How do features of social media influence knowledge sharing? An ambient awareness perspective

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to verify the relationship between the features of social media and knowledge sharing, and to examine how ambient awareness mediates this relationship. Design/methodology/approach An experiment is designed to stimulate the knowledge work in a famous Chinese business college and 156 valid samples were obtained. AMOS was used in this paper to examine the theoretical model. Findings There is a correlation among features of social media, ambient awareness and knowledge sharing. Surprisingly, network translucence, which indicates individuals’ meta-knowledge of others’ connections, has no influence on knowledge sharing. Although this is inconsistent with conjecture of the existing literature, it can be well explained by the phenomenon in real life, such as privacy setting in social media. Practical implications For employees who use social media to promote knowledge sharing within organizations, this study reminds them of the importance of ambient awareness. For managers, this study can give them some suggestions to make employees take full advantage of social media to achieve optimal benefits of knowledge sharing, thus improving organizational performance and innovation. For social media designers, they can make social media more useful in knowledge work by improving its specific features. Originality/value This paper proposes that ambient awareness is the mediator of the effect path between communication and knowledge sharing. And the status perception of coworkers’ exchanging information is closely related to knowledge sharing.