An economic model for knowledge maintenance in professional communities

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Abstract:

This thesis considers the process of knowledge dissemination and knowledge maintenance in professional communities. Community members obtain and share knowledge through interpersonal interactions, learning and experience. We develop and study a new mathematical model that determines the dynamics of the size and age distribution of a professional community. We develop also a sustainability condition, which ensures that in a limit stationary case, the professional community converges to a stable age distribution. We evaluate the steady state of a community by a social cost function that involves multiple factors associated with learning the profession, maintaining the professional activities in the community and the quality of service the community provides to the entire society. In particular, a research question we explore is what are the conditions under which the professional community is to be split into two smaller communities and compare the social costs of the two scenarios. We use the theory of dynamical systems, optimization methods and data analysis techniques to justify the model and develop practical methods for knowledge management. We illustrate the model with the case of the professional communities of family and children doctors in Israel.

Bio:

Yehiav Sabag is an M.Sc. student at the department of Industrial Engineering in Tel Aviv University, specializing in Operations Research and Data Science. Yehiav holds a B.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering from Ariel University. His research focuses on dynamical models of knowledge dissemination and knowledge maintenance in professional communities. The research is supervised by Prof. Eugene Khmelnitsky.