Governing knowledge commons in Caribbean disaster management: A comparative institutional analysis

2.1.Knowledge commons

The notion of the Commons as an economic institution in its own right was elevated after Garret Hardin’s seminal “The Tragedy of the Commons”, published in 1968 [8]. Although Hardin’s “Tragedy” predicts a failure of collective action, absent one of the traditional governance mechanisms of private property or public goods, the subsequent work of commons scholars in the natural resource arena led by Ellinor Ostrom and various collaborators suggest otherwise, and have established much of the intellectual pedigree in which this academic stream is rooted [13,14]. These studies lead to the identification of a general-purpose set of design principles (see [13], 90–102), if commons as a governance institution is to effectively address the essential core issues of equity, efficiency and sustainability.

Fascination with this discourse has been amplified in recent times with the widespread adoption of ICTs and the pervasive effects of the Internet in particular, leading to the emergence of the Knowledge Commons as a specific variant of the Commons, manifesting idiosyncratic characteristics and a more complex set of social dilemmas [3,7,12,15]. Frischman et al. [7] offer a definition of the knowledge commons as “the institutionalized community governance of the sharing and, in some cases, creation, of information, science, knowledge, data, and other types of intellectual and cultural resources”. They emphasize the idea that while this applies collectively to resources, a group or community of people, the Commons does not denote the elements themselves, but rather the institutional arrangement of these elements. This is a particularly important nuance for the knowledge commons in which typically, participants not only share existing resources but also engage in defining and producing those resources, making it impractical, if not impossible, to separate the attributes of the managed resources from the attributes of the community that produces and uses them [7]. In the case of Caribbean Disaster Management, the community itself, is as valuable as the knowledge artifacts, by way of expertise, empathy and responsiveness in the aftermath of a Disaster.

Several other distinct idiosyncrasies of the knowledge commons, as compared with natural commons, are highlighted by Frischman et al. [7] as follows:

These nuances become apparent and relevant to our subsequent empirical Case analysis.

2.2.Evaluating knowledge repositories

According to [7], these distinctive attributes of the knowledge commons require significant engagement with the specific narrative of the community, given the basic assumption that each actor begins from a position of rational self-interest. We therefore turn to several studies of electronic information repositories such as knowledge management (KM) systems and document management (DM) systems that primarily address the behaviors of participants as the unit-of-analysis, and their motivations/incentives to collaborate, contribute and share knowledge artifacts, and provide important insights to the social dilemmas confronting knowledge commons [1,2,11].

Kankanhalli et al. [11] point to the failure of KM initiatives due to the reluctance of employees to share knowledge through knowledge management systems (of which their particular focus is on electronic knowledge repositories (EKR)). They use both the social exchange theory and the social capital theory to formulate and test a theoretical model to explain EKR usage by knowledge contributors. The model was validated through a large scale survey of public sector organizations and it was found that self-efficacy and enjoyment in helping others significantly impact the EKR usage by knowledge contributors.

Bock and Kim [1] seek to develop an understanding of the factors affecting the individual’s knowledge sharing behavior in an organisation context. They recognize the importance of knowledge sharing and the growing interest in this area by many senior management. They draw on a number of theories including the social exchange theory, self-efficacy, and theory of reasoned actions. They surveyed employees of large public organisations and found that expected associations and contribution are the major determinant of an individual’s attitude toward knowledge sharing. Interestingly they found that expected rewards was not significant to the attitude toward knowledge sharing.

Chiu et al. [2] study focuses on virtual communities and the willingness of members to share knowledge with other members. It is imperative that for these virtual communities to have any value the richness of the knowledge is key, and that this knowledge must be member generated. Thus, it is essential that studies must be conducted to explain why individuals elect to share or not to share knowledge with other community members when they have a choice. They also used the Social Capital Theory but with the Social Cognitive Theory to develop and test a model for investigating the motivations behind people’s knowledge sharing in virtual communities. The study found that community-related outcome expectations play an important role underlying knowledge sharing in terms of both quantity and quality, while personal outcome expectations have a negative but insignificant effect on quantity of knowledge sharing.

The insights derived from these studies inform the design of a baseline survey of the Caribbean Disaster Management community and their knowledge attitudes and practices as described in Section 3.2.

2.3.Analyzing knowledge commons – IAD framework

The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework was developed by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to provide a general-purpose comparative method of institutional analysis for studying commons arrangements in the natural environment [13]. According to Hess and Ostrom [10], the framework is well suited for analysis of resources where new technologies are developing at a rapid pace, such as the new ICTs that have redefined knowledge communities. It is not only applicable to descriptive analysis, but “…is an appropriate place to start when trying to think through the challenges of creating new form of commons such as a new digital repository within an organization…”

Fig. 1.

