Research On The Mechanism Of Employees' Using Enterprise Social Media To Perform Knowledge-related Practices

Social media technologies are profoundly changing our society.These technologies were first applied in public living spaces and became part of the lives of many folks.In recent years,social media technology has become more and more widely used within enterprises and has become an important part of enterprise information systems.The application of enterprise social media(ESM)is expected to have a significant impact on important organizational processes such as organizational communication,knowledge sharing,and collaboration.ESM has become an important tool for employees to perform their daily work.Therefore,using ESM to carry out knowledge-related practices will promote employee knowledge efficiency and improve work performance.Considering the special background of ESM which is the integration of social media technology and work-related scenarios,the guiding effect of research conclusions on the use of public social media and traditional information technology is limited.At the same time,as a relatively new phenomenon,the research on employees' use of ESM is still in the preliminary stage.Based on this,the purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanism of employees using ESM to perform knowledge-related practices.This paper first systematically reviews recent literature on ESM from the perspective of "information technology use".The results of the literature review show that the existing research mainly focuses on three major themes,including the characteristics of ESM users,the causes and consequences of ESM use(including general use and specific use),and the affordances of ESM.In terms of user characteristics,research has identified some of the basic characteristics,behavior and content characteristics,and network characteristics of ESM users.The precautions of ESM use mainly involve personal(especially motivation),social,and organizational factors;the use of ESM will affect employees' work performance,agility,social capital,and work safety.Finally,the existing research pays special attention to ESM affordance,conceptually,and partially empirically tests the influence path of ESM affordances on organizational knowledge sharing.After that,based on the psychological contract theory,this research proposes a behavioral model of employees using ESM to share knowledge from the perspective of user-organization(and ESM community).The model proposes that employees' attachment to formal organizations and their sense of belonging to the ESM community can positively influence employees' motivation to help the organization and help the ESM community,and are positively related to employees' use of ESM to share explicit and tacit knowledge.A questionnaire survey was conducted on Ding Talk users and the empirical results obtained by using structural equation model analysis data showed that:organizational attachment is positively related to organizational help motivation,the use of ESM to share explicit knowledge behavior,and the use of ESM to share tacit knowledge behavior;ESM community belonging sense is positively related to helping ESM community motivation,using ESM to share explicit knowledge behavior,and using ESM to share tacit knowledge behavior;ESM community helping motivation is positively related to using ESM to share tacit knowledge behavior,but it is related to using ESM to share explicit knowledge behavior irrelevant;organizational help motivation is not related to the behavior of using ESM to share explicit knowledge,and negatively related to the behavior of using ESM to share tacit knowledge.These findings indicate that the psychological contractual relationship between employees,the organization,and the ESM community can positively influence their use of ESM to share knowledge.However,due to the dual nature of the ESM community and work,the use of ESM to share knowledge(explicit and implicit)has little or no relationship with the employee's help organization expectations;the use of ESM to share explicit knowledge and the employee's help ESM The relationship between community expectations is not big,but the relationship between using ESM to share tacit knowledge behavior and employees' help ESM community expectations is significant.Furthermore,based on the self-determination theory and employee help behavior literature,this study proposes and empirically tests a motivation model for employees to use ESM to continuously help colleagues.According to the theory of selfdetermination,the motivations for employees to use ESM to help colleagues' behavior include autonomous motivation and control motivation.This paper proposes that autonomous motivation promotes positive emotions to increase employees' intention to continue using ESM to help colleagues,while controlled motivation reduces employees' intention to continue using ESM to help colleagues by inhibiting positive emotions;employee perceived ESM visibility can reduce the effect of autonomous motivation on positive emotions,but boost the effect of control motivation on positive emotions.Based on a questionnaire survey data,using the structural equation model to conduct empirical analysis,the results showed that: positive emotion positively mediates the relationship between autonomy motivation and employees' continued intention,but negatively mediates the relationship between control motivation and employees' continued intention.Perceived ESM visibility negatively regulates the positive relationship between autonomous motivation and positive emotions.The above empirical results show that employees have different motivations for using ESM to help colleagues and different intentions for continuous use.Autonomous motivation can ensure that employees continue to use ESM to help colleagues.The higher the visibility of communication brought by ESM,the weaker the influence of autonomous motivation.Finally,based on different social theories,this research explores the relationship between social factors at different levels and the possibility of cooperative problemsolving practices in ESM virtual groups.Using second-hand data from an internal ESM site of a high-tech company,the regression results of the multilevel logistic model showed that the quality of group-level social interaction and the degree of centralization of social interaction is positively related to the possibility of cooperative problemsolving.The social similarity between the issuer and potential collaborator is positively correlated with the possibility of cooperative problem-solving.There is a U-shaped relationship between the strength of social connection with potential collaborators and the possibility of cooperative problem-solving.The user-level level of the issuer is positively related to the possibility of cooperative problem-solving.These findings suggest that social influence has an important influence on the occurrence of cooperative problem-solving practices in the ESM community.ESM group members should improve the quality of communication and form a flat communication mode.Employees should actively participate in the ESM community,increase community presence,gain community status,and increase the value of ESM use.However,the influence of the strength of social relations between employees and group members is complicated and must be effectively managed.This research can make up for the gaps of enterprise social media usage research and explores the mechanism of employees using ESM to carry out knowledge practice from different theoretical perspectives,which helps researchers further explore ESM usage.This study also uses different types of data for testing theoretical models,and empirical conclusions can help practitioners more effectively use enterprise social media to carry out knowledge practice,improve ESM value and organizational performance.