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The Role Of Social Media In Promoting Knowledge Sharing And Transfer
RUNNING HEAD: Literature Review
The role of social media in promoting knowledge sharing and transfer
[Name of the Writer]
[Name of the Institution]
The role of social media in promoting knowledge sharing and transfer
Introduction
Social media has taken the world in storm. Regardless of age, people use it daily sometimes to gain knowledge while sometimes for entertainment. Specifically talking about the knowledge factor, many educational websites as well as a collection of research papers that can be accessed freely are present on several social media websites. This helps in transferring and sharing knowledge among several people as most of the people can be accessed through social media. In this paper, a literature review related to the role of social media in context to sharing and transferring knowledge is present. Furthermore, the impact of social media in promoting knowledge sharing in a different working environment is also discussed.
Literature review
Due to the rise in the use of social media, many organizations need to incorporate its use in their working environment. The author Zoltan Gaal in his paper, also discussed the role of social media in knowledge sharing in the organizations. According to the author, communication between employees can help in solving different work-related problems by providing a collaborative environment where all the employees can share their ideas with others equally. This will, in turn, benefit the organization. The author also explained three stages of knowledge sharing that are first-generation that include a traditional way of knowledge sharing while incorporating social media as well. Next stage is the second generation that includes face to face meeting and coaching etc. While the last stage is called the third generation that includes usage of social networks to share information not only within an organization but outside the organization as well. Furthermore, the author also discussed the advantages of using social media such as transparency could be achieved as stakeholders can see the financial status of the company. Additionally, a company can promote its business using blogs and maintaining an official site on social media so that people all around the world can access them (Gaál & Csepregi, 2015). Similarly, the author Pia Nielson in her paper also explained the role of social media in Danish organization in the context of knowledge sharing. According to her, the companies that adopt social media have better access to knowledge and can access more clients through this platform that can help in generating revenue. She also conducted a survey among several employees in a Danish company, and the results showed that most of the people are breaking stereotypes and are more focused on sharing knowledge to help their colleagues. However, according to the survey, there were some barriers to sharing knowledge through social media. For instance, a lack of motivation from management, employees are not interested in sharing knowledge. Also, many people are not aware of how much information they need to share with their colleagues (Nielsen & L., 2014).
Furthermore, discussing the role of social media in several organizations, social media can help in promoting tourism, thus benefitting the tourism industry as well. Hossein Nezakati, in his paper, also discussed the role of social media in sharing knowledge in the context of the tourism industry. According to the author, social media can help in knowledge sharing in travel planning. People can use several websites and blogs related to their desired destination also they can search for many tourist destinations online. The information related to the experience of other tourists is available online that can help people in getting an idea about the desired location. Furthermore, the author also discussed the importance of travel blogs that provide more information regarding specific places and can attract more people. Thus, increasing tourism which will, in turn, benefit the government (Nezakati & Sohrabinezhadtalemi, 2015). Moreover, the author Ani discussed a case study in which she also took a government agency. The chosen agency is a department of chemistry responsible for providing forensic services and new medicines to the health care department. The author discussed that using social media can help in generating more ideas that will benefit research and improve the quality of research. However, most of the researchers are not willing to share knowledge as it is a government agency and there are restrictions on sharing data. Although, some data that is related to the activities conducted in the lab is allowed to share. Also, the lack of accessibility to social media is another factor that hinders effective knowledge sharing. Thus, if these factors can be reduced then social media can be an effective tool to help maintain a collaborative environment that can help in improving research (Dahri & A.M., 2017).
