Knowledge Sharing in a Dynamic, Multi-level Organization: Exploring Cascade and Threshold Models of Diffusion

Studying large, dynamic organizations poses a number of challenges, such as accounting for multi-level processes and exploring changes over time. Organizational culture, informal roles, and individual attitudes interact to influence organizational processes such as knowledge sharing, a process vital to organizational performance and innovation. To explore such organizational dynamics, we developed an agent-based model (ABM) that incorporates dynamic social networks over the physical environment of a hospital in southwest Virginia. The ABM simulates attitude formation and knowledge spread within the hospital. Social networks are dynamically created as agents interact while simple rules based on cascade and threshold models of diffusion drive the decision to share knowledge. Results show that there is a strong effect by formal roles in the hospital that are important in social network development and knowledge diffusion.

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