Enacting knowledge strategy through social media: Passable trust and the paradox of nonwork interactions

• Author: Tsedal B. Neeley,Paul M. Leonardi
• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2739
• Published date: 01 March 2018

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Enacting knowledge strategy through social media:

Passable trust and the paradox of nonwork

interactions

Tsedal B. Neeley

1

| Paul M. Leonardi

2

1

Harvard Business School, Harvard University,

Boston, Massachusetts

2

Technology Management Program, University of

California, Santa Barbara, California

Correspondence

Tsedal B. Neeley, Harvard Business School,

Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02163.

Email: tneeley@hbs.edu

Paul M. Leonardi, University of California Santa

Barbara, 1319 Phelps Hall, Santa Barbara,

CA 93106-5129.

Email: leonardi@ucsb.edu

Research Summary:Despite the recognition that knowl-

edge sharing among employees is necessary to enact

knowledge strategy, little is known about how to enable

such sharing. Recent research suggests that social media

may promote knowledge sharing because they allow

social lubrication and the formation of trust. Our longitu-

dinal and comparative analysis of social media usage at

two large firms indicates that users who participate in

nonwork interactions on social media catalyze a cycle of

curiosity and passable trust that enables them to connect

and share knowledge. Paradoxically, the very nonwork-

related content that attracts users to social media and

shapes passable trust can become a source of tension,

thwarting a firm’s ability to encapsulate knowledge