NetLogo Assignment As a result of completing assignment 1 you have a NetLogo model of the knowledge creation collaboration that is at the heart of the security awareness project. In this assignment, you will explore one or more aspects of knowledge creation in the security awareness project. The assignment will be submitted as a group assignment in Moodle (.nlogo file plus the PDF that is a log of the work and records testing, screen dumps and so on). The documentation and the Info Tab of the model must include the Group’s participants, student ID numbers and who is responsible for what. Assignment Objective. The objective is to see how to facilitate a knowledge creation collaboration produce useful ideas that meet stakeholder criteria. In assignment 3 your group setup a NetLogo model to study knowledge creation necessary for the security awareness project. Now, in assignment 4 you will use this model to gain insights into the knowledge creation collaboration of the security awareness project. Model Changes Your model needs to be focussed on the selected aspects you are investigating. A pulldown menu is required for the submission so I can see interesting behaviours and behaviours I can follow and assess. The code comments should highlight adjustments/enhancements and so on made to support the assignment objectives. Collaborative Dimensions for Investigation. For this assignment your group must select at least one collaborative dimension to study by modelling using the NetLogo developed in assignment 3. The dimensions do interact in complex feedback loops – for example the purpose dimension effects all other dimensions. It will be necessary to make some simplifying assumptions to achieve the modelling objectives. The group will need to list and justify all assumptions made during the assignment. Furthermore, the group will need to consider how these assumptions have affected their model’s behaviour. It is tempting to apply statistical measures and network analysis (centrality and so on). The issue here is that you are dealing with a small group. You cannot make averaging assumptions or behavioural assumptions. Common social network measures aren’t really useful because of the dynamics in the model. Furthermore, modelling of free-will has been introduced and you will only have time for a limited number of runs of the model. Then there is the issue of only being able to partially validate your model. This brief discussion means that in your submission, you will have to think carefully about how you summarise the usefulness of your model and the way you have employed it. The purpose of the project is to “improve security awareness”. This statement is largely meaningless as it stands. At a minimum your group should provide answers to the following questions and then ensure the model fits this elaborated brief. What is “security awareness”? Will our answer to (1) be acceptable to business stakeholders? Will we need to provide training (group sessions, training material and so on) to the business? Do we need to involve other teams in the organisation (such as HR)? How do we measure “security awareness” and how do we improve it? What knowledge and resources do we need to undertake the project? What is the benefit of improving “security awareness”? What is the risk to the business in doing nothing? Without a clear purpose, we cannot ask the questions to direct our modelling study. So the final question is: “What do we investigate?”. Dimensions for Study Select one or more dimensions for your study in the model. Selecting more than one dimension will attract bonus marks in the assessment. If you do not select the purpose dimension, then the purpose remains unchanged and is defined in your answers to the above questions. At the start of a collaboration, it is generally assumed that the purpose as interpreted by the collaboration’s facilitators, meets the expectations expressed by the stakeholders. Furthermore, it is assumed that all participants have been briefed about the purpose, understand and accept their role and are confident they have the requisite capabilities and access to resources in order to perform their roles. You are attempting to make the model follow experience in real-life collaborations. However, given the constraints of the assignment, NetLogo and time you should scope your investigation to changing one independent variable and then measure/track changes across all relevant dependent variables. You may need to make assumptions that the effects may be negligible in some dependent variables and therefore are excluded from consideration. Your investigation should yield realistic results that could be used in further follow-up studies. Purpose. As a knowledge creation collaboration progresses, the experience and the knowledge created can influence both the purpose and the wellness of the knowledge creators. Track the effect of a change in the purpose of the collaboration. This will affect all assessments, that in turn will affect role alignments and so on. Knowledge Worker capabilities. A knowledge worker applies their capabilities through their roles. Wellness will affect how a knowledge worker applies their capabilities through the role. How well the role is aligned to other roles and the purpose determines the relevance of the capabilities. For example, changes in the role or role alignment may require the knowledge worker to learn or use different capabilities. It may also be the case, that the knowledge worker had assumed that their capabilities aligned with their role, but then discovered they needed to upskill. Track the effects of a change in a knowledge worker’s capability Role Alignment. Choose a role