Contribution of social media use at work to social capital and knowledges sharing : a comparison between Chinese and Thai employees

Abstract

Efficient knowledge sharing behavior within enterprises plays a key role in increasing organizations’ competitive strength and productivity. Social media is a way that provides a broader knowledge sharing platform for organizations. However, different culture backgrounds may affect employees’ attitude towards knowledge sharing. This research aims to explore how social media use at work affects knowledge sharing behavior under the cross culture values between Thai and Chinese employees. Social capital was introduced as mediating effects, indicated by trust, social networking and shared language. Convenient sampling was employed to collect data from Chinese multinational corporations, 198 Chinese and 155 Thai employees participated in this study, partial least square regression was used for analyzing. After analyzing the mixed data of the two countries, positive relationship between social media use at work and all mediating variables were discovered, further, these mediating variables were all positively related to knowledge sharing, the direct relationships between social media use at work and knowledge sharing was not found. Subdividing to the two countries, the results are not so consistent with what the study assumed. This research provides practical significance for multinational corporations on developing diversification knowledge sharing strategy based on multiculturalism context.