Knowledge sharing in communities of practice: A game theoretic analysis

This research applies game theory to analyze the incentives of knowledge-sharing activities in various types of communities of practice (COPs), characterized by individual profiles and decision structures. Indeed, individual decision making results in the under-provision of knowledge; however, the benefit of knowledge sharing may be raised by IT investment and suitable incentive mechanisms we study here. In general conditions, improving communication and collaboration technologies should be prior to developing data mining technologies. However, when the number of community members is sufficiently small and the heterogeneity of the expected value of knowledge among community members is sufficiently large, developing data mining technologies should be considered more important than the other if most community members are low-type ones. On the other hand, based on a screening technique, we find that the benefit of knowledge sharing in the incomplete information setting can be the same as that in the complete information setting if the cost of more efficient community member is smaller than that of less efficient one.     

Analyzing online B2B exchange markets: Asymmetric cost and incomplete information

This research applies the discriminating auction to analyze the online B2B exchange market in which a single buyer requests multiple items and several suppliers having equal capacity and asymmetric cost submit bids to compete for buyer demand. In the present model, we examine the impact of asymmetric cost and incomplete information on the participants in the market. Given the complete cost information, each supplier randomizes its price and the lower bound of the price range is determined by the highest marginal cost. In addition, the supplier with a lower marginal cost has a larger considered pricing space but ultimately has a smaller equilibrium one than others with higher marginal costs. When each supplier’s marginal cost is private information, the lowest possible price is determined by the number of suppliers and the buyer’s reservation price. Comparing these two market settings, we find whether IT is beneficial to buyers or suppliers depends on the scale of the bid process and the highest marginal cost. When the number of suppliers and the difference between the highest marginal cost and the buyer’s reservation price are sufficiently large, each supplier can gain a higher profit if the marginal costs are private information. On the contrary, when the highest marginal cost approaches the buyer’s reservation price, complete cost information benefits the suppliers.