Skills in Sight: How Social Media Affordances Increase Network Awareness

Buunk, Iris; Hall, Hazel; Smith, Colin

Abstract

The discussion in this paper derives from an analysis of data from twenty interviews conducted with members of an online knowledge sharing platform between October 2016 and February 2017. The empirical work is part of a larger doctoral study that investigates tacit knowledge sharing, online platforms and social media use within the public sector in Scotland. These are themes that, to date, have been under-explored by researchers. The work reported in this paper is a contribution that addresses one of the aims of the larger study in that it examines the extent to which social media afford new capabilities in the sharing of tacit knowledge.

The methodological approach deployed for the larger study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods (Buunk, Hall & Smith, 2016). The sample approached to participate in the interviews was identified from survey responses gathered in late summer 2016. The sampling strategy chosen was based on criterion sampling. This is a form of purposive sampling commonly used in qualitative studies (Palys, 2012). As a result, only heavy users of social media tools were selected from the survey returns for invitation to interview.

Prior work suggests that the visibility of individuals' competencies can enrich "knowledge awareness" (Cooke & Hall, 2013). In addition, when social interactions are facilitated publicly on an online platform, awareness of these enhances opportunities for knowledge transfer (Leonardi & Meyer, 2015). The preliminary findings from the analysis of the interview data gathered for this study suggest that online platform and social media affordances increase network awareness and – as a consequence – the skills of individuals are rendered more visible. Some interviewees made this explicit by underlining this positive outcome of sharing details of their expertise online.

Skills belong to the technical dimension of tacit knowledge (Nonaka, 1994; Panahi, Watson & Partridge 2013). Thus, it can be argued that when online platforms and social media offer the affordance of enhancing skills' visibility (for example through making it possible for network members to see social interactions within a network, and understand network shape) they bring new capabilities to the facilitation of tacit knowledge sharing

Citation

Buunk, I., Hall, H., & Smith, C. (2017). Skills in Sight: How Social Media Affordances Increase Network Awareness. In Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Knowledge Management ECKM 2017

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (Published)
• Conference Name: European Conference of Knowledge Management (ECKM)
• Start Date: Sep 7, 2017
• End Date: Sep 8, 2017
• Acceptance Date: Jun 19, 2017
• Publication Date: Sep 7, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 5, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 5, 2017
• Publisher: Academic Conferences and Publishing International
• Series ISSN: 2048-8963
• Book Title: Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Knowledge Management ECKM 2017
• ISBN: 9781911218494; 9781911218487
• Keywords: Heavy user of social media, knowledge sharing, online platforms, social media, social network awareness, tacit knowledge.
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/957705
• Contract Date: Jul 5, 2017