CCE Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

College of Computing and Engineering

Advisor

Ling Wang

Committee Member

Inkyoung Hur

Committee Member

Martha Snyder

Keywords

employee work attitude, enterprise social media, organization cultural diversity, organizational knowledge transfer

Abstract

Enterprise social media (ESM), digital platforms used within organizations to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration, are valuable tools that can help organizations gain a competitive advantage. Efficient retention, dissemination, and transfer of knowledge is an industry differentiator, and companies are spending a tremendous amount of resources on ESM to achieve this discriminating advantage. The behavior of transferring knowledge, especially tacit knowledge, can be a challenging task. Discordant organizational culture has been identified as a barrier to efficient knowledge transfer, whether it is explicit or tacit. Despite ESM’s positive track record of promoting communication, it lacks the efficiency to facilitate knowledge transfer when interposed by organizational culture performance.

The goal of this study was to investigate and evaluate the factors causing inefficiency in knowledge transfer when using ESM in a culturally diverse organization. The effect of organization cultural diversity, employee work attitude, ESM capabilities, and ESM usage on knowledge transfer were examined. This study was quantitative, utilizing data gathered through a Web-based survey and analyzed using the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). During the data analysis of 370 responses, statistical tests were conducted to determine which of the factors have a significant effect on ESM knowledge transfer.

The results of this research showed that organization cultural diversity, employee work attitude, and ESM usage all have a positive influence on the effectiveness of organizational knowledge transfer, while ESM capabilities exhibit a negative influence on the effectiveness of organizational knowledge transfer. Furthermore, both organization cultural diversity and ESM capabilities were shown to have a positive effect on employee work attitude. The findings from the analysis conducted in this study showed that ESM usage is positively influenced by ESM capabilities. Furthermore, this study presents several implications for professional practitioners who use ESM to transfer knowledge in a culturally diverse environment.

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