Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Extending earlier research on the individual action component of collective action model, this research examined the impact of social influence and intranet proficiency on individual contribution and retrieval of information from organizational information commons, the corporate intranet. The model was tested using data collected from 13 intact work groups in 5 organizations via LISREL. The research strongly supported our hypotheses in the revised model, and partially supported the pattern of relationships found in earlier studies on individual action component of collective action models.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The roles of ‘knowledge and power’ and ‘knowledge as power’ in development have been increasingly gaining the attention of critical scholars as well as policy practitioners. While the former seek to articulate the way in which (global) development is constituted through power struggles which also entail struggles over knowledge in development, the latter tend to misapprehend both. That is, the discourses of development they construct render invisible that development has been historically a continuously contested practice. This is evident for example, in the continued deployment of the comparative method in the theory and practice of mainstream development analysis. Methodologically, such approaches reify spatial boundaries and operate with a temporal logic that necessarily subordinates alternative conceptions of development to that of ‘past time’ in terms of a temporalisation as ‘past, prior or primordial’. A consequence of this is the foreclosure of the possibility of articulating social struggles in challenge of the politics underpinnings this spatio-temporal fix. This paper argues that a critical engagement of this dynamic with reference to the dialectic between ‘knowledge and power’ and ‘knowledge as power’ in struggles over development can render visible the analytical and practical tensions that ensue under a continued legacy of colonial /postcolonial thinking within a reconfigured ‘international’ political economy of global development.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The goal of this study was to theorize and empirically test network models of organizational member?s information retrieval from their colleagues and digital knowledge repositories (e.g. intranets and databases). Based on the Multi-theoretical Multilevel (MTML) framework (Contractor, Wasserman & Faust, 2006; Monge & Contractor, 2003), this study applied and extended 3 social science theories (transactive memory, public goods, and social contagion) to examine team members? information retrieval networks. Empirical data were collected from 9 organizational work teams in Western Europe. A cutting-edge social network analysis technique, Exponential Random Graph Modeling/p* analysis, was conducted to test the hypotheses. The results found that team members had the greatest tendency to retrieve information from those colleagues whom they perceived to be knowledgeable and accessible. In addition, team members? information retrieval from digital knowledge repositories was greatly influenced by social contagion effects. As one of the original research using a multi-theoretical perspective to examine multidimensional information retrieval networks, this study has important implications for theoretical development, methodological applications, and managerial practices.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: The main goal of this study is to explore the information behavior of information professionals to inform the design of alternative user interfaces that can use multifaceted and multimedia questions for retrieving medical images. The study will use Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology to explore and understand the information-seeking behaviors of medical students and healthcare professionals. Results will be used to inform the design and implementation of a user interface to support user queries that contain text and image features.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Research concerning the impact of stress on eyewitness identification accuracy has largely not included child samples. Furthermore, studies have not examined how stress at the time of an event interacts with stress experienced in the context of performing an identification to predict accuracy. We are currently examining the impact of stress at encoding and retrieval on children’s and adolescents’ identification abilities. Preliminary analyses suggest that the effects of retrieval stress on accuracy vary by gender, with high stress negatively impacting girls but not boys. Subsequent analyses with the full sample will allow us to more fully explore these effects.