Knowledge productivity: the development of knowledge as social communicational process

Kirsti Booijnk-Kemna, student at the University of Twente, did her bachelor-research on knowlegde productivity. She investigated the social and communicative process that plays an important role in knowledge development.

Here Kirsti introduces herself:
"Why start a research on knowledge productivity? Well, I started one out of curiosity. As a student of the bachelor study ‘Educational Design, Management and Media’ of the University of Twente, the word ‘knowledge productivity’ to me was very abstract. I felt the need to find more practical cues to deal with it. That was when my passion about knowledge productivity started to grow. I started reading about it and found the 11 principles of knowledge productivity that were developed by Suzanne Verdonschot and Paul Keursten (2006). The principle about ‘making it a social and communicational process’ intrigued me the most, so I decided to do my final paper of the bachelor about this topic. The research was started in January 2006 and hopefully will be finished around September 2006."

During the research, the role of the social communicational process on knowledge development was investigated. To do so, the existing literature was studied first to find out more about knowledge productivity and the relation between social communication and knowledge productivity. Finally several factors of social communication were found, that are related to the development of knowledge.

The second part of the research existed of a case study in which it was investigated how the factors that were found during the literature study, interact on knowledge productivity processes during real life situations. How do they support or slow down the creation of knowledge?

After this empirical study she concluded that the factors found in literature were described on a too detailed level to be meaningful and to do justice to practice. She then reformulated these factors into five more open ones:

1. Creating space
2. Getting and bringing
3. Being personally involved
4. Positive attitude
5. Composition of the group/team

In December 2006 she finished the research. The research is summarised in this (dutch!) article she wrote.