The impact of social media on knowledge management Helio Aisenberg Ferenhof* Complexo de Ensino Superior de Santa Catarina (CESUSC) and Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) Department of Production Engineering and Systems Campus Trindade Florianópolis/SC, Brazil. Zip Code: 88.040-900. E-Mail: dm@gotroot.com.br Susanne Durst School of Business University of Skövde Högskolevägen 54128 Skövde, Sweden E-mail: susanne.durst@his.se Roozbeh Hesamamiri Iran University of Science & Technology (IUST) Tehran, Iran. Postal Code: 1684613114 E-mail: amiri@iust.ac.ir * The authors contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors. Structured Abstract Purpose – The aim of this paper is to review extant research on the impact of social media on knowledge management (KM) to establish the current body of knowledge and, on this basis, to suggest some promising avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach – The study consists of a systematic literature review of eighteen refereed empirical articles on social media and knowledge management. In order to get access to the articles, we used different scientific databases such as Scopus and ProQuest. As keywords, we decided to use multiple keyword combinations. After having read the abstracts of the articles identified, we ended up with a final set of eighteen articles, which represented the basis for analysis. The systematic approach helped us to make sure that the majority of relevant papers would be covered. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no systematic literature review on social media and knowledge management has previously been published or presented. 1 Practical implications – The topic seems to be a promising field for systematic and intensive research and offers a variety of future research avenues. Keywords – Social Media, Knowledge Management, Knowledge sharing, Systematic literature review. Paper type – Academic Research Paper 1 Introduction The advancements in the area of social media applications have opened up a feeling of self-determination and co-determination among people (Weiber and Wolf, 2012). A growing number of organizations has been started using social media – which are media based on networks to enable participation and sharing – in order to improve and develop their business operations. Given the fact that there is a variety of social media channels available (Tuten and Solomon, 2014) and the activities are less controllable (Mangold and Faulds, 2009) detrimental consequences (“online firestorms”) cannot be excluded. This will also have implications for an organization´s knowledge management approach, as the application of social media can support different KM practices such as knowledge creation and knowledge sharing (Kaplan, 2012). Against this background, the aim of this paper is to review extant research on the impact of social media on knowledge management (KM) to establish the current body of knowledge and, on this basis, to suggest some promising avenues for future research. 2 Theoretical Background The use of social media also called Web 2.0, is assumed to assist company´s knowledge management. According to Panahi et al. (2013), Web 2.0 tools fit perfectly with Nonaka’s SECI model, which enables all socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization processes. The importance of using social media in relation to knowledge management is also highlighted by Pirkkalainen and Pawlowski (2013). These authors propose a research area named Global Social Knowledge Management - as a research discipline on strategies, management, and processes-, which utilizes social tools and software systems to boost knowledge management in internationally distributed settings. 2 The focus is on reducing the gap between the human and the technology orientation, as well as on assisting intra- and inter-organizational knowledge processes. Social Media is defined by Schiuma et al. (2012) as ‘‘a set of software components and software services that enable individuals to find each other and the information they need and to be able to communicate and work together to achieve common business goals’’ (p. 6). According to them, social media facilitates and enables knowledge sharing. The social media creates a platform that allows individuals to publish their knowledge and insights, discuss with others, ask questions, comment on different issues, and search for knowledge and people within the platform. In the same vein, Chua and Banerjee (2013) refer to social media as online services that facilitate social interactions between users. These services are built to being highly accessible and scalable using web-based publishing techniques. Regarding the interaction with knowledge management, social media has the ability to facilitate, for instance, the collaboration of virtual communities and to provide a productive environment for interaction and mutual information and knowledge sharing. Because of this, it has attracted the attention of organizations, communities, and individuals (Alberghini et al., 2014). According to Levy (2013) social media has the potential for leveraging KM in organizations in many ways: • it suits the sharing of tacit knowledge and assists in building organizational memory; • it is convenient for sharing in bottom-up processes as well as for geographically distributed team sharing; • it eases knowledge capturing