In part 3 task is to setup the Netlogo model of the knowledge creation collaboration that is the heart of the “Security Awareness” project given to the IT manager. The assignment will be submitted in Moodle (.nlogo file plus the PDF that is a log of the work and records testing, screen dumps and so on). Everyone is expected to “have a go” at all aspects of the assignment. The documentation and the Info Tab of the model must include the participants, student ID numbers. You should also mention any outside help you have received. I view seeking help as a positive experience and it is only right that it be acknowledged Assignment Objective. The objective is to setup a NetLogo model that enables the study of the ideation involved in the security awareness project. This is about setting up: The world co-ordinates Visualisation, turtles and patches Coding – variables, initialisation, running and stopping the model Controls – Appropriate sliders, switches and pull-down scenario chooser. Tracking – monitors, totals, changes in turtle colours, messages, etc. The model should be capable of being run bug-free to show a representation of idea creation, refinement and assessment by the IT-Manager. The model will be based on the Collaborative Wellness Unit (CWU) and the SECI model of knowledge creation (refer to lectures). The model your group develops in this assignment will be used in assignment 4 to study an aspect of knowledge creation to come up with ways of facilitating knowledge creation for the “security awareness” project. The Project Brief In this section, the model structure and suggested approach referred to as the “project brief” will be discussed. Like all briefs from management, there are some vagaries, ill thought out assertions and contradictions. Furthermore, the lack of detail allows for some adaptive thinking on your part and you have much lee-way as long as what your group does is interesting and the decisions documented in your submissions. The Scenario. The participants are knowledge creators (refer to the lecture notes) who are independent, exercise free will and are not prone to sharing their knowledge. They see their knowledge as their competitive advantage in the organisation. At the initialisation of the model, one or more knowledge creators have an “idea”, that they consider potentially to be useful for inclusion in the security awareness plan. They reflect on their idea, and refine the idea, knowledge resources are accessed, experts called in to help, other groups consulted and so on. During this process, the idea is refined to a point where it is included in the security awareness plan by the IT manager. During refinement, the IT-manager assesses the idea for its usefulness for inclusion in the security awareness plan. Refer to the collaborative wellness unit in the lectures. A role is a responsibility in a business plan. In the scenario, knowledge workers occupy and perform roles to interact with other roles occupied by knowledge workers. A knowledge worker may have multiple roles. An important consideration is toask how well does a knowledge worker fit into a role and perform that role? Also, are the roles in the group compatible and encourage sharing knowledge? The NetLogo Model The model is not so much about the number of turtles but rather tracking and modelling the interaction between them. There are two primary measures that you can use. The first is a scale of usefulness as shown in Table 1 below. The IT-manager assigns a usefulness assessment to the idea. The second measure is that of “effective emergence” (Rose 2016, p. 116). Paraphrasing, the effective emergence of an idea is the measure of the number of assessments applied to the idea between the ancestral assessment that identified the idea and the current the current assessment. Table 1 Usefulness Assessment It is suggested that you use one of the Assignment 2 models developed by you as a basis for this assignment. It is also recommended that you look at the Netlogo model library for inspiration. For example: the “Team Assembly” example in the networks section can be used to consider how people work together; use code examples to understand how to make turtles execute in a particular order. NetLogo 3 Model Guidelines: 1. There are between 4 and 6 groups in the IT Team. The minimum group membership is 2 knowledge creators; the maximum is 5. You will need to initialise the group membership using a randomized algorithm. Your model could choose to focus on one group with its membership and just include other group turtles. This could help you make it easier to understand the dynamics of the model 2. The IT-manager is a special knowledge creator and is the only one who can make a usefulness assessment. The IT-Manager resides on a patch called the office. The office may be categorised as physical or virtual. For this assignment, all spaces will be physical. All of the assessments are “stored” in the office. 3. Groups meet with the IT-manager in the office. Normally, all members of the group would be present on the office patch, but they can also communicate remotely (indicated by communication links between the members). You will need to think about how to take into account the differences between face-to-face and meetings using IT infrastructure such as video conferencing, and so on.4. In many organisations, people invariably find a “go to” person, one who knows “who knows what” and other knowledge. A facilitator, technically this person is a boundary spanner (see lecture notes). For the purpose of this model, we will refer to this boundary spanner as a ”librarian” and they reside on the library patch. If a group or participant token lands on the library patch then they are helped to improve their capabilities and their roles are more aligned to the task at hand. 5. Other patches: a.Meeting room patch: The group meets here to refine ideas. b.Socialisation patch: Informal socialisation that is “out-of-office” hours. A relaxed collaboration. This may be the whole or part of the group meeting. Social barriers are relaxed. c.Reflective Patch: This is the private space for a knowledge worker. It may represent the library or home areas. It is a place conducive to reflective thinking. d.Other patches: You want to add other patches that are appropriate to your model. These may include a patch representing an external organisation like a potential client or a stakeholder. 6. Groups and Knowledge creators move between the patches. The IT-manager stays in the office and the librarian stays in the library. In the scenario, knowledge creators have ideas and refine them with other members of their group. A knowledge worker may have an idea at any time in any patch. Ideas may come from reflecting over conversations or be triggered through interactions within the group or perhaps from mentoring by the IT-manager. Knowledge workers, working together, may synthesize their ideas with others to improve usefulness and alignments. Ideas may also be discarded. It is suggested that you concentrate on just the development of a single idea to start with. 7. Things to take into account with Knowledge workers: a. A knowledge worker occupies and interacts through their role. How well do they fit the role? If they are a good fit (good alignment) then they are effective at idea creation. The alignment depends on capabilities and the wellness of the knowledge creator to use their capabilities. b. Knowledge workers interact through their roles. If roles have good alignment with other roles, then idea creation and refinement is good. c. Knowledge workers submit their idea(s) for assessment via the group to the IT manager for assessment. So the group, like it’s members has a role and the concept of alignment also applies. d. d. Utilisation. Resources, including the librarian, IT-manager, other members of your team and infrastructure may be busy some of the time and unavailable for your use. Some resources may be dedicated to other tasks and you will need to provide some sort of alternative that does not provide as good a quality service and takes longer. e. All activities take time (that is ticks). The better an alignment, the less time socialisation takes and the fewer the assessments to come up with a useful idea acceptable to the IT Manager. 8. It is suggested that trust, role alignment and free-well are the minimum social aspects to include in the model. You can include more aspects as discussed in the lecture. 9. The collaborative spaces have an effect on wellness. Think of questions like “how well do I work at home, or the library or while been assessed by the IT-Manager in his office?”10. Before finalising your model design, consult the part 4 brief. You may prefer a scenario assignment over others and tailor the model here for that scenario. Part 4 As a result of completing part 3 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 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 participants, student ID numbers. Assignment Objective. The objective is to see how to facilitate a knowledge creation collaboration produce useful ideas that meet stakeholder criteria. In part 3 you setup a NetLogo model to study knowledge creation necessary for the security awareness project. Now, in partt 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 you must select at least one collaborative dimension to study by modelling using the NetLogo developed in part 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. 1. What is “security awareness”? 2. 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)?3. How do we measure “security awareness” and how do we improve it? 4. What knowledge and resources do we need to undertake the project? 5. What is the benefit of improving “security awareness”? 6. What is the risk to the business in doing nothing? 7. 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 the 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. 1. 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. 2. 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 3. 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. 4. 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’sunderstanding 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. 5. 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. 6. 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 coordinator 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 7. 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? 8. 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.9.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. 10. 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.