Mass collaborative knowledge management: Towards the next generation of knowledge management studies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reveal the underlying principles of knowledge processing in a new era of mass collaboration and provide an integrated guideline for organizational knowledge management (KM) based on identifying the gaps between the existing KM theories and emerging knowledge initiatives such as Web 2.0, Pro-Am, Crowdsourcing, as well as Open Innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This research mainly employs three types of research methodologies: Literature study was conducted to connect this study with conventional theories in KM and propose the main principles of Mass Collaborative Knowledge Management (MCKM). Object-oriented modeling was used for designing its interaction model. The case study method was employed to discuss the two typical practices carried out by Goldcorp Inc. as well as the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. Findings – This paper proposes the novel KM paradigm called MCKM and also provides its main principles and the interaction model. First, it id...