Murdoch University BUS348: Knowledge Management and Social Media

This essay examines the pivotal role of social media in enhancing knowledge sharing within multinational corporations (MNCs). It highlights how social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn facilitate communication, build social capital, and support innovation. The essay discusses the benefits of using social media for internal and external communication, problem-solving, and fostering a dynamic market environment. It also explores the threats associated with social media use, such as security risks and potential productivity impacts. The analysis covers key aspects like knowledge sharing platforms, communication strategies, and the role of social media in innovation processes. The conclusion emphasizes the advantages of leveraging social media for effective knowledge management within MNCs, offering valuable insights for businesses seeking to improve their communication and knowledge-sharing strategies.

Running Head: Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management
Essay
System04104
3/18/2019

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1. Introduction
Social media platform is now used by Millions of people all over the world and
people interact with each other daily. Since last two decades, social media gain so much
popularity among the people. There are numbers of social media channels like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. which are gaining popularity every day. Many MNCs use these social
media channels to enhance their corporate image. Social media channels are playing a key
role in shaping up these large MNCs. It is also noticeable that in recent time, many
companies are focusing on a task-oriented approach rather than a people-oriented approach.
Therefore, the employees of the MNCs are able to socially interact with each other, can
generate new ideas, and can give a new direction to their business organisation (Al Saifi,
Dillon, & McQueen, 2016).
This essay is affirmatively shows the key role of social media to improve knowledge
sharing in MNCs. Further, it shows how can social media helps the MNCs in building social
capital, supporting innovation, and helps in the process of problem-solving in multinational
organisations. The article shows how a multinational organisation uses the social media for
communication and brand building. These MNCs are not simply using the social media like
other common people using it.
2. Use of Social Media to Build Social Capital in MNCs
Social media is one of the best influential tools used by many MNCs in recent days.
According to a survey, approximately 90% of MNCs are using the social media platform for
knowledge sharing and building social capital. These companies are very much assured about
the advantages and disadvantages of using social media as a knowledge-sharing tool that
improves the communication within and outside of the organisation (Sardi, Garengo, &
Bititci, 2019)
The concept of social capital is based on the organisational people because the
organisational people are treated as the knowledge pool. Social capital can be defined as a
knowledge network within the organisation that displays how knowledge is gathered,
disseminated, and shared with each other to gain a competitive advantage. Social capital is
not related to personal information, ideas, skills, experience, or personal ability, rather it
refers to social networking in your own network as the business network in the industry. The
major advantage of social capital is that it establishes a strong relationship among employees

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and between organisation and employees through communication (Bharati, Zhang, &
Chaudhury, 2015). It also helps to boost the knowledge of people who are connected with the
MNC or are planning to connect in the future. Social capital not only improves the
organisational performance rather it also develops the team works among the employees.
However, social media like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn helps the MNC to spread the
information and knowledge to employees and facilitates companies in team building.
3. Role of the Social Media as Knowledge Sharing Platform in MNCs
Social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have taken the world in a
storm. These channels allowed the individuals to modified personal relationships, raises and
contribute to numbers of issues, and generate new ideas and possibilities. Sharing of
information is one of the important functions in every organisation in their success. There are
many possible advantages of implementing social media in MNCs. Though the interest of
people in the social media is increasing but most of the people in the organisation are not
aware of its advantages that how they can use social media as a tool for their own growth and
development.
Sharing of knowledge in MNCs through the social media helps other individuals to
understand the issues and it can further help in encouraged the employees to support problem
solving. The social media also helps to covert personal knowledge into organisational
knowledge. For example, if a manager records a video on a specific work process and shares
it on Facebook or Twitter, it helps other people to understand the same work process without
expensive training programs (Abdelrahman, Papamichail, & Wood-Harper, 2016). The great
expansion in content sharing technologies and in social media channels is becoming an
integral part of every individual’s daily life routine. People check their social network ids
frequently, thus it is easy for MNC to share the knowledge and information related to the
product and services to these people on very low cost. Thus, the modern scenario is that
approximately 90% of MNCs are using social media networks for knowledge sharing (Sardi,
Garengo, & Bititci, 2019). More companies adopt the ‘social business communication'
strategies in order to enhance internal communication and collaboration to gain competitive
advantages. People can easily share their organisational knowledge through wikis, blogs, and
other social networks with other people without caring for departmental geographic

