Emergence of collective intelligence in online communities
☆
Monika Mačiulienė
a,
⁎
, Aelita Skaržauskienė
b
a
Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania
b
Institute of Communication and Mediation, Mykolas Romeris University, Ateities st. 20, Vilnius, Lithuania
abstractarticle info
Article history:
Received 1 February 2015
Received in revised form 1 July 2015
Accepted 1 September 2015
Available online 11 November 2015
Keywords:
Collective intelligence
Online communities
Social indices
Knowledge management
The main focus of this study is on the scientificidentification of preconditions for collective intelligence (CI) to
emerge and the prediction of possible development scenarios based on qualitative research results. The research
subject is online communities that use innovative social technologies encouraging collective decision making,
creativity, entrepreneurship and cooperation. The research treats such platforms of indirect communication as
envi ronments for th e development of CI. The qualitative content analysis aims at exploring similarities,
differences, and relations between interview segments and the theoretical framework for CI Potential Index.
Qualitative research allows to deepen the understanding of CI and specifies a further direction for theoretical
and empirical research. The research conclusions lead to the re-design and alteration of the proposed methodo-
logical framework for CI Potential Index.
© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The growing significance of Web 2.0/3.0, social networks, wikis,
and other collaborative t echnologies in helping individuals and
groups to share knowledge through collect ive platfor ms is a gre at
source for organizational intellectual capital and “could help
human communities evolve the ir collective capabilit ies in an un-
precedented way” (Lykourentzou, Vergados, Kapetanios, & Loumos,
2011, p.217) . The Collective Intelligence (CI) approach is a funda-
mentally different perspectiv e t o how appl ications can support
human interaction and decision-making. Relevant research efforts
from various discip lines focus on the growing role of online collabo-
rative communities in the cooperation emergin g through online
communities. However, little research focuses on knowledge man-
agement techniques in civil society structures, most of which adapt
and use such softwar e in the ir activitie s and proje ct that software
in the form of online communitie s. Lett ieri, Borga, and Savoldelli
(2004) outline several causes of status quo in t his research field.
First, they emphasize the highly diverse, unstable nature of manage-
able data. Second, the author s state that civil society s tructures do
not prioritize knowledge management in their activities. Re-
searchers present significant result s in i dentifying the potential of
CI to solve various societal problems in modeling CI from a conceptu-
al point of view (Luo, Xia, Yoshida, & Wang, 2009), but according to
Lykourentzou et al. (2011, p.219) they do not focus on an essential
issue: “CI system design and optimization processes, through
which CI wi ll be able to emerge in a systemic manner.”
Section 2 introduces the theoretical framework for a CI Index and a
set of criteria for measuring CI in online communities. The methodology
for the CI Potential Index calculation allows the analysis, evaluation, and
assessment of significant ch anges in CI systems and builds on a pre-
defined questionnaire, automatic data collection, and their algorithmic
analysis. The proposed methodology will be empirically tested and ad-
justed according to the results of quantitative research, qualitative re-
search and experiment. This study presents and discusses the results
of a qualitative research study.
2. Toward theoretical framework for measuring CI
According to Lykourentzou (2011, p.224) online communities,
although different in functionality, “seem to share some basic common
attributes and provide the potential for the design of a general method-
ology that will allow the systematic development and optimization of CI
systems.”
The de sign of the CI Potential Index focuses on the creation of a
framework for the evaluation of online community projects and the
identification of potential cases, which could become effective CI sys-
tems. A theoretical literature analysis sets the basis for the design of
an adequate and empirically tested framework (detailed results appear
in Skaržauskienė,Pitrėnait ė-Žilėnienė, Leichteris, Paunksnienė,&
Mačiulienė,2014
). This analysis leads to the identification of three di-
mensions crucial for the CI potential: capacity, emergence and social
Journal of Business Research 69 (2016) 1718–1724
☆
The authors are grateful to contributions from Alicia Mas, University of Valencia, for
her careful reading and suggestions on revising this essay.
⁎ Corresponding author at: Institute of D igital Technologies, Mykolas Romeris
University, Ateities st. 20, Vilnius, Lithuania.
E-mail addresses: maciuliene@mruni.eu (M. Mačiulienė), aelita@mruni.eu
(A. Skaržauskienė).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.044
0148-2963/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Research