Social metacognition and knowledge creation in groups

While a single person can have a creative insight, groups of people can work together to create new, useful ideas (knowledge creation) that they cannot create alone. Some group characteristics and processes (diversity, argumentation, politeness, shared positioning) facilitate knowledge creation. Groups with diverse views can create more ideas, representations, justifications, and solution proposals, especially when group members understand and value one another’s diverse contributions. During argumentation, groupmates explain and justify their own views to convince both themselves and others. During this process, group members evaluate one another’s ideas and recognize problems. In contrast, other group processes (public self-image [face] and status concerns) hinder it. Although polite disagreements might aid knowledge creation, rude disagreements can reduce the likelihood of knowledge creation, especially when individuals are concerned about status. Also, group members might prefer to protect their face rather than contribute to knowledge creation. In general, group members’ monitoring (e.g., evaluations) and control (e.g., commands) of one another’s knowledge, emotions and actions (social metacognition) can influence group knowledge creation. Copyright © 2016 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.