Greetings!

The Berkman cooperation group is going to be hosting Haiyi Zhu from Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University who is going to talk about some of her research on shared leadership in Wikipedia.

The meeting will Tuesday 10/2 at 4:15pm at Harvard at the Berkman Conference room at 23 Everett Street, 2nd Floor, Cambridge (right near Harvard Law School). The seminar will include time for discussion and should end by 17:30.

An abstract and biography follows.

Abstract:

Traditional research on leadership in online communities has consistently focused on the small set of people occupying leadership roles. We use a model of shared leadership, which posits that leadership behaviors come from members at all levels, not simply from people in high-level leadership positions. Although every member can exhibit some leadership behavior, different types of leadership behavior performed by different types of leaders on different types of followers may not be equally effective. We investigate how distinct types of leadership behaviors (transactional, aversive, directive and person-focused) and the legitimacy of the people who deliver them (people in formal leadership positions or not) and the experience of the people who receive them (newcomers and experienced members) influence the contributions that the receivers make in the context of Wikipedia.

Bio:

Haiyi Zhu is a fourth year PhD student in Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She is interested in how to manage people to achieve the common goal that transcends individual interest in an environment which lacks hierarchical structure and monetary incentives. Specifically, she has investigated shared leadership, group identification, goal settings and social modeling in the context of Wikipedia. One of her papers is nominated for best paper award in the 15th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. She got her bachelor degree in computer science from Tsinghua University in 2005.

Hopefully, we'll see some of you Tuesday!

Regards, Mako