in working contexts; • and it provides people with the confidence that they will indeed find the knowledge they are seeking for; it feels intuitive for people to use: thus increases “trust”. Supporting this line of argumentation, Jalonen (2014) states that “social media enables employees to participate in collaboration activities and informal discussions within the organization” (p. 564). Alberghini et al. (2014)also highlight that the “use of social media helps employees fulfill their knowledge tasks and meet their objectives through informal interactions” (p. 256). In a similar line, Sigala and Chalkiti (2015) explain that “the social media enable people: to aggregate, share, store and synthesize knowledge from various 3 sources for creating new meta-knowledge; to identify and join social networks in order to stay informed professionally and participate in collective knowledge generation processes by sharing experiences, criticizing theories and findings within various communities of practices; and to manage their own meaning making and KM processes” (p. 45). Even though the importance of social media for KM has been stressed by a number of researchers, to date there are just very few studies on social media’s contribution to enhancing KM, i.e., boosting the organizational knowledge of organizations (Bharati et al., 2015). Against this backdrop, the aim of our paper is to determine the current body of knowledge. 3 Methodology of literature review In our review process, we adopted the principles of a systematic review as recommended by Jesson et al. (2011) namely: 1) Mapping the field through a scoping review 2) Comprehensive search 3) Quality assessment 4) Data extraction 5) Synthesis 6) Write-up First, we developed a research plan comprising the research questions we were interested in answering. This also involved the keywords and a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. We were interested in the current status of research on social media and knowledge management in order to identify promising areas for future research. The questions formulated, as outlined above, were: 1) Which topics have been studied in relation to social media and knowledge management? 2) Which were the main findings of the studies? We decided to use a combination of keywords to identify relevant studies, such as social media and knowledge management. Our inclusion criteria were: empirical research papers, peer-reviewed, English language, ProQuest and Web of Science databases. We excluded gray literature such as reports and non-academic research, other languages than English, and other databases than ProQuest and Web of Science. 4 Additionally, we produced an excel data sheet consisting of key aspects related to our research aim. In our case these were: name of the author(s), year of publication, research aim/objectives, theoretical perspective/framework, method, main findings, and the name of the journal. Second, once we had specified all the relevant issues, one of us accessed ProQuest and Web of Science and searched using combinations of the keywords set. We looked for keyword combinations in the title, keywords, and abstract. The literature review included papers published until August 2015. Third, each of us manually scanned the abstracts of the respective papers and, if relevant, more parts of the articles to make sure that they actually fell within our scope of interest. This reduced the number of articles without duplications to the final number of 18 articles which fulfilled our criteria and were then analyzed. Fourth, all authors read the 18 papers individually and entered relevant data regarding our research purpose in the excel sheet. Fifth, in the next stage we discussed the findings, synthesized the individual data into themes. This helped us to establish the current body of knowledge with regard to social media and knowledge management. Sixth, the final stage of our review process was devoted to the write-up of our findings. 4 Presentation of findings In the sections below we present our analysis concerning the following aspects: general observations regarding the papers included. After that, the study’s main findings according to the themes identified are presented. 4.1 General observations Among the eighteen papers that formed the basis for our analysis, the oldest publication is from 2012 and the most recent ones are from 2015. With regard to the methodology, nine papers were based on a quantitative approach, four papers on a qualitative research approach and two papers applied a mixed methods approach (Chua and Banerjee, 2013; Levy, 2013). The remaining four papers were conceptual papers. 