UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ LE DANG PHUONG SOCIAL CAPITAL AND JOB PERFORMANCE: THE ROLES OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING, KNOWLEDE ACQUISITION IN SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITIES ID: 22120102 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr.LE NHAT HANH Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 123doc 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere thankfulness to my research advisor, Dr. Le Nhat Hanh for her time and enthusiasm in guiding me to complete this thesis. She has spent all her time in Saturday morning during our preparation for this thesis to help, support and solve hard problems for us. I am sure that the thesis would not have finished without her support.
I also give many thanks to Prof. Nguyen Dinh Tho and Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang for carefully guiding me in Research and Design subject to help me have enough knowledge to finish this thesis. I would like to thank all ISB lecturers and staffs who facilitate necessary knowledge and materials for us to study and finish this course.
Finally, I would like to give my special thanks for my wife and family for supporting me during my study. 123doc 2 ABSTRACT Social media professional groups have been developing in recent years. Many people come there for seeking for knowledge to solve problems at work. However, seeking knowledge on social media professional groups can be difficult because people tend to hoard rather than exchange knowledge to other people.
This study focuses on social interaction ties, trust, and shared language of the social capital theory to explore which motivations make people to share and acquire knowledge in social media professional groups. Besides that, this research go further to investigate how these knowledge affect on job performance. Data collected from 207 members of social media professional groups in Ho Chi Minh city of Viet Nam support for the proposed model. The results indicate social interaction ties have positive impact on knowledge acquisition.
Trust and shared language have positive impact on knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition. Besides that the finding also shows that knowledge acquisition has a positive relationship with job performance. Keywords: Social capital, social media professional groups, knowledge sharing, knowledge acquisition, Job performance. 123doc 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .2 Research Questions and Objectives.
11 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Knowledge, Knowledge sharing and Knowledge acquisition. 2 Social capital theory and knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition. Social interaction ties .6 The relationship between knowledge sharing, knowledge acquisition and job performance. 17 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .2 The unit of observation .4 Measures of the constructs .1 Social interaction ties.
27 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS .3 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) .1 The relationship between social interaction ties, trust, shared language and Knowledge sharing.2 The relationship between social interaction ties, trust, shared language and knowledge acquisition.3 The relationship between knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing and Job performance. 42 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND LIMITATIONS .3 Limitations and future research. 50 123doc 5 TABLE OF FIGUIRES Figure 2. 20 Figure F1: Histogram of knowledge sharing.
74 Figure F2: Normal P-P Plot of knowledge sharing. 74 Figure F4: Histogram of knowledge acquisition. 75 Figure F5: P-P Plot of knowledge acquisition. 75 Figure F6: P-P Scatter Plot of knowledge acquisition.
75 Figure F7: Histogram of Job performance. 76 Figure F8: Normal P-P Plot of job performance. 76 Figure F9: Scatter plot job performance. 76 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Scales of Social Interaction Ties .2: Scales of Trust .3 : Scales of Shared language .4: Scales of Knowledge sharing .5: Scales of acquisition .6: Scales of Job performance .3: KMO and Bartlett's Test.
5 Rotated Component Matrix .6: Results of Pearson correlations .7: Model Summary of social interaction ties, trust and shared language to knowledge sharing .8: ANOVA of social interaction ties, trust and shared language to knowledge sharing .9: Coefficients of social interaction ties, trust and shared language to knowledge sharing .10: Model Summary of social interaction ties, trust and shared language to knowledge acquisition .11: ANOVA of social interaction ties, trust and shared language to knowledge acquisition .12: Coefficients of social interaction ties, trust and shared language to knowledge acquisition .13: Model Summary of knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition to job performance.14: ANOVA of knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisiton to job performance.15: Coefficients of knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisiton to job performance.16: Summary of hypotheses testing. 45 123doc 7 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. 1 Background The development of internet has made human being’s life change. The development of technology applied on the internet and the popular use of the internet in recent years have led to a communication revolution (Massari, 2010; Coyle, 2008).
This communication revolution has made a change in people communication (Coyle, 2008). Social networking sites are established and developed strongly in the trend of this revolution (Moqbel, Nevo, & Kock, 2012). The expansion of online social networking tools creating an “unprecedented levels of personal connection and communication which transcend time and distance limitations” (North, 2010, p. Many people use SNSs for entertainment or meet other people.
Kuss and Griffiths (2011) report that Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are social networks where users can “create individual public profiles, interact with real-life friends, and meet other people based on shared interests” (p. People take part in social networks, especially in social media professional groups for accessing knowledge, experiences, and skills to find solution for work (Chiu, Hsu, and Wang, 2006). Hof, Browder, and Elstrom (1997) say that 42% of social media professional groups members state it relate to their profession. Massari (2010) claims that SNSs such as: Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Orkut, YouTube, LinkedIn can involve in both business and personal environments, and help members to improve business and decline costs, to support learning, to connect with friends and interact with each other.
