Managing Knowledge through Experimentation and Socialisation

This paper reports results of an empirical examination of the facilitating role of experimentation and socialisation in enhancing individual knowledge and performance in decision making. A laboratory experiment was conducted using 28 graduate students as voluntary subjects. Performance of actual subjects was compared with that of their nominal naive and optimal counterparts. Results indicate that both opportunities for independent experimentation and socialisation among subjects significantly facilitated individual knowledge enhancement and led to improved decision performance. Subjects encouraged to interact with others tended to make better quality decisions than those who individually experimented with the decision task. Both performed better than notional naive subjects who applied random walk decision strategy. However, the results indicate room for further improvement. Subjects failed to reach performance of notional optimal counterparts who used linear decision strategy. The results also suggest the need for a holistic approach to managing knowledge by combining and integrating various initiatives to create even higher levels of knowledge and performance.