Rinze Bajema
Current position:
Junior Software Engineer at Syntel Banking Software
Thesis title:
Informational and Social Motives Influencing the Intention to Use an Online Entrepreneurial Community During its Emergence
Description:
Since the value of a successful online community of practice has been proven, many organizations have tried to use an online community for internal or external use. Though some turn out to become very successful, most of them fail due to a lack of social activity. Failure in the design, the ease of usage and the social networking possibilities of the community are important reasons why these online communities of practice fail (Preece, 2001; Sieckenius de Souza and Preece, 2004). In October the Rabobank Utrecht has started a community for entrepreneurs. Though many entrepreneurs have signed up, no social interaction takes place on the forums and information and knowledge is not accessed by the entrepreneurs. The current literature on communities of practice focuses mainly on successful communities. Less attention is paid to emerging communities and almost no attention is paid to the distinction between the informational and social motives people have to join a community. This however is an important question to raise, since the existence of a social motive to use a community is crucial for its emergence. When no social motive exists, the community will not emerge and it will remain just another information portal. How the impact of these motives change the intention to use a community during its evolution is also important to understand with respect to the design of the community. The study shows that in the early stages of a community entrepreneurs have both an interest to use a community for gathering information and engaging in social activity. When the community evolves, engaging in social activity becomes a more important reason to use a community than gathering information. There is thus a clear difference between the impact from an informational gathering point of view and a social point of view. The willingness an entrepreneur has to use a community for its informational or social aspect also depends on the need an entrepreneur feels for a community to gather information or engage in social activity. A higher need results in a higher intention to use a community in the first stages of evolution. The reasons why the entrepreneurial community of the Rabobank does not emerge have to do with a failure in the design, the ease of usage and the information gathering and social networking possibilities of the community. Due to its design entrepreneurs have difficulty in using the community. It also does not provide sufficient means to enable social interaction and easy information and knowledge gathering and sharing. Master Thesis 2009 R.A. Bajema 3 The focus of the community is still too much on delivering bits of information and knowledge to the entrepreneur and not on providing good social networking possibilities, which is crucial for a community to emerge. The results of the study should not be generalized to a different population, since its exploratory nature and the focus on entrepreneurs who are involved with the Rabobank Utrecht.
For the complete pdf version of this thesis click
here.
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2008 - Rinze Bajema
