Social Media, Knowledge Sharing, and Innovation: Toward a Theory of Communication Visibility

Information Systems Research, Vol 25, No. 4, pp. 796-816, 2014

40 Pages Posted: 8 Oct 2014 Last revised: 19 Oct 2016

See all articles by Paul M. Leonardi

Paul M. Leonardi

University of California, Santa Barbara

Date Written: October 6, 2014

Abstract

This paper offers a grounded theory of communication visibility based on a field study of the implementation of a new enterprise social networking site in a large financial services organization. The emerging theory suggests that once invisible communication occurring between others in the organization becomes visible for third parties to see, those third parties may be able to improve their metaknowledge (knowledge of “who knows what” and “who knows whom”). Communication visibility, which was in this case made possible by the enterprise social networking site, leads to enhanced awareness of who knows what and whom through two interrelated mechanisms: message transparency and network translucence. Seeing the contents of other people’s messages helps third-party observers to make inferences about the knowledge other people have and seeing the structure of other people’s communication networks helps third-party observers to make inferences about who those people talk with on a somewhat regular basis. The emerging theory further suggests that enhanced metaknowledge can lead to more innovative products and services and less knowledge duplication if individuals learn to work in new ways. Specifically, individuals will be able to recombine existing ideas into new ideas more effectively and avoid duplicating work that has already been done if they switch from learning through experience to learning vicariously and if they can begin to proactively aggregate information they are perceiving daily rather than engage in reactive search after they have run up against a problem they cannot solve. I discuss how the important implications this emerging theory of communication visibility has for work in the knowledge economy.

Keywords: social media, knowledge sharing, metaknowledge, innovation, work duplication, knowledge transfer, social networking, knowledge management

Suggested Citation

Leonardi, Paul M., Social Media, Knowledge Sharing, and Innovation: Toward a Theory of Communication Visibility (October 6, 2014). Information Systems Research, Vol 25, No. 4, pp. 796-816, 2014, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2506367

Paul M. Leonardi (Contact Author)

University of California, Santa Barbara ( email )

Phelps Hall
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.tmp.ucsb.edu/leonardi/

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