5 The eighteen papers were published in nine different journals. The vast majority of the journals can be assigned to the fields of knowledge and information management, and computer science, which suggests a rather limited focus so far. 4.2 Body of knowledge regarding the contribution of social media to KM We summarized the main findings of the investigated studies under three themes: • Social media supports knowledge management practices • Social media supports the resource “knowledge” • Social media helps in overcoming knowledge management barriers 4.2.1 Social media supports knowledge management practices Under this theme papers, we summarized papers that indicate the social media´s contribution to knowledge management in general or knowledge management practices in particular. For example, (Barker, 2015) who studied knowledge management in virtual communities showed how knowledge intervention by an expert can ensure knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination on a continuous basis. Behringer and Sassenberg (2015) who addressed employees’ intentions to make use of social media to enhance internal knowledge exchange, highlighted the effects of the interplay between the importance and deficits concerning knowledge exchange, the perceived usefulness of social media for knowledge exchange and the experience with social media use on the success of such an activity. The paper by Wagner, Vollmar and Wagner (2014) show how new types of behavior (e.g. authoring, experimentation) that are possible thanks to new IT-based communication and are enabled by social media can support knowledge creation in organizations. As regards the management of different types of knowledge (individual and collective knowledge), Razmerita et al. (2014) demonstrated the role of certain social media tools in supporting this aim. Also, the possibility of integrating a social collaborative dimension in these activities was depicted. The paper by Panahi et al. (2013) addressed the possible power of using social media for facilitating tacit knowledge sharing, which the authors consider as essential in new business models. Chua and Banerjee provide insights into how Starbucks uses social media for customer knowledge management. The paper 6 highlights the activities used to enable knowledge sharing and knowledge creation by actively integrating customers. 4.2.2 Social media supports the resource “knowledge” We assigned papers to this theme which highlighted the contribution of social media to different types of knowledge as well the overall quality of the knowledge base. Bharati et al. (2015), for example, studied the impact of social media on the organizational knowledge quality. Their paper shows how social media can (directly and indirectly) affect different types of knowledge such as structural knowledge, relational capital and social capital. In another paper, Leonardi (2014) showed the power of social media in making communication visible, which in turn can help organizations in their meta-knowledge. 4.2.3 Social media helps in overcoming knowledge management barriers We assigned papers to this theme that showed the role of social media in implementing KM activities. Thus, in such a case, social media act as an enabler for KM. The study by Jalonen (2014) showed that the use of social media can facilitate the easing of knowledge problems through providing necessary information, locating knowledgeable people, providing a virtual context, harnessing collective wisdom, and building trust. Ray (2014) showed how the interactive features social media tools possess can be used in order to overcome national culture as a barrier to KM within organizations. 5 Conclusions The aim of this paper was to review extant research on social media and knowledge management to establish our understanding and to identify gaps justifying further research activities. We used the method of a systematic literature review to identify papers. This led to the identification of eighteen papers that formed the basis of our analysis. The papers were published in the years 2012-2015, taking into consideration the recent origin of the topic. The small but growing number of papers indicate a promising field of research. 7 The main findings were categorized into three main themes: Social media supports knowledge management practices; Social media supports the resource “knowledge”, and Social media helps in overcoming knowledge management barriers, which determine the current body of knowledge. In view of practitioners, the study´s finding may enable an increased awareness towards the contribution of social media to different KM practices as well as KM in general. This can assist practitioners in better integrating social media in their ongoing and planned KM activities. In addition, it can help in better exploiting the benefits of social media while reducing possible downsides at the same time. As outlined above the topic seems to be a promising field for systematic and intensive research and offers a variety of future research avenues. For example, a closer analysis of the implications of applying social media for different KM practices would provide a useful basis for the further development of the topic. Also longitudinal studies are useful in order to study the contribution of social media over time. Particular with regard to knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination such a type of research would be promising. Also, other subject areas such as general management, organization studies, psychology or marketing are invited to study social media and its relation to KM as it is expected that these areas can contribute a lot to a better understanding of the topic. References Alberghini, E., Cricelli, L., and Grimaldi, M., 2014. A methodology to manage and monitor social media inside a company: a case study. Journal of Knowledge Management 18, 255-277. Barker, R., 2015. Management of knowledge creation and sharing to create virtual knowledge-sharing communities: a tracking study. Journal of Knowledge Management 19, 334-350. Behringer, N., and Sassenberg, K., 2015. Introducing social media for knowledge management: Determinants of employees’ intentions to adopt new tools. Computers in Human Behavior 48, 290-296. 