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boundaries. Social media helps the organisation to share unspoken and implicit knowledge
among employees and between employees to organisation.
4. How Social Media Helps in Communication?
Social media helps the MNCs to manage the knowledge at both personal and
organisational level through social collaboration and networking opportunities. Social media
helps in internal communication and knowledge sharing in MNCs. The different types of
social media channels help the company to share and transfer knowledge from one
department to other departments of the country as well as in various countries where the
company is operating its business (Maimone, 2018). Social media helps in effective
communication that facilitates the organisation to share and transfer important knowledge
and information. It enables the company to have healthy communication with the
organisational people and employees in both upward and downward direction. The use of
social media provides a platform to various organisations for discussion about particular issue
or problem where employees can share their valuable opinions, comments, suggestions, and
ideas to solve the complex problems of the organisation. Social media also creates a platform
that helps many companies to establish direct communication with customers, listen about
their problems, and provide instant solutions (Panahi, Watson, & Partridge, 2016). It means
sharing of knowledge and information helps the company to communicate with external
parties as well.
5. Social Media and its Role in Innovation
The nature of market is dynamic and it is the responsibility of the organisational
employees to keep aware and update themselves about the market situation and scenario.
Therefore, they can face future challenges and meet future requirements. Therefore, the role
of innovation is important thus, a company can be benefitted. Failure in innovation can lead
to losses for the company and competitors will be ahead of the company (Iturrioz, Aragón, &
Narvaiza, 2015).
To promote innovation in an MNC, it is required that the company should allow its
employees an affordable means of communication for exchanging free ideas and information.
Social media helps the company to facilitate such types of communication among employees
and between employees and organisation that is not only cheaper but virtually instantaneous
too. Social media fulfil the demand for cheap and instant communication between researchers
as well. People from a different background, culture, and values bring specific and innovative

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ideas, creative solutions, and shrewd judgement at a single table. The management can also
play a crucial role in this process by setting a mechanism that collects and assimilate
feedbacks, inputs, and opinions of different people and researchers to bring innovation in the
company (Ali-Hassan, Nevo, & Wade, 2015).
6. Role of Social Media in the Process of Problem Solving
MNC’s are facing constant problems in both internal and external business
environments. Many MNC companies are facing problems from the external service
providers, while some companies are facing issues related to employee’s skills and their
inability to work in a team. It is well known that various attributes of the social media are
interconnected to each other. Therefore, it can be said that organisations can solve these
problems by just sharing knowledge and information through the social media. The process
of communication can help in eliminating misunderstanding among organisational people,
solve the query of customers, provide an instant solution for issues raised by external and
internal people etc. The social media can facilitate the organisation to communicate with its
external service providers and it also helps the employees to communicate with the external
service providers (Chatti & Mohamed, 2012). This step will help to provide an instant
solution to the problems, which had arisen previously. It must be noted that sharing of
problems as knowledge sharing on the social media platform can ultimately improve the
problem to a great extent.
The various social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are
great examples where the company raises the problems and connected people provides an
instant solution. These channels also provide one to one communication facilities where a
person can individually share the knowledge with a group of people or with individual people
(Baker & Mehmood, 2015). Moreover, it can be noticed that the company can consider the
basic information and the solutions provided by the various people on the social media
platform and networking process to solve the problem. However, the company provides
online solution to the customer on the social media to solve their respective problems.
7. The Benefits of Using the Social Media as a KM tool in MNCs
The various advantages of the social media in using MNCs as knowledge management
are as follow:

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1. The social media provide both internal and external communication to the
multinational companies and facilitate the companies in knowledge sharing among
employees and between employees and organisation.
2. Communication through the social media in MNCs enhances the sharing of
knowledge and allows organisational people to participate in organisational activities.
3. Social media is used by many MNCs for convenience. People use this platform for
raising issues, provides personal opinions, share their own views, idea and experience,
while organisation can easily communicate with them and provide instant solutions of
their problems (Stephanie, 2015).
4. The popularity of the social media has risen because the organisation finds it more
convenient as well as timesaving knowledge management and communication tool.
5. It enhanced the organisation's capability of innovative thinking. Social media also
helps the people to share their innovative ideas and views with the organisation; thus,
the organisation can bring more superior products and services in future (Corcoran &
Duane, 2017). It gives a competitive advantage to a particular MNC company over
others.
8. The Major Threats of Using Social Media as a KM tool in MNCs
Though there are various advantages of the social media, there are few risks are
associated with social networking site. Many organisations face frauds and cheating due to
technological advancement in the field of the social media. There are numbers of cybercrimes
happens every day in every country which are taking place via the Internet. Thus, the
communication of employees is always under the risk of impersonating information.
Employees also face privacy and security threats when they share any confidential
information or knowledge with other employees or organisation (Sigala & Chalkiti, 2015).
The company always faces the issues related to piracy of information and threats of
hacking confidential information. Thus, it is essential for a company to must aware of this
type of fraud. The other threat, which is associated with the use of social media, is the bad
publicity of the company. It may cause losses in the form of both financial and human capital.
The organisation will lose its potential employees if people know that the company is not
doing the right things. One of the major problems of using the social media within the
organisation is that when a company allows its employees for using the social media during
working hour, this will affect the productivity of people (Yen, Quan, Rasiah, & Ramasamy,

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2018). Using the social media within the organisation decreases the production level in the
organisation, as people will engage in retrieving information, and not implementing the
change in the process.
9. Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that social media is one of the most popular inventions in
the field of communication, which plays an important role in the organisational success if it is
wisely used by an organisation. It helps in communication, helps the organisation in building
social capital, and facilitates the organisations to share the knowledge with the employees and
other external service providers. It also helps in developing both internal and external
relations among people and organisation, which further assists in the development of new
ideas and innovation of new products. Although, there are many benefits of social media in
MNCs but the excessive use or careless approach of an organisation about using social media
causes a decrease in employee's productivity and heavy financial loss.

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