Studies on information sharing behaviour

Recent information science literature on information-sharing theories or models is really scarce. In the edited book of Fisher, Erdelez and McKechnie (2006), that embraces the theories of information behaviour, there are only attributes to information sharing while discussing Rioux and Erdelez’s (2000) and Pettigrew’s (1999) works. In the work of Rioux and Erdelez the acquisition of information encountered and shared on the Web is discussed. Information acquisition and sharing models propose that individuals encounter and store other people’s information needs. When this information is relevant for others, the possessor recalls this information and then shares it with individuals who need this. In the acquisition and sharing model, the acquirer behaves considering his or her own needs and the other people’s

needs. In Pettigrew’s (1999) work, the information environment in health clinics and the information behaviour of the nurses, patients and seniors are identified. The social atmosphere in the clinics enables both parts to create and share human services’ information. The clinic is a social area where information is created through the interaction of individuals. In this context, the social constructionist approach is inevitable for investigating this kind of information behaviour of patients, nurses and seniors. Thus, the study developed information ground concepts where human services information is created by the conversation between the nurses, patients and seniors. Pettigrew’s work is similar to Tuominen and Savolainen’s (1997) social constructionist approach. They propose that people construct versions of reality by communicating among themselves and, thus, exchanging what they know about the problem. Through information exchange, they intend to solve their problem. In their study, people facilitate the purposeful and spontaneous information sharing in their conversations.

As there are some other works that focus on the information-sharing behaviour of individuals in different contexts, one other similar work to Pettigrew’s is McKenzie’s (2003b) Everyday Life Information Seeking model. People seek information from each other. They assist each other by exchanging information to solve each other’s information problems. Proxy information exchange occurs through: active seeking in information encounters, active scanning in information encounters, non-directed monitoring in information encounters and interaction by proxy with others (McKenzie, 2003b).

Similar to the above studies, Fulton (2009) investigat the information-sharing activities of genealogists in the context of leisure activities. His work is based on Talja’s (2002) collaborative information-sharing model (social exchange), Erdelez and Rioux’s encountered information (on the Web) and Hersberger, Murray and Rioux’s (2007) online information exchange communities model as analytical frameworks. In the emergency health care context, Sonnenwald and her colleagues (2008) have conducted research on information-sharing by teleconferencing. Their research aims to investigate how to facilitate

immediate access to the required domain information held by experienced senior health staff when distance exists between the team members. Their study investigated the information-sharing activities of team members from both the informatics side and the social capital side. The use of 3D technology for information sharing in the emergent cases help paramedics to take action more effectively and respond to urgent cases. Immediate access to the required information gave the advantage of rapid responses.

As another information exchange environment, communities of practice (CoP) have been studied in many researches. CoP is a social world where all participants learn from each other through exchange and communication (Lave and Wenger, 1991). It emerges that in the context where people have common concerns they embrace sharing activities among people (Davenport and Hall, 2002). Communities of practice are groups of people who share a set of problems, or a passion about a topic and who deepen their knowledge by interacting with others on an ongoing basis (Wenger et al., 2002). This information-sharing practice is interpersonal, among members, and incorporates sharing expert or professional knowledge, or any other kind of information through informal means. Wenger et al. (2002) point out that knowledge creation and learning is deeply embedded in CoP. CoP is concerned with how newcomers learn their professions by seeking and sharing with others.

Social capital and information-sharing linkage is investigated by Widén- Wulff and colleagues (Widén-Wulff et al., 2008, Widén-Wulff and Ginman, 2004). They investigated the phenomenon through the dimensions of social capital and they discuss the link between the information-sharing motives of the organisation members and organisational knowledge (Widén-Wulff and Davenport, 2007).

Widén-Wulff and Davenport’s (2007) paper is amongst the first to analyse the information-sharing behaviour of the organisational members of two Finnish firms in terms of organisational knowledge production through the analysis of activity systems. Also, their work is intimately related to the present researcher’s interests since it uses Activity Theory as a theoretical

framework. Their aim is to investigate the individual and group information behaviour role in organisational development and evaluate the mediating artefacts in the process via using Activity Theory as an analytical tool.

Another comprehensive work about information behaviour models is the book of Case (2002). In the book there are prominent information behaviour models; however, none of them pertains to information sharing as a main discourse. The models are mentioned considering the information seeking behaviour of social groups or work groups, such as professionals, students, ordinary people etc. Recent models, such as Wilson’s (1981, 1997, 1999b) information behaviour models attribute information exchange to individuals; however, this point is not discussed in depth from a social point of view. This point does not highlight information sharing behaviour in collaborative situations. In his early model, Wilson (1981) discusses the information seeking behaviour of the user as opposed to other people. He determines this as the “information exchange” where “the use of the word 'exchange' is intended to draw attention to the element of reciprocity, recognized by sociologists and social psychologists as a fundamental aspect of human interaction. In terms of information behaviour, the idea of reciprocity may be fairly weak in some cases (as when a junior scientist seeks information from a senior but hierarchically equal colleague) but in other cases may be so strong that the process is inhibited, as when a subordinate person in a hierarchy fears to reveal his ignorance to a superior” (Wilson, 1981, p.4).”.

As a summary, the recent information behaviour research literature which discusses information-sharing activity, focuses on the types of and motivations behind information sharing (Widén-Wulff, 2007; Talja, 2002; Davenport and Hall, 2002), sharing the encountered information on virtual communities (Fulton, 2009; Hersberger et al., 2007; Erdelez and Rioux, 2000), spontaneous information exchange in everyday life contexts for everyday life information needs and information exchange for health care (Sonnenwald et al., 2008; McKenzie, 2003b; Pettigrew, 1999), and social capital and information-sharing behaviour (Widén-Wulff et al., 2008; Hall and Widén-Wulff, 2008; Widén-Wulff and Ginman, 2004). It is worth noting

here that there are many studies on information sharing in the supply chain and organisational networks but these are not related to this research area so they will not be discussed in this part. There is still a gap in the literature regarding collaborative information-sharing behaviour.