1999 Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 111-121
Information sharing within an organization using computer networks is becoming more important each day in line with the expansion of the Internet. We are interested in the issue of information sharing on computer networks within an organization. Therefore, we examine user behavior in terms of information acquisition using computer networks. The results of this study demonstrate the importance of organizational information sharing. The study of retrieval and referential logs recorded during a twelve-month experiment of a prototype know-how management system highlights the importance of three factors in organizational information sharing : interest in shared information use, curiosity about shared information, and clues on how to use shared information. Based on our observations, we propose a concept called "Information Acquisition Awareness" that supports organizational information acquisition by addressing these factors. The support functions related to these three factors are : (1) stimulating the user's latent interests in shared information use, (2) arousing the user's curiosity about shared information, and (3) giving opportunities to acquire clues for using shared information. These three functions are integrated into a support system, called GGG, by extracting useful information automatically from shared information. The effectiveness of GGG is shown by the evaluation. The results show that the proposed support functions have significant effects on promoting organizational information sharing when users notice the presence and the value of shared information, which had previously lain idle in the system.
