Better knowledge with social media? Exploring the roles of social capital and organizational knowledge management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore social media’s impact on organizational knowledge quality through the theoretical lens of social capital and resource exchange. Design/methodology/approach – Theory-confirming, quantitative study using panel data collected through web-based survey Findings – The results show that while social media affect structural capital and cognitive capital directly, it only affects relational capital indirectly through structural and cognitive capital. Moreover, overall social media and the enhanced social capital do help promote organizational efforts in knowledge management, which subsequently leads to higher level of organizational knowledge quality. Research limitations/implications – All survey respondents were from the U.S., which may limit the generalizability of the findings. The authors also call for more research in establishing the time sequence in the proposed causal relations and in the individual level mechanism through which social media promotes organizational knowledge quality.