The Knowledge Commons (IAD) Framework. Source: Frischman et al. [7].

Frischman et al. [7] have taken account of the distinct idiosyncrasies of the knowledge commons in their adaptation of the IAD to the Knowledge Commons Framework (see Fig. 1), which reflects the more complex relationships among knowledge resources, community participants, and governance structures. This is evident, for instance, in the case of Caribbean Disaster Management, where knowledge artifacts such as Disaster Recovery Plans are a function of both standards set by the Governing body as well as the unique local circumstances of the countries participating in the CDM community. [7] describes the application of the framework to the examination and analysis of specific empirical contexts using a systematic cluster of inquiries. Schweik [15] illustrates the application of the approach in the comparative analysis of Open Source Commons institutions, while Morell [12] applies the approach in examining online communities engaged in the creation of digital commons. [12] considers the enabling ICT infrastructure as part of the governance mechanism, rather than as an aspect of the resource characteristics of the commons, hence challenging the neutrality of infrastructure for collective action. This idea is particularly interesting for this study, where, in Section 3.4, we employ the IAD systematic approach to comparative institutional analysis, while examining the relative merits of alternative technology solution approaches to the knowledge management challenges of the Caribbean Disaster Management community.

3.1.Institutional context

In the Caribbean, the Disaster Management community is well organized, with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) designated as a regional inter-governmental agency for disaster management in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). CDEMA’s mandate is to fully take up its role as facilitator, driver, coordinator and motivating force for the promotion and engineering of Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM) in all Participating States. CDEMA is supported and actively engages with a network of national disaster management agencies. For example, in Jamaica the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) is the main body responsible for coordinating the management of the various types of disasters while in St. Vincent and the Grenadines it is the National Emergency Management Office (NEMO) who is assigned the role of activating the community on a countrywide basis to deal with disasters. CDEMA is governed through a regional structure22 consisting of the Council, a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and the Coordinating Unit:

Given its mandate CDEMA represents a key knowledge actor within the CDM Community and knowledge management (KM) is seen as one of the strategic priorities for the community, as reflected in Outcome 2 of the Comprehensive Disaster Management [5], which speaks to the need for enhanced knowledge management to understand disaster risk through the sharing of information and knowledge. Two significant institutional initiatives within CDEMA’s 5-year strategic program in keeping with these priorities are:

3.2.Baselining the CDM knowledge ecosystem

While the Caribbean Disaster Management Community has a comprehensive and mature institutional framework in terms of governance mechanisms and reporting relationships throughout the Caribbean, there are deficiencies in the management and sharing of knowledge resources across the Community as acknowledged by the following excerpt from CDEMA’s 2014–2024 Strategic Plan, page 14 (highlights added for emphasis):

To unpack this issue further, a baseline survey was designed to assess the state of attitudes and practices of members within the Disaster Management community to share knowledge resources with other members of this community. This is an important step of the process in determining the effect the implementation of the Electronic Knowledge Repositories will have on the willingness of the members the Caribbean Disaster Management community to share and contribute to the knowledge resources of the community.

Given this objective, 16 constructs from existing literature related to Knowledge Sharing [1,2,11] were synthesized into a survey instrument. Kankanhalli et al. [11] used both Social exchange Theory and Social Capital Theory to explain electronic knowledge repositories (EKR) usage by knowledge contributors. Chiu et al. [2] used Social Cognitive Theory and Social Capital Theory to investigate the motivations behind people’s knowledge sharing in virtual communities. Finally, Bock and Kim [1] used Social Exchange Theory, Self-Efficacy and Theory of Reasoned Action to understand the factors affecting the individual’s knowledge sharing behavior in the organizational context. They included a construct for IT usage and this was deemed to be extremely important given the diversity of members in the Caribbean Disaster Management Community. The relevant constructs (see Table 1) from the existing literature were used to design a questionnaire that will be administered to the members of the Disaster Management Community throughout the Caribbean region with the support of the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).

3.3.Conceptual application of the knowledge commons (IAD) framework

The appropriately termed Institutional Analysis and Development Framework finds application in both analysis of existing types of commons, as well as in commons design for future desired states. Hess/Ostrom [9] suggest, for instance, that the “Action Arena” (see Fig. 1) is the “appropriate place to start when trying to think through the challenges of creating a new form of commons such as a new digital repository within an organization”.