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We investigate how the propensity to trust, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation drive the intentions of individuals to share knowledge in idea crowdsourcing. Building on motivation theories and Uses & Gratifications (U&G) approach, we conducted a web-based survey within IdeasProject, an open innovation and brainstorming community dedicated to harvesting ideas. Based on a sample of 244 users, our research shows that the key driver of knowledge-sharing intentions is made up of two intrinsic motivations — social benefits and learning benefits. We also found that recognition from the host company affects intention to share knowledge. From the management point of view, the relative importance of social integrative benefits calls for better facilities available for users to be able to help each other in formulating and developing their ideas. Learning and creativity could be inspired by feedback from professionals and experts, while providing insight into technological advances and features dealing with the current tasks.

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As organizations are increasingly moving towards geographically dispersed and virtual forms of collaboration, knowledge sharing through social software such as wikis is widely acknowledged as an important area of research and practice. However, social software remains an underinvestigated issue in the literature on knowledge management (KM), and there is a lack of studies demonstrating how organizations can successfully incorporate these technologies into their everyday operations. To bridge this gap, our paper examines a case of successful wiki implementation. We claim that understanding the implementation of wikis requires a sociotechnical perspective focusing on the organizational context and activity system in which they are implemented rather than on their technological proficiency. Furthermore, we claim that their implementation brings about change in existing social systems, and results in new kinds of social constellations, interactions, and identities, which are manageable and controllable only to a limited extent.

Innovations in web-based technology have generated new channels for communicative purposes. Blogs provide organisations a unique opportunity for informal knowledge sharing. However, much on the current research on blogs has a normative orientation and a focus on tools rather than the related social and communicative issues. Our theoretical approach is internal communication, which we link with the characteristics of this emerging form of social software. Based on our case, we analyse the factors affecting the use of blogs in the corporate environment, position blogs in the sphere of mediated communication and identify a two-dimensional framework on the types of internal blogs and the related modes of communication.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kosonen, M., Henttonen, K. and Ellonen, H-K. (2007) 'Weblogs and internal communication in a corporate environment: a case from the ICT industry', Int.