Social Media in Organizations

BE SOCIAL AND BE (MORE) COMPETITIVE!

By Pia Nielsen and Liana Razmerita

Department of International Business Communication

More and more companies are becoming more ’social’ in terms of doing business by deploying social platforms for internal communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing. Recent consultancy reports¹ and academic studies show that these companies, potentially, can gain considerable business value and competitive advantage IF these platforms are adopted and used by the employees.

Based on an empirical quantitative study with 114 participants, the article (Nielsen & Razmerita, 2014) investigates employee motivation in Danish companies and aims at determining which factors affect employees’ knowledge sharing through social media in a working environment. Our findings pinpoint towards the potential social media have for enhancing internal communication, knowledge sharing and collaboration in organizations, but the adoption is low, at this point, due to mainly organizational and individual factors. Technological factors do not seem to affect employees’ motivation for knowledge sharing as much as previous research has found, but it is the influence from the combination of individual and organizational factors, which seem to affect the adoption of the platforms in line with findings presented in (Razmerita et al., 2014).

KEY FINDINGS pinpoint towards the facts that

Knowledge sharing is not a ‘social dilemma’. Knowledge does not seem to be power. The study shows a positive development in employees’ willingness to share knowledge, because knowledge sharing is considered more beneficial than to hoard it.

Relevance is king. Employees are concerned with providing relevant and valuable content, since the essence of knowledge sharing trough social media is to provide value to colleagues and the organization.

Motivation is key. The study shows that, due to several factors, only few employees have adopted social media for knowledge sharing and those employees, still share knowledge primarily, through traditional communication channels such as email and face-to-face meetings.

Read the book chapter from "Motivation and Knowledge Sharing through Social Media within Danish Organizations" at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-662-43459-8_13

For more information please contact Pia Nielsen or Liana Razmerita

¹http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_social_economy & http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/May13/05-27SocialToolsPR.aspx & http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/download/presskits/enterprisesocial/docs/escresearchsumppt.pdf