The Role of Social Media in Improving Knowledge Sharing and Problem Solving in Multinational Corporations

This article explores the positive role of social media in improving knowledge sharing, supporting innovation, and solving problems in multinational corporations. It discusses how social media can be used as a tool for research and innovation, how it helps in improving knowledge sharing, building social capital, and solving problems. The article also highlights the benefits of using social media in organizations and emphasizes the importance of effective communication.

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA 0
Knowledge management

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Social media as a tool for research and innovation................................................................................3
How social media helps in improving the knowledge sharing...............................................................5
How social media does helps in building the social capital...................................................................6
How social media helps in the problem solving....................................................................................7
How social media helps in communication?..........................................................................................8
Benefits of using social media...............................................................................................................8
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8
References...........................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Fcaebook are proved useful for manager in
promoting the sharing of knowledge as well as team building. If it is applied appropriately,
the use of such media helps in facilitating the problem solving and innovation within the
business corporation. Another positive aspect of social media is its customizability or
malleability to specific organization goals and purposes. Besides the sites like Facebook,
Twitter, and LinkedIn, several other specialized sited are also there to share the application or
pictures.1 However, it is true that when information is communicated through the internet,
loss of information as well as risk of miscommunication can occur. Therefore, with the
proper management of sharing of knowledge on the social media, organization can
effectively provide the excellent products and services to the customers. 2The objective of
this report is to bring out the positive role of social media in order to improve the knowledge
sharing, support innovation, building of social capital as well as solving problem in
multinational corporations.
Social media as a tool for research and innovation
The essential key area where social media site differ from the conventional site is in its
content. Social media sites generate its content by itself by collaboratively editing, sharing,
creating, organizing information, tagging, as well as reshaping the other’s contribution of
other people. it also assist in engaging the peer to peer discussion. In recent time,
technologies are emerging that means, content, structure and application develop with the use
from the activities or need of users.3 It is in the feature of contemporaneous and dynamic
1 Kane, Gerald C. "Enterprise social media: Current capabilities and future possibilities." MIS
Quarterly Executive 14, no. 1 (2015).
2 Dirk, Schneckenberg. "Open innovation and knowledge networking in a multinational
corporation." Journal of Business strategy 36, no. 1 (2015): 14-24.
3 Garcia-Morales, Victor Jesus, Rodrigo Martín-Rojas, and María Esmeralda Lardón-López.
"Influence of social media technologies on organizational performance through knowledge
and innovation." Baltic Journal of Management 13, no. 3 (2018): 345-367.

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content that effectively and properly suits to the knowledge sharing exercises. Besides this, it
also best suits to the organization task of building social capital. It is founded that by
fastening the power of social media, significant social capital can be easily built. People from
different opinions and cultural background, organization can bring he creative solutions as
well as shrewd judgement. In addition to all these, management can also play the constructive
role by setting the proper mechanism for collecting, assimilating the feedback, opinions and
inputs. In this regard, Surowiecki’s concept is effectively related with the crowd sourcing that
is the emerging model of employee participation in the business development creative
process. Social media in this way is the backbone of prominent example of the crowd
sourcing. 4
Social media also acts as platform for the staff members in order to discuss the ideas with
several people in the organization as well as outside of the organization. As a result, it will
help in gathering the new and valuable ideas. In addition, this platform does not require the
extra cost on employee’s part as well as company. By doing this, it will also able to put
emphasis on the generation of various new ideas without putting major stress on the cost of
company. It is also true that market is changing very frequently so it is the responsibility of
employees to keep themselves updated from the scenario of the market. By doing this,
employees will be able to see the threats and become attentive of all the situations. Social
media helps in great way to bring innovation. The use of social media assist the employees to
innovation several ideas that can also implement in the business. By doing this, company will
also able to stay in business and can gain the competitive advantage over its competitors.
Moreover, employees can also modify and change the ideas in order to fit with the ever-
changing needs.
Single loop as well as double loop learning is a kind of learning process in organization. In
the single loop learning, people change their actions as per the difference between the
expected and desired outcome. Through proper research and use of social media, person can
learn the modified patter to adopt and can achieve the expected outcome. It also means that
person can observe the current situation, find out the major problem, and then work on that
4 Razmerita, Liana, Kirchner Kathrin, and Nielsen Pia. "What factors influence knowledge
sharing in organizations? A social dilemma perspective of social media
communication." Journal of Knowledge Management 20, no. 6 (2016): 1225-1246.

