Exploring Transitions between Communal and Market-Based Knowledge Sharing : A Collective Action to Resolve Uncertainty

Markets and communities are often compared as alternative forms of knowledge sharing, but the process by which people dynamically transition between them is less understood. As a preliminary study of these transitions, we design a technology that allows geographically distributed participants to either buy knowledge (using virtual points) or request it for free. We use a data-driven, inductive approach, studying 550 members in over 5000 interactions, during nine months. Because the technology offered participants choices between market or community forms, we can document both individual and collective transitions that emerge as people cycle between these forms. We tentatively propose that the uncertainties endemic to knowledge sharing are the impetus for collective sensemaking and action which prompt these transitions. Communities evoke uncertainties about knowledge sharing's costs and benefits, which markets resolve by quantifying explicit prices. However, if people manipulate markets, they create uncertainties about the validity of those prices, allowing communities to reemerge, establishing certainty via identity-based validation