Enhancing Organizational Performance through Social Media use and Knowledge Management

Abstract

Researchers acknowledge the importance of knowledge, innovation, social capital, and social media for organizations. Based on practical and academic importance of these variables, hypotheses were developed and relationships have been tested among knowledge management, innovation and performance for various contexts. Furthermore, hypotheses have also been drawn to test the relationships amongst knowledge management, social capital, and social media use. However, limited research examined relationships amongst all these constructs in the same research framework, and this research attempted to cover that gap. Thus, this research pays original contribution in the form of testing an extended model regarding the impact of social media use on companies’ performance involving the investigation of serial mediating effect of social capital, knowledge management, and innovation. Pakistan’s home appliance industry markets around 2500 electronic products and has 95% share domestically. Further, innovation and knowledge sharing are critical success factors for home appliance industry Therefore, this study was conducted for this industry and used survey method which resulted in 150 responses from the managers. The study finds that commercial social media’s use by companies impacts knowledge management through social capital; and a serial mediating impact of these constructs exists amongst social media use and organization performance. There are extremely limited studies for electronic companies in Pakistan given the concerned variables. Therefore they are helpful for the managers concerned as these findings suggest effective use of social media by electronic companies in particular to create better organizational knowledge and improve company performance.campaigns motivate citizens to pay for safe drinking water