Dans le contexte de closed inbound innovation, comme une des pratiques de l'innovation ouverte, la qualité de la coordination informelle des salariées prend une place importante. Des idées innovantes peuvent apparaître à tout moment lors de nombreuses conversations formelles et informelles. La génération de concepts est un moment clé de processus d'innovation. De plus en plus d'entreprises impliquent ses salariées dans leurs processus d’innovation et, dans un certain nombre d’eux, les discussions entre les salariées sont organisées en ligne, grâce à des plateformes internes. Nous proposons ici d'explorer les discussions en ligne orientées innovation, que nous avons eu l'occasion de co-animé à travers la collaboration avec un cabinet de conseil. Les discussions en ligne orientées innovation ont été lancés dans le cadre d'une communauté en ligne des salariées afin de permettre à ses membres d'aller au-delà des discussions quotidiennes et d’explorer davantage une tendance ou une opportunité pour le groupe. Ce projet nous amène à étudier la dynamique d'une génération collaborative de concepts en ligne à l'étape d'idéation. Par conséquent, nous présentons trois séries de résultats: d’abord, nous décrivons la dynamique générale des discussions en ligne orientées innovation, ensuite les pratiques de Community Management dans le contexte, et enfin les caractéristiques de la dynamique collaborative de la génération de concepts. De plus, nous essayons d'établir un cadre général permettant l'analyse d'une conversation orientée innovation en ligne pour les chercheurs académiques. Cette recherche nous amène à discuter davantage des liens entre les plateformes d'innovation ouverte et l'organisation de l'innovation. / In the context of closed inbound innovation, as a form of open innovation practice, the quality of coordination among employees takes an important place. Innovative ideas can appear at any moment of the numerous formal and informal conversations. Concept generation is a key moment of upstream innovation processes. Thanks to internal web-platforms, in many organizations employees are integrated within the innovation processes and often, community discussions are organized on-line. We carry an empirical exploration by analyzing on-line, innovation-oriented, web community discussions that we have had the opportunity to co-animate throughout collaboration with a consulting firm. The innovation-oriented online discussions were launched in the context of an online community of employees to allow its members to go beyond daily discussions and further explore one trend or opportunity for the group. In this dissertation, we explore the dynamic of online collaborative concept generation at ideation stage. Therefore, we present three sets of results: firstly, we describe the general conversational dynamics of online innovation-oriented discussions, secondly contextualized community management practices, then the collaborative dynamics of concept generation. Finally, we try to establish a general framework enabling the analysis of an online innovation-oriented conversation. This research leads us to further discuss the links between open innovation platforms and the innovation organization.

Der Aufbau und das Management von Online Communities hat in den vergangenen Jahren für Unternehmen erheblich an Bedeutung gewonnen. Grund dafür ist die steigende Popularität und Nutzung neuer Technologien, insbesondere Social Media, mit deren Hilfe virtuelle Gemeinschaften im Unternehmenskontext aufgebaut und gepflegt werden können. Besonders populär ist die Anwendung in den Bereichen Marketing und PR. Hier werden vor allem die Kommunikation und Vernetzung mit Kunden gefördert. Auch im Innovationsmanagement, gerade bei Open-Innovation-Projekten, werden vielfach Community-Ansätze gewählt, um das Wissen und die Ideen externer Stakeholder nutzbar zu machen. Nicht zuletzt finden Communities auch innerhalb von Unternehmen, vor allem bei Organisationen mit einer großen Anzahl an Mitarbeitern, Anwendung. Mit Hilfe von Social Intranets vernetzen sich Mitarbeiter, die Zusammenarbeit und das Wissensmanagement werden gefördert. Interne Communities sind oftmals ein wesentlicher Bestandteil der digitalen Transformation, weil sie Change-Prozesse auf verschiedenen Ebenen unterstützen. [Aus dem Volltext.]

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This dissertation, "Ban Hammer: Rhetorics of Community Management in the Computer Game Industry," argues that community management, as an emerging corporate discipline, manages community discourse to produce particular subject-consumer attitudes and behaviors. Employing a multi-perspectival, suspensionist methodology, this dissertation analyzes the discursive practices of community managers working in the computer game industry, along with the communities themselves, to discover how computer game communities and computer game development organizations employ a wide variety of rhetorical strategies as they attempt to exert power over one another. Drawing from a wide range of sources in the study of rhetoric, community management, fan studies, computer game development, psychoanalysis, new media studies, and professional communication, this project argues that community manager's inhabit a unique discursive space, one characterized by unresolved and unresolvable discursive tension, and that the work of community managers has an ever increasing importance to both the computer game development cycle and the production of fan communities.

This dissertation explores the effects of democratic competition among political parties in India on natural resources and the ability of local communities to cooperate for natural resource management. A significant number of decentralization policies in developing countries depend for their success on local collective action for the provision of public goods. At the same time, democratization generates multiple impulses in society, and understanding its effects on the prospects for local cooperation is important for explaining the variation in success of decentralization policies for natural resource management. I use historical and ethnographic data to understand the influence of political competition on natural resource outcomes and local collective action. The descriptive analysis draws upon theoretical and empirical literatures on political competition, collective action, and property rights, and is used as the basis for generating hypotheses as well as specifying context-specific measurements of the relevant variables for statistical analysis. I test the hypotheses on two sets of dependent variables – local cooperation and forest condition – and three datasets covering community-based irrigation and forest management systems, co-management institutions for irrigation, soil conservation, and forest management, as well as state-managed forests as the null category without decentralized management. The findings show that an inclusive pattern of political mobilization and party competition have increased the salience of environment and forests in the public domain and democratic politics, with a positive effect on resource outcomes. Further, natural resources are better managed by decentralized institutions, compared to state management. However, communities located in highly competitive electoral districts find it significantly more difficult to cooperate due to interference from political parties. Moreover, communities that are heterogeneous along the salient issue dimension in democratic politics are the worst affected. On the other hand, better representation of sub-group interests in community affairs, prevalence of democratic practices, and linkages of community leaders to multiple political parties are associated with higher levels of local cooperation. In conclusion, the findings demonstrate that communities are better at natural resource management than state agencies, but the impulses generated by democratization can constrain the ability of local communities to manage natural resources. / Dissertation

