional activities related to KS were observed. [CONCLUSION] The measurement framework we propose allows for assessing quantitative knowledge-sharing behavior enabled by a GPR because the framework captures accurate KS behavior data in a suitable format for quantitative analysis. For qualitative data analysis, the framework is not suitable and, for this, self-reporting or monitored data can be used. The implemented measurement instruments seem suitable for the intended analysis but could be expanded in the future by including more fine-grained activities. The KS activity recorded during the empirical test was mostly limited to the performance of the tasks, but overall there was a some more observed action than expected.