8 Bharati, P., Zhang, W., and Chaudhury, A., 2015. Better knowledge with social media? Exploring the roles of social capital and organizational knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management 19, 456-475. Chua, A.Y., and Banerjee, S., 2013. Customer knowledge management via social media: the case of Starbucks. Journal of Knowledge Management 17, 237-249. Jalonen, H., 2014. A framework for dealing with fundamental knowledge problems through social media. VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems 44, 558-578. Jesson, J., Matheson, L., and Lacey, F.M., 2011. Doing your literature review: Traditional and systematic techniques. Sage. Kaplan, A.M., 2012. If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4x4. Business horizons 55, 129-139. Leonardi, P.M., 2014. Social media, knowledge sharing, and innovation: Toward a theory of communication visibility. Information Systems Research 25, 796-816. Levy, M., 2013. Stairways to heaven: implementing social media in organizations. Journal of Knowledge Management 17, 741-754. Liu, M. and Rao, P., 2015. A comparative perspective of knowledge management via social media: India and China. The Learning Organization 22, 93 - 114. Ma, W.W.K., and Chan, A., 2014. Knowledge sharing and social media: Altruism, perceived online attachment motivation, and perceived online relationship commitment. Computers in Human Behavior 39, 51–58. Mangold, W.G., and Faulds, D.J., 2009. Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business Horizons 52, 357-365. Nielsen, P., and Razmerita, L., 2014. Motivation and Knowledge Sharing through Social Media within Danish Organizations. Vol. 429 of the series IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology (197-213). Panahi, S., Watson, J., and Partridge, H., 2013. Towards tacit knowledge sharing over social web tools. Journal of Knowledge Management 17, 379-397. Pirkkalainen, H., and Pawlowski, J., 2013. Global social knowledge management: from barriers to the selection of social tools. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 11 Issue 1 (3-17,) available online at www.ejkm.com. Ray, D., 2014. Overcoming cross-cultural barriers to knowledge management using social media. Journal of Enterprise Information Management 27, 45 - 55. Razmerita, L., Kirchner, K., and Nabeth, T., 2014. Social media in organizations: leveraging personal and collective knowledge processes. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce 24, 74-93. Schiuma, G., Vuori, V., and Okkonen, J., 2012. Knowledge sharing motivational factors of using an intra-organizational social media platform. Journal of Knowledge Management 16, 592-603. Sigala, M., and Chalkiti, K., 2015. Knowledge management, social media and employee creativity. International Journal of Hospitality Management 45, 44-58. Tuten, T.L., and Solomon, M.R., 2014. Social media marketing. Sage. Wagner, D., Vollmar, G., and Wagner, H.-T., 2014. The impact of information technology on knowledge creation. Journal of Enterprise Information Management 27, 31 - 44. Weiber, R., and Wolf, T., 2012. Disruptive Empowerment–Auswirkungen von Kundeninteraktionen auf den Social-Media-Erfolg. Marketing Review St. Gallen 29, 42-47. Zhang, X., Gao, Y., Yan, X., Ordóñez de Pablos, P., Sun, Y., Cao, X., 2015. From elearning to social-learning: Mapping development of studies on social media-supported knowledge management. Computers in Human Behavior 51, 803–811. 9 Authors’ Biographical Notes Susanne Durst is an Associate Professor at the School of Business at University of Skövde (Sweden). She is also the leader of the research group knowledge and innovation management (KIM) at the School of Business at University of Skövde. Her research interests include small business management, SME succession/transfers, knowledge management, knowledge risk management and corporate governance. She has been conducting several national and international research projects on company succession, corporate governance, and knowledge management in SMEs. Helio Aisenberg Ferenhof has a Postdoc position at the Production Engineering Department at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil). He also got his Doctor degree in Production Engineering from the same department. He is a member of the research group knowledge and innovation management (KIM) at the School of Business at University of Skövde. He is Adjunct Professor of Business Administration and Computer Science at CESUSC, and Lecturer of the Post-Graduate Program in Project Management and Information Security of different institutions. His research interests are Knowledge Management, Intellectual Capital, Project Management, Service Management, Product Development, and Computer Science. Roozbeh Hesamamiri, Ph.D., is Adjunct Professor at Industrial Engineering Department at Iran University of Science & Technology (IUST), Tehran, Iran. His research and teaching interests are risk, reliability and failure analysis of organizational knowledge management, High-Reliability Theory (HRT), and Strategic Management. He has conducted several research projects and his findings have been published in professional journals, such as Aslib Journal of Information Management, Program: electronic library and information systems, and Higher Education. 10