The video game industry has developed into a multibillion dollar industry. As the rise of social media and other online networks has enabled consumers to more easily express their opinions and critique about the products, these platforms become important when it comes to obtaining customer knowledge. The responsibilities of a community manager includes to obtain this knowledge and share it further with the game developers. Hence, a shared effort between the firm and the online communities of the firm can help create value for the customers in the long run. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the community manager's role within the process of transferring information from the communities into knowledge for the company, and also to explore how it differs in different sized companies. Theory regarding knowledge transfer and conversion, as well as customer knowledge management theory have be covered and in addition also theories on online communities. To achieve the aim of the study a qualitative and exploratory research was undertaken by selecting four case companies. Gathering the empirical findings, it became clear that one company had the most interesting community out of the four cases and therefore it became the main focus in the analysis. A community manager’s role is different depending on the company and its size. Larger firms are more concerned with a social media presence and smaller firms are more concerned with maintaining close relationships. Reaching a conclusion, it was clear that the community manager at Expansive Worlds, had several different roles within the process of knowledge transfer, in terms of acquiring, combining, and sharing knowledge.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Participatory decision making practices were introduced into the Cambodian health sector in the late 1990s by the international development community. These practices were consolidated into a government policy in 2003. The participation policy requires lay citizens and other community representatives to be involved in management committees for health centres. In this thesis I report my research to ascertain if a participation policy results in strong participation. I did an ethnographic study of seven health centres in regional Cambodia. I found that participation levels of all lay citizens and other community representatives in health centre management were very low – the committees were only established where an international NGO supported them. Where the committees were operational, they were not decision making bodies. Community representatives including lay citizens had low levels of participation partly because of poor process design and lack of policy institutionalisation. This context enabled international NGOs to dominate and manipulate the committees. They used committees as a forum to educate community leaders about health, mobilise leaders to promote health centres, and lobby the government for changes in health centre management. By drawing together and extending the work of others, I show how in Cambodia both the participation process used in the study area and the national participation policy became commodities that were consumed in the game of international development. International development actors produced, marketed, and “sold” participation policies and processes and, in return, offered an implicit promise of resources to the government. As a result, lay citizens and other community representatives in Cambodia were short-changed by the consumption of participation policies and processes, being left without meaningful involvement in government decision making.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Participatory decision making practices were introduced into the Cambodian health sector in the late 1990s by the international development community. These practices were consolidated into a government policy in 2003. The participation policy requires lay citizens and other community representatives to be involved in management committees for health centres. In this thesis I report my research to ascertain if a participation policy results in strong participation. I did an ethnographic study of seven health centres in regional Cambodia. I found that participation levels of all lay citizens and other community representatives in health centre management were very low – the committees were only established where an international NGO supported them. Where the committees were operational, they were not decision making bodies. Community representatives including lay citizens had low levels of participation partly because of poor process design and lack of policy institutionalisation. This context enabled international NGOs to dominate and manipulate the committees. They used committees as a forum to educate community leaders about health, mobilise leaders to promote health centres, and lobby the government for changes in health centre management. By drawing together and extending the work of others, I show how in Cambodia both the participation process used in the study area and the national participation policy became commodities that were consumed in the game of international development. International development actors produced, marketed, and “sold” participation policies and processes and, in return, offered an implicit promise of resources to the government. As a result, lay citizens and other community representatives in Cambodia were short-changed by the consumption of participation policies and processes, being left without meaningful involvement in government decision making.

For the past 30 years the dominant approach to managing rural water services in low and lower middle income countries has been the community management approach. Yet there is increasing evidence the model is not fit for purpose as too many services fail. The next generation ideas for community management emphasise the need for continuous on-going support to communities – an approach known as the community management plus approach. This thesis tests and develops this next generation community management plus paradigm. It analyses field data from twenty case studies of ‘reportedly successful’ community management programmes across seventeen states in India. Bringing together data from 2,355 household surveys, 272 interviews and 130 focus groups it provides a synthesis that assesses the type and level of support found in successful examples of community management. The evidence from these case studies demonstrates that communities receive significant recurrent subsidy covering between 7-48% of operational expenditure. This is in marked contrast to the conventional principles of community management whereby communities cover 100% of these costs. Analysis of organisation types also shows how community management has been shaped by the devolution of governance in rural India. Many community management programmes involve a structural overlap between the local self- government institution of the Gram Panchayat and water committees. The thesis argues this represents a shift to the ‘institutionalised co-production’ of rural water services, involving both the state and private citizens in public service delivery. Overall, the research shows that successful community management in India involves continuous on-going support as per the community management plus paradigm. However this has required the nesting of the model within the broader system of local self-government which blurs the lines between public and community management.

Online communities have grown to be an important feature of modern life, and substantial economic assets in their own right. Over the years, organizations that provide them have adopted a range of management practices, or policies. We propose that the choice of policies to manage an online community can be viewed under the lens of mechanism design. Using both empirical data and computer simulations, we investigate how online community providers might decide to put in place and evaluate such mechanisms.