Exploring the Impact of Enterprise Social Media Affordances on Work Performance and Knowledge Transfer

Abstract

Knowledge is the result of collective work. As an important component of human capital and intangible assets of the company, when properly processed, knowledge transfer can foster work performance. For a decade, enterprise social media affordances have been studied based on surveys of different platforms users, not allowing to submit the users to the same conditions, therefore, ignoring the effects of platform design on enterprise social media. To address this gap, this empirical research studies the effect of enterprise social media affordances on employee performance from the perspective of knowledge transfer, using a single platform. The analysis of survey data collected from 317 Malagasy employees using the company's own intranet has shown that association, visibility, persistence and editability affordances of ESM foster knowledge acquisition and knowledge provision, which in turn promote employee performance. Findings show that the relationship between ESM affordances and work performance are essentially mediated by knowledge provision. This study provides the key variables for a sustainable performance of the co-creation of value in the knowledge transfer process of the technological innovation process, and the levers for action on these variables. These variables are identified from the intersection of the technological (ESM affordances), social (knowledge provision and knowledge acquisition) and organizational (task performance and contextual performance) dimensions of the knowledge transfer process.