While discussing the role of social media in academia the author Saadiah in her paper explained in detail the advantages and disadvantages of social media in academia. According to her using social media, new ideas related to specific research problems can be generated. Also new information can be learned as many research papers are posted daily online. However, many students, especially at the high school level, are hesitant in sharing their ideas and research on the social media platform because of the feeling of insecurity. However, using social media facilitates communication between students. It helps in self-promotion as people can publish their research papers online and is a convenient tool for the publications of journals. Additionally, social media helps students in searching for several jobs and scholarship opportunities (Ghazali & R.A., 2016). Moving on towards higher education institutions the author Niall in his paper further explained the role of social media in enabling staff knowledge sharing in higher education institutions. According to him, the collaboration between staff and faculty can help in creating a positive environment in the institute. For this purpose, staff motivation is necessary as there exists a barrier between faculty and administration. To remove this barrier, it is important to focus on ways that can increase communication between them. For this purpose, several interventions are required that can break the stereotypical organizational culture and promote collaboration. The author proposed that individuals that have the leadership quality can take lead and motivate other employees to indulge in knowledge sharing as this will help new staff and faculty to understand more about the organization. Also, many of the staff members are hesitant in participating in communication because they do not know how to effectively use social media (Corcoran & A., 2018). Thus, teaching staff the use of social media can further increase the chances of collaboration.
Typically, the younger generation is more interested in using social media for both educational and entertainment purposes. The author Saodah also focused on literature review related to the use of social media knowledge sharing among youth. The author provided a questionnaire to the younger generation in an area in Malaysia to analyze the usage of social media. The results showed that most males used social media than females to share information however Facebook remains one of the main sites that was used by teenagers to share information. The information includes both educational knowledge and entertainment as well (Wok & S.A., 2012).
The term tacit knowledge is a type of knowledge that is very difficult to transfer both verbally and in written form. The author Sirous in his paper discussed the role of social media in sharing tacit knowledge. According to him, several factors such as face to face communication and discussions etc serve as a prerequisite for the sharing of tacit knowledge. The author further explained that many online chat rooms and discussion boards help a lot in sharing tacit knowledge. Also, using social media within an organization creates an environment of mutual trust than can further help in transferring tacit knowledge easier. Also, social media sites are known to connect people informally due to which it easier to transfer and share tacit information (Panahi & H., 2012).
Conclusion
Social media plays a key role in sharing and transferring knowledge among people. According to the literature review presented above, many authors have focused on using social media to establish communication and collaborative environment in both educational and business organizations. However, several barriers, such as people are reluctant in sharing their knowledge and having less information regarding the usage of social media sites. Thus, it is important to educate people so that more people can use social media sites and can get benefit from it.
Bibliography
Corcoran, N. and Duane, A., 2018. Using Social Media to Enable Staff Knowledge Sharing in Higher Education Institutions. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 22.
Dahri, A.F. and Yunus, A.M., 2017. The Effectiveness of Social Media as Knowledge Management Sharing Tool in Government Agency: A Case Study. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 7(12), pp.1189-1199.
Gaál, Z., Szabó, L., Obermayer-Kovács, N. and Csepregi, A., 2015. Exploring the role of social media in knowledge sharing. Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 13(3).
Ghazali, S., Sulaiman, N.I.S., Zabidi, N.Z., Omar, M.F. and Alias, R.A., 2016, October. The impact of knowledge sharing through social media among academia. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1782, No. 1, p. 030003). AIP Publishing.
Nezakati, H., Amidi, A., Jusoh, Y.Y., Moghadas, S., Aziz, Y.A. and Sohrabinezhadtalemi, R., 2015. Review of social media potential on knowledge sharing and collaboration in tourism industry. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 172, pp.120-125.
Nielsen, P. and Razmerita, L., 2014, June. Motivation and knowledge sharing through social media within Danish organizations. In International working conference on transfer and diffusion of it (pp. 197-213). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Panahi, S., Watson, J. and Partridge, H., 2012. Social media and tacit knowledge sharing: Developing a conceptual model. World academy of science, engineering and technology, (64), pp.1095-1102.
Wok, S., Idid, S.A., Misman, N. and Rahim, S.A., 2012. Social media use for information-sharing activities among youth in Malaysia. Journalism and Mass Communication, 2(11), pp.1029-1047.
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