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error. By doing this, a proper outcome will come. In this way, single loop learning is the
mixture of action and result. As compare to this, double loop learning, person change the
underlying reasons behind the problematic action. In this way, double loop-learning lead to
the deep understanding of the assumptions and effective decision-making in the day-to-day
operations. Therefore, double loop learning includes the assumptions, actions, and results. 5
How social media helps in improving the knowledge sharing
Employees in the organization share the knowledge among each other. Most of the
multinational organization practice this use, it also encourage the employees for sharing
significant information as well as accessing the intellectual capital. Many of the organization
follow such practices and as a result, employees are recognised as well as rewarded for their
effective actions. Companies such as IBM have an effective system of rewarding its
employees so that employees also get encouraged for sharing the knowledge. In addition,
employees are also able to produce the information at the annual meeting that further helps in
company development. 6
With the help of sharing of knowledge, individual knowledge of each employee is transferred
to company that helps in improving the innovative ideas within each person. It also assists the
organizations in facing the competition effectively from other players. In this way, companies
are able to face the competition from all the other presented players in the market. It is also
seen that individual who are more interactive are able to create knowledge. Many companies
have properly developed the social media pages such as P & G. It facilitates the customers to
follow them on the different sites of social networking where users can easily share the
appreciated information regarding the product. 7
5 Turban, Efraim, Jon Outland, King, Jae Kyu Lee, Ting-Peng Liang, and Deborrah C.
Turban. Electronic commerce 2018: a managerial and social networks perspective. Springer,
2017.
6 Leonardi, Paul M., and Emmanuelle Vaast. "Social media and their affordances for
organizing: A review and agenda for research." Academy of Management Annals 11, no. 1
(2017): 150-188.
7 Ellison, Nicole B., Jennifer L. Gibbs, and Matthew S. Weber. "The use of enterprise social
network sites for knowledge sharing in distributed organizations: The role of organizational

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Using social media, explicit knowledge (systematic language) can be stored in the data in the
database. Further, organizations can easily use such valuable information for the organization
purpose. Other than this, tacit knowledge is the personal knowledge that resides the person’s
head in the form of know-how, experience, expertise, insight, as well as personal believes. By
taking effective knowledge from the social media, individuals are able to discuss this type of
knowledge in face-to-face meetings, discussions, as well as reports. SECI model clearly
linked this. It includes socialization that means sharing as well as creating the tacit
knowledge through the direct experiences. After getting the knowledge through social media,
then individual can articulate the tacit knowledge through the reflection and dialogue. After
this, individuals in Multinational Corporation can systematically apply the knowledge as well
as information.8 After getting all these, at last, person can bring those knowledge into the
practice.
How social media does helps in building the social capital
Social media means building the relation among all the people who work as well live in the
society9. It is true that employees are said to be most essential asset in the organization. It
helps the employees in boosting their knowledge. It can be also said that it helps in breaking
the ice between the employees and develops the stronger relationship among people. Besides
this, social media also assist in exchanging the videos, picture and even support the video
conferencing with all the employees across world.10 With the increment in the sharing of
affordances." American Behavioral Scientist 59, no. 1 (2015): 103-123
8 Sonja , Utz. "Is LinkedIn making you more successful? The informational benefits derived
from public social media." New Media & Society 18, no. 11 (2016): 2685-2702.
9 Ali-Hassan, Hossam, Nevo Dorit, and Wade, Michael. "Linking dimensions of social media
use to job performance: The role of social capital." The Journal of Strategic Information
Systems 24, no. 2 (2015): 65-89.
10 Mirvis, Philip, Elena Maria, Herrera Baltazar, Googins Bradley, and Albareda, Laura.
"Corporate social innovation: How firms learn to innovate for the greater good." Journal of
Business Research 69, no. 11 (2016): 5014-5021.

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knowledge among employees, it is able to bring increment in the performance of company.
Social media also helps the employees in their personal development.11 It also brings the
teamwork in the organization. By discussing all the ideas on social media sites, employees
can interact with each other as well as know each other properly. In this way, it can be stated
that multinational companies can benefit from the development of social capital.
How social media helps in the problem solving
In recent time, there are constant problems occur in the organization with the increasing
external service provider of the organization. However, company can solve the problems by
enabling proper communication. It is essential to kept in the mind that several attributes of
social media are connected with each other.12 In this way, it can be stated that with the
process of knowledge sharing and communication, problems can also be solve to some
extent. It can also use as the tool by opening up communication channel between the external
service provider and employees as well as with all the employees. As a result, it leads to the
problem solving that aroused before. It is required to see that the knowledge sharing in the
areas of problem will help in improving the problem to great extent. It is also possible that the
social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook provides the one to one
relation with employees. In addition, companies are also able to solve all the problems of the
company as basic information as well as solutions are provided to the people or staff through
social networking sites. Besides this, social media also helps in providing the online solution
to customers for solving their problems.
How social media helps in communication?
Social media assist the organization in creating the internal as well as external channel of
communication. The communication channel progresses between the employees as well as
between the organizations. In this way, it helps in transferring the knowledge to several
departments as well in different countries wherever the company is operating. By using and
11 Bashir, Naheed, K. Papamichail Nadia, and Malik, Khaleel. "Use of social media
applications for supporting new product development processes in multinational
corporations." Technological Forecasting and Social Change 120 (2017): 176-183.
12
DeCenzo, David A., Stephen P. Robbins, and Susan L. Verhulst. Fundamentals of Human
Resource Management, Binder Ready Version. John Wiley & Sons, 2016

