The impact of enterprise social media platforms on knowledge sharing: An affordance lens perspective
Journal of Enterprise Information Management
ISSN: 1741-0398
Article publication date: 16 April 2019
Issue publication date: 16 April 2019
Abstract
Purpose
Enterprise social media platforms (ESMPs) are web 2.0-based computer media tools that facilitate knowledge sharing by employees. The purpose of this paper is to outline the potential of ESMPs in both enabling and hindering knowledge sharing from the perspective of affordances.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper which integrates the literature on ESMPs’ affordances and knowledge sharing.
Findings
This paper finds that prior research on affordances only considered artifacts without much attention on the role of individual goals and organizational context. ESMPs may both enable and hinder knowledge sharing by affording different user behaviors contingent on artifacts, individual goals and organizational context.
Practical implications
The results of the paper will help managers and ESMPs designers to better understand the potential of ESMPs and pay attention to the positive and negative impacts of ESMPs in the process of knowledge sharing.
Originality/value
The paper derives a new categorization of affordances based on individual goals and organization context and portrays a model to describe how and when these affordances enable knowledge sharing through the development of transactive memory system and social capital and hinder knowledge sharing through overload, groupthink and privacy invasion.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants awarded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos 71772162, 71302034, 71773115), Business Administration Subject of Zhejiang Gongshang University which is the Key Research Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities of Zhejiang (No. JYTgs20161501) and the Contemporary Business and Trade Research Center, and the Collaborative Innovation Center of Contemporary Business and Trade Circulation System Construction of Zhejiang Gongshang University (No. 16YXYP01), Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education in China (No. 17YJA630028), Special Funds Project for Promoting the Level of Running Local Colleges and Universities in Zhejiang Province (Interdisciplinary Innovation Team Building of Internet and Management Change) and Research and Innovation Fund Project for Postgraduate in Zhejiang Gongshang University (The Impact of ESMPs Affordances on Knowledge Sharing and Job Performance – From the Perspective of Social Capital and Transactive Memory System). This research is the achievement of New Key Specialized Think Tank of Zhejiang Province (Zheshang Research Institute).
Citation
Sun, Y., Zhou, X., Jeyaraj, A., Shang, R.-A. and Hu, F. (2019), "The impact of enterprise social media platforms on knowledge sharing: An affordance lens perspective", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 233-250. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-10-2018-0232
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited