The Effect And Mechanism Of Social Networks On Tacit Knowledge Integration

Knowledge has been increasingly recognized as one of most valuable assets which is developed and possessed by individuals in modern enterprise. Much more research and practice of knowledge management has been conducted in an effort to capture, store, and disseminate knowledge effectively across organization. Research contributions on knowledge management are particularly from different theoretical perspectives, such as knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, and so on. Knowledge integration is an example of an attempt to synthesize relevant streams of research. However, knowledge resides in human beings and tacit knowledge which is 90 percent of organization knowledge capacity is critical to organization's competitiveness. Integrating the tacit knowledge of many different individuals in the process of producing goods and services in organization is a critical logic. Therefore, researchers in information systems have begun to pay more attention on integration for fragmented pockets of tacit knowledge, like expertise, specialized knowledge, etc.Individuals are known to seek knowledge from their own personal networks which extend beyond the formal organizational structures. Tacit knowledge integration is embedded in social activities and interactions. Transactive memory systems (TMS) also have been recognized as the predictor of knowledge management. This research considers how different features of social networks affect tacit knowledge integration and what the mechanism is. As a complement to previous research that has only recognized the social networks direct effect on knowledge integration as a black box, we focus on the mechanism of social networks on tacit knowledge integration from the perspective of TMS. Based on the research framework, we conducted two empirical studies from individual level and team level respectively.In our study, expressive ties and instrumental ties have different effects on tacit knowledge integration and TMS. Ties strength influences TMS directly. Value diversity of individuals is negative to TMS and to tacit knowledge integration finally. Density and betweenness centralization of networks structure also have different influencs on TMS. The inter-dependence of teamwork moderates the effect of TMS on acit knowledge integration visibly. The results of study provide a novel mechanism for researching tacit knowledge integration which is playing a pivotal role in this turbulent environment. The explorative results provide a new lens for tacit knowledge integration and have superior instructional and explanatory power for both academia and practice.