Behavioral Selection Strategies of Members of Enterprise Community of Practice—An Evolutionary Game Theory Approach to the Knowledge Creation Process

The development of a community of practice may play an important role in promoting knowledge creation and knowledge sharing economics. However, due to the nature of humanity, community members must cope with collaboration and conflicts in order to achieve knowledge creation in the community of practice. Based on the evolutionary game theory, this article analyzes and simulates the behavioral selection of community members in the knowledge creation process, in order to clarify how the selection strategies of community members evolves with time and related parameters, and to help us to further understand the game process and influencing factors. The results show that the consequences of a comprehensive game of community members are determined by the location of the saddle point, which will evolve to the evolutionary stable strategy. The closer the position of the saddle point is to the origin, the greater the probability that the community members will select the collaboration strategy. The probability of one member selecting a collaboration strategy will have an impact on the probability of another member selecting a collaboration strategy. Factors such as the coefficient of benefit distribution (α), the cost of knowledge creation (S), and the additional benefit obtained by the conflicting member (G) have an impact on the evolution of the selection strategy of community members in the knowledge creation process.