Affordances for the sharing of domain-specific knowledge on enterprise social media

Abstract

Despite the general belief that enterprise social media (ESM) transcend traditional boundaries and offer access to knowledge in various domains, there has been a lack of understanding and empirical evidence for employees’ willingness to expend the effort to share such knowledge when approached. This research-inprogress proposes that employees would be more willing to share domain-specific knowledge if they perceive the relevant ESM affordances for reducing the effort of codifying such knowledge. Preliminary results of a survey indicate that perceiving the affordance of visibility increases employees’ willingness to share domain-specific knowledge, but the affordance of editability does not have a significant effect. Implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed.