Knowledge Management and Enterprise Social Networking: Content vs. Collaboration

Abstract

Historically, most enterprise knowledge management efforts have been content-based; however, recently firms have begun to focus their knowledge management efforts into collaboration. As a result, enterprises are changing their knowledge management strategy, focusing on collaboration, using enterprise social networking (ESN). This bifurcation has brought attention to user’s potential supply and demand of knowledge for tasks and decision making: Which do they use, content, collaboration or both? This paper investigates three potential theories to analyze that choice. In addition, the bifurcation suggests development of approaches to facilitate the integration of content and collaboration. Further, this paper investigates the role of personal knowledge management in collaboration and content generation. A case study is presented to illustrate some of the concepts generated in this paper. Finally, this paper proposes a number of potential research issues resulting from this investigation.

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Enterprise Social Networking, Least Effort Theory, Pecking Order Theory, Social Exchange Theory, Personal Knowledge Management, Social Media

JEL Classification: D8, D80, D82, D83