Contemporary assessment models have focused on the degree to which self- and other reports of personality description agree in an effort to define consensus and agreement about personality attributes. In general, we believe that analyses of this type of data have been limited in that they tend to focus on both simple models (usually dyad-based) and simple aggregations of data (usually correlations between self- and other ratings). In addition, the behaviors used as stimuli in experimental settings lack the richness of behaviors in natural social settings. Here, we present some ideas from social network models in an effort to influence broader conceptualizations of agreement and consensus in assessment. Social network models provide a more complete description of interpersonal behavior beyond the dyadic level in both laboratory and natural settings. After defining some basic social network concepts, we go on to suggest the applicability of these concepts to personality assessment and, more specifically, to how these models might be used to study self-other agreement and consensus about personality judgments. Empirical data are used to illustrate social network concepts in the domain of personality assessment.
Current research on distributed knowledge processes suggests a critical conflict between knowledge processes in groups and the technologies built to support them. The conflict centers on observations that authentic and efficient knowledge creation and sharing is deeply embedded in an interpersonal face-to-face context, but that technologies to support distributed knowledge processes rely on the assumption that knowledge can be made mobile outside these specific contexts. In this paper we describe our multi-method approach for studying the tension between embedded and mobile knowledge in a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation's program on Knowledge & Distributed Intelligence. This project examines knowledge processes and technology in distributed, multidisciplinary scientific teams in the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance), a prototypical next generation enterprise. First we review evidence for the tension between embedded and mobile knowledge in several research literatures. Then we present our three-factor conceptualization that considers how the interrelationships among characteristics of the knowledge shared, group context, and communications technology contribute to the tension between embedded and mobile knowledge. Based on this conceptualization we suggest that this dichotomy does not fully explain distributed multidisciplinary knowledge processes. Therefore we propose some alternate models of how knowledge is shared.
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