Furthermore, Bennett, Owers, Pitt, and Tucker (2010) report that the benefits of SNSs usage in the workplace can improve collective knowledge, and increase effectiveness. 123doc 8 SNSs are also very popular in Viet Nam. Pham (2013) emphasizes that Viet Nam is the leading country in using internet in ASEAN area. Facebook, Zing Me, and YouTube, LinkedIn are the most popular ones.
Social media professional groups are also established as a trend of development of the SNSs. They are related to careers and specific benefit of one’s groups. Social media professional groups allow creating and developing company’s profile, advertising products or disclosing helpful information about companies. Marketers know how to connect with customers and get feedback from customers to create wonderful achievements for themselves in social media professional groups (“Building strategic online marketing,” 2013).
36% of Viet Nam internet users are members of SNSs (Cimigo, 2011). People use SNSs for many different purposes. According to InfoQ Viet Nam (2013), people use SNSs for keeping contact with friends (97%), updating information (75%), expanding new relationship (56%), solving problem at workplace (47%). According to “Surprised advantage of SNSs,” (2013), Social media professional groups can help people to be better in many fields.
For example, YouTube can teach people how to cook, make clothes, or offer basic knowledge in many areas that people concern. Moreover, they are channels to access information in order to serve for working and learning. Moreover, according to “Advantage of SNSs” (2014), people use SNSs to introductions to business people whom known to their contacts. Cuong Nguyen Cao, a lecturer of University of Social Sciences, and Humanities, says that he uses SNSs to share his material and lectures and this receives the good feedback from students.
He emphasizes that it is very useful for students to interact and learn from each other. Tham Trinh Thi, a student of University of Social Sciences, and Humanities, 123doc 9 comments that SNSs are very helpful for students, they can share knowledge and learn from classmates. In addition, comments of other students help to create many interesting ideas to solve problems. In summary, people participate in social media professional groups, mainly for entertainment or gaining and exchanging knowledge.
This paper focuses on the facet of gaining and sharing knowledge in social media communities. Knowledge plays a very important role in operating and developing a company. According to Berman, Down, and Hill (2002), knowledge is very important and valuable intangible resource in acquiring competitive advantage that many organizations try to get it to meet their business needs and goals. Knowledge exchanging among members is important to improve performance (Huang, Liu, & Warden, 2005; Käser & Miles, 2002).
However, an individual may keep knowledge for themselves rather than share to the others because knowledge is valuable and important for them to create competitive advantages with their colleagues (Osterloh & Frey, 2000). According to Chiu et al., (2006), “the biggest challenge in fostering a virtual community is the supply of knowledge, namely the willingness to share knowledge with other members” (p. Therefore, this paper will collect data and use social capital theory to identify factors that affect on people behavior to share and acquire knowledge in social media professional groups and then continue to identify how this knowledge affect on job performance. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) basically define social capital theory with three dimensions: structural, relational, and cognitive.
The structural dimension of social capital displays through social interaction ties, the relational dimension displays 123doc 10 through trust, norm of reciprocity and identification, and the cognitive dimension displays through shared vision and shared language. This study focuses on social interaction ties of the structural dimension, trust of the relational dimension and shared language of the cognitive dimension to explore how these factors impact on people behavior to share and acquire knowledge in social media professional groups and then how this knowledge affect on job performance. The research model is at figure 1.2 Research Questions and Objectives This research aims to examine whether the social capital has any impacts on knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition within social media professional groups, which in turn affect the job performance. Specifically, it investigates: - The impact of interaction ties, trust, and shared language on knowledge sharing in social media professional groups.
- The impact of interaction ties, trust, and shared language on knowledge acquisition in social media professional groups. - The relationship between knowledge sharing and job performance. 123doc 11 - The relationship between knowledge acquisition and job performance.3 Research Delimitation This study focuses on employees who use social media professional groups and work for organizations in Ho Chi Minh City of Viet Nam. This study focuses on social interaction ties of the structural dimension, trust of the relational dimension, and shared language of the cognitive dimension to investigate the impact of these factors on people who share and acquire knowledge in social media professional groups and then how this knowledge affect on job performance.4 Research contribution Base on the results of this study, the author hope to provide practical contribution to members of social media professional groups who would like to use social media professional groups to share and acquire knowledge for solving problem at work.
A new point of this paper in comparison with previous researches is to combine the use of social capital theory to investigate the motivation employees share knowledge in social media professional groups and the impact of knowledge on job performance.5 Thesis Structure The structure of this thesis is as follows: - Chapter 1 is the research background, research questions and objectives, research delimitation, significance of the Research and thesis structure. - Chapter 2 presents the literature review and conceptual research model and its hypotheses. - Chapter 3 introduces the methodology used to test the research model. - Chapter 4 presents research results of data analysis.
- Chapter 5 summarizes the research results; provide the findings, and recommendations. 123doc 12 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter is an overview of social capital theory, knowledge sharing, knowledge acquisition, job performance, and their relationships that previous researchers have conducted. Based on these studies, the author builds the conceptual model and develop the hypotheses.