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Solid lines represent knowledge sharing between people who talk to each other very
frequently and dotted lines are between people who talk very infrequently.
Figure 10.1. Small-worlds.
The small-worlds phenomenon provides a way of seeing knowledge sharing between
small groups of ants working one particular project cluster, and occasional sharing with
other groups of ants working within a different project cluster. It is perhaps predictable
from the knowledge-sharing theory literature (Hare, 1976), which highlights that we
can only have direct two-way knowledge sharing with a limited number of people. This
is due to the exponential growth of knowledge sharing channels as the number of people
involved increases. When three people wish to communicate with each other freely,
there are only three knowledge sharing channels that need to be kept open (A to/from
B, A to/from C, and B to/from C). For four people there are six, and for five there are 10
channels that need to be serviced. For people, that may mean exchanging pleasantries,
as well as being able physically to get to and from the others at the same time and in the
same place. Having to service a lot of channels becomes time consuming.
So with an ants' nest it is possible to imagine a situation where an ant responds to the
ants immediately around it, obeying self-organisation driver number one (I do what you
do), and joins in doing whatever they are doing; for example building a new passageway.
When a problem arises with the harmony of this activity, no individual in the ant's im-
mediate cluster knows what to do. One of them communicates to an ant nearby that was
not involved in the passage building, an ant from another cluster it only knows weakly.
The weakly known stranger may communicate that it is very busy collecting food. This
then stimulates the passage builders to start collecting food. When a crisis occurs in this
task, the ants look around for previously weak messages about other tasks.
The small-worlds research (Killworth and Bernard, 1979; Watts, 1999; Matsuo et al.,
2001; Richardson and Lissack, 2001; Buchanan, 2002) extends the social network research
(e.g. Mizruchi, 1994; Scott, 1996; Durrington, 2000; Cross et al., 2002) by suggesting
what network shapes have self-organised in human groups, in the natural environment,
in written communication and in biological systems. Management literature increasingly
regards knowledge management as a social networking problem. Hansen (1999),
Roubelat (2000) and Reagans and McEvily(2003) have studied management issues related
to knowledge sharing using weak links.
To summarise, the discussion above suggests that small-worlds networks allow for ef-
fective knowledge sharing both in times of routine and when a strategic response is re-
quired. This further suggests that anyone responsible for designing the knowledge-
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