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communicating through social media in effective way, Companies can create the healthy
communication between all the employees horizontally and vertically. Through this,
employees are also able to share their comments and solve the compound problems and
disputes by discussing properly over that topic.
Benefits of using social media
In every organization, social media helps in promoting the communication between
employees as well as organization. It also helps in doing the external communication easily
and effectively. 13In this way, the whole process of effective communication enhances the
knowledge sharing of the organization as it permits each person to participate. It helps in
creating the pool of potential people who will definitely share their knowledge on the social
media sites. It is true that social media has gained a huge popularity in the recent time.
Multinational organizations are using this platform in communicating with all the people and
other organizations. It is the fact that popularity of social media has increased because people
are finding social media as more time saving as well as convenient. It also facilitates the
process of knowledge sharing and learning among wide number of people.
Conclusion
In the limelight of above discussion, it can be concluded that social media has brought the
recent development in organizations in the field of marketing as well as communication.
Social media also plays an essential role in the multinational corporations. It assists the
organizations in the process of communication between the employees of the organization.
These communication avenues play an essential role in the overall development of business.
Besides this, social media also helps in the development of better relationship among
employees internally as well as externally. Further, this helps in the development of new and
innovative ideas. Through the management of knowledge and combination of the social
media, multinational organization is able to get several advantages. In addition, organizations
are able to get the advantages of collaboration, innovation, and problem-solving as well as
13 Elena, Alina, Cerchia. "Social Media–A strategy in developing customer relationship
management." Procedia Economics and Finance 39 (2016): 785-790.

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social capital within the organization. Multinational companies, by using social media, are
also able to share the knowledge effectively.

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References
Ali-Hassan, Hossam, Nevo Dorit, and Wade, Michael. "Linking dimensions of social media
use to job performance: The role of social capital." The Journal of Strategic Information
Systems 24, no. 2 (2015): 65-89.
Bashir, Naheed, K. Papamichail Nadia, and Malik, Khaleel. "Use of social media applications
for supporting new product development processes in multinational
corporations." Technological Forecasting and Social Change 120 (2017): 176-183.
DeCenzo, David A., Stephen P. Robbins, and Susan L. Verhulst. Fundamentals of Human
Resource Management, Binder Ready Version. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
Dirk, Schneckenberg. "Open innovation and knowledge networking in a multinational
corporation." Journal of Business strategy 36, no. 1 (2015): 14-24.
Elena, Alina, Cerchia. "Social Media–A strategy in developing customer relationship
management." Procedia Economics and Finance 39 (2016): 785-790.
Ellison, Nicole B., Jennifer L. Gibbs, and Matthew S. Weber. "The use of enterprise social
network sites for knowledge sharing in distributed organizations: The role of organizational
affordances." American Behavioral Scientist 59, no. 1 (2015): 103-123.
Garcia-Morales, Victor Jesus, Rodrigo Martín-Rojas, and María Esmeralda Lardón-López.
"Influence of social media technologies on organizational performance through knowledge
and innovation." Baltic Journal of Management 13, no. 3 (2018): 345-367.
Kane, Gerald C. "Enterprise social media: Current capabilities and future possibilities." MIS
Quarterly Executive 14, no. 1 (2015).
Leonardi, Paul M., and Emmanuelle Vaast. "Social media and their affordances for
organizing: A review and agenda for research." Academy of Management Annals 11, no. 1
(2017): 150-188.
Mirvis, Philip, Elena Maria, Herrera Baltazar, Googins Bradley, and Albareda, Laura.
"Corporate social innovation: How firms learn to innovate for the greater good." Journal of
Business Research 69, no. 11 (2016): 5014-5021.

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Razmerita, Liana, Kirchner Kathrin, and Nielsen Pia. "What factors influence knowledge
sharing in organizations? A social dilemma perspective of social media
communication." Journal of Knowledge Management 20, no. 6 (2016): 1225-1246.
Sonja , Utz. "Is LinkedIn making you more successful? The informational benefits derived
from public social media." New Media & Society 18, no. 11 (2016): 2685-2702.
Turban, Efraim, Jon Outland, King, Jae Kyu Lee, Ting-Peng Liang, and Deborrah C.
Turban. Electronic commerce 2018: a managerial and social networks perspective. Springer,
2017.