(Dis-)satisfaction with the online community - Herzberg’s two factors theory in a community context

Intuitively, one would say that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are like two poles on the same continuum. But that is not necessarily so. In the context of job satisfaction and job performance Herzberg developed his two factors theory and showed that there is a set of factors that causes satisfaction (motivators) and another one that causes dissatisfaction (hygiene factors) when absent. [1]. The practical implication is that to improve job attitudes and productivity, administrators must recognize and attend to both sets. The question is whether this theory can be applied to satisfaction with an online community and participation in community life as well.

Social information behaviour as a Driver of Online Communities

The need for information is one of the reasons why people participate in communities and information exchange (like giving and receiving support) is a social phenomenon. But very often, seekers of information are seen as individuals and the focus in many studies lies on individual information behaviour - omitting socials aspect. Reddy & Jansen [1], on the other hand, argue that more emphasis should be put on these social aspects in information behaviour, that is why they investigate the driving forces that lie behind social information

Why People Participate in Online Communities

Why do people hang out online and what motivates them to participate in online communities? There are two very interesting studies that provide some insight into the answers of these questions.(continue reading on The Community Manager)

Social Presence, Social Identity and Participation in Online Communities

In an empirical study from 2006, Shen et al. [1] combined two important concepts - social presence and social identity - in order to investigate their effect on community participation. The structural model revealed that social presence is a decisive factor in creating social identity and that the influence of social presence and social identity on participation is bigger than the fulfillment of information needs (one of the primary reasons why people join a community).

Gamification – What is the benefit for community management?

Gamification is a very young and hot debating topic. The term was not existent before 2010 [1], a fact that might explain that there are so few empirical studies on this subject. Furthermore, the available studies show mixed results [2]. Apparently, the effectiveness of gamification depends on a whole set of interrelated factors (community topic, community type, community size, cultural factors, members' motives and appraisals, the design of the reward system itself etc.). This multitude of determinants makes it difficult to decide whether gamifying one’s own community site may be such a good idea after all.

Sense of community in virtual communities

Sense of community (SOC) is a concept in community psychology with far ranging implications for the management of face-to-face communities. It is applied to geographical communities (i.e. neighbourhoods, blocks, colleges) as well as to relational communities of interest where members are brought together primarily by social interaction and not by territorial demarcation. If you google for instance „developing sense of community“ you will see that SOC is a desirable thing because individuals and institutions devote a lot of energy to its creation. So, can this concept be made operational for the management of virtual communities?

Why Knowing Your Community Type is Important

Should you ban off-topic discussions in your community? Is it always a good idea to promote growth? Does a large number of anonymous members threaten your community? Three different questions it seems—but the answers have one thing in common: the way the member is attached to the community. Two basic types of communities can be distinguished: members may be attached primarily either to the community as a whole, or to other members. This has some interesting implications (continue reading on The Community Manager).