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

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA 0
Knowledge management

SOCIAL MEDIA 1
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

SOCIAL MEDIA 2
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.

SOCIAL MEDIA 3
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.