From Physical to Digital: Investigating the Offline Drivers of the Online Use and Quality of Knowledge Exchange of an Intraorganizational Digital Collaborative Technology

Abstract

This study integrates social capital and social cognitive theories to empirically test the effects of employees' attitudes, normative expectations, and informal position targeting the organization as offline drivers of online digital platform use and quality of knowledge exchange. Our findings provide several contributions: (1) revealing the relationships between individual and contextual variables targeting the physical and virtual organizational contexts, (2) offering a nuanced understanding of offline drivers for digital platform use and knowledge exchange, and (3) identifying key predictors that managers can leverage to align employee behaviors with organizational goals. MANAGERIAL RELEVANCE STATEMENTThis study underlines the need to pay attention to individual motivations to use and contribute to intra-organizational digital platforms as a function of the position of the individuals within the informal organizational network. Incentives may be needed that consider the reputational effect in the informal organization and the need of translating complex knowledge to be diffused online. After spending a significant amount of money, time and resources, managers usually tend to pressure employees to use and contribute to digital platforms even though participation is officially voluntary. This behavior, though common, is largely counterproductive as it affects the very rationale for their existence. Our results suggest that managers focus on the development of internalized norms related to learning and sharing behaviors as well as to the