alignment to change and then track dependent variables. In doing this option, you will need to state what you mean by role alignment and how you are measuring it. Messaging. Messaging is at the heart of a human interactions. There are four in validating a message between a sender and receiver. Firstly, verify the receipt of the message (in face-to-face, the receiver may nod their head in acknowledgement for example). Secondly confirm the message was meaningful to the receiver. Thirdly assess the fidelity of the receiver’s understanding against the sender’s intended meaning. Lastly, determine the usefulness of the message relative to the purpose of the collaboration. It is recommended that you approach this from the perspective of “Media Naturalness Theory” (Peng & Sutanto 2012, p. 145) where you consider how the appropriateness of technology choices affects the content and ability to derive meaning from the message. This can be done by comparing a face-to-face meeting and a disbursed meeting relying upon communications support. Utilisation and Knowledge Availability. At the start of the collaboration it has been assumed that all participants and supporting staff have sufficient time to be involved in the collaboration. However, as the collaboration progresses, circumstances and priorities change. It may well be that some subject matter experts are fully utilised on other projects (or they choose to be so). Knowledge requirements may change needing new resources and so on. Trust comes into play. Vary the utilisation of selected knowledge workers, IT-Manager, librarian to see the effects on the model. Social Dimension. The social dimension is the human context of the collaboration. It includes: responsibilities and relationships; social complexity (Ellis 2006, p. 15); interactions (culture); sharing; social capital - “advantages that individuals or groups have because of their location in social structure” (Burt 2001, p. 203. Figure 1); and value assessments. On the face of it, this is a difficult and somewhat confusing dimension to investigate. Consider that your group will invariably have appointed someone to act as a co-ordinator. The co-ordinator liaises with other groups, seeks clarification from the IT-manager and deals with subject matter experts. In effect, the co-ordinator is a boundary spanner who facilitates the sharing of knowledge (Peng & Sutanto 2012; Williams 2011). Focus on the boundary spanner and consider the effect of trust (say) or other property on their ability to facilitate knowledge. You could consider what happens when a new knowledge creator joins your group. Cliques. Cliques are a type of social relationship. They are characterising as a collection of people who primarily only communicate with members of their clique. This knowledge sharing will not occur, unless absolutely necessary and with great reluctance across a clique’s boundary. Investigate what happens when a clique forms in the collaboration. It is suggested to consider this from the perspective of a boundary spanner. How do you overcome a clique? Collaborative Spaces (von Krogh & Geilinger 2014). What is the effect of space on knowledge creation collaborations? Here, you should make a list of attributes that may affect a collaboration at a particular venu (office, social venue, library, meeting room and so on). Decide how you will model this attribute and then compare the model as venues are changed or attributes are changed. Stakeholders. A stakeholder is literally anyone who has an interest in the collaboration. Pragmatically, it is necessary to make a judgement call on who is a stakeholder. In the assignment scenario, the stakeholder would be people who use the knowledge contribution (in this case the plan) to derive value through use (apply the plan to improve security awareness). For the assignment purposes, this would be the IT-Manager and the director. There are two ways of tackling this investigation, firstly the issue of lack of clarity of purpose and secondly discovering that there are other stakeholders who have expectations but have not been consulted. In this scenario this is mot likely the HR department. Usefulness Assessment. It is usually assumed that management has an ability to assess the usefulness of knowledge created by collaborations under their direction. However, frequently in real life, this is not the case. There can be a variety of reasons for this, ranging from ignorance to being prevented from considering certain attributes. An example of the latter is a director being prevented from considering environmental effects of a new product due to his agreement with shareholders. From the analysis of “security awareness” carry out a before and after comparison of the collaboration by changing the assessment algorithm. References Burt, R.S. 2001, 'The socal capital of structural holes', in F. Mauro, R. Collins, P. England & M. Meyer (eds), New Directions in Economic Sociology, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, pp. 201-47. Ellis, G.F.R. 2006, The re-emergence of emergence. The emergentist hypothesis from science to religion: On the nature of emergent reality, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Peng, Y. & Sutanto, J. 2012, 'Facilitating knowledge sharing through a boundary spanner', IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 142-55. von Krogh, G. & Geilinger, N. 2014, 'Knowledge creation in the eco-system: Research imperatives', European Management Journal, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 155-63. Williams, P. 2011, 'The life and times of the boundary spanner', Journal of Integrated Care, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 26-33.