Towards understanding how organisations incorporate social media into their knowledge base

Abstract

Social media presents new possibilities of creating knowledge that would not have been possible using other computer-mediated forms. Social media enables enrichment of organisations’ knowledge resources with the extracted insights; however, what is not certain is the factors that are at play when taking a decision to consider social media data as the source of insight that will translate into valuable knowledge that organisations may benefit from. The purpose of this study is to investigate how organisations integrate social media into their knowledge base. The dynamic capabilities and organisational resilience in turbulent environments framework was used as a lens to look into how organisations integrate social media into their knowledge base. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was performed to identify, evaluate and interpret all the relevant material or primary studies that are available to answer the research question. Furthermore, an empirical investigation was conducted through the use of interviews and questionnaires. The contribution of the current study to the body of knowledge is twofold. Firstly, synthesis of the existing literature on the uses of social media and knowledge management as well as the evaluation of the model resulted in a revised dynamic capabilities model (DCF) where three capabilities were added, namely validating capability due to questionable SM data quality, crisis management capability for safeguarding the organisations’ reputation, and innovating capability to stay ahead of the fiercely competitive dynamic environment. Secondly, this study produced a significant number of factors that both the literature and the research participants considered key to the implementation of the proposed model. These factors can be categorised into people, processes and technology aspects. The study is significant in the sense that 1) the research findings should be of interest to organisations that are open to innovation and therefore can be used as yardsticks for decision-making; 2) the emergence of the crisis management capability is a major contribution to the body of knowledge as it highlights the importance of proactivity and alertness to responding to conversations of the organisations’ audiences and avoiding the social media backlash suffered by organisations. As the study focused on only one case study, it serves a basis for further research in different sectors of the business with the aim of validating the generality of the proposed model.