Impact of self-construal on choice of enterprise social media for knowledge sharing

• Jun Liu

  Tsinghua University

• Pei-Luen Patrick Rau

  Tsinghua University

common interests, and are vital for organizational knowledge management (Fulk & Yuan, Researchers have rarely focused on organizations choosing the right knowledge-sharing media according to users’ individual-level variables such as self-construal. We investigated the impact of self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) and organizational relationship (ingroup vs. outgroup) on employees’ motivation, self-efficacy, and openness of sharing through two widely adopted online knowledge-sharing social media: wiki (e.g., Wikipedia, a volunteer-contributed encyclopedia) and a question and answer (Q&A) archive. Quantitative responses to 4 scenarios were collected from 232 Chinese employees. The results indicated that when sharing with outgroup members, interdependent employees (but not independent employees) had higher self-efficacy and openness of sharing using wiki than using Q&A. No difference between the two social media was found in the ingroup sharing. Theoretical implications and implications for practicing managers are discussed.

1. Jun Liu, Tsinghua University
   Department of Industrial Engineering
2. Pei-Luen Patrick Rau, Tsinghua University
   Department of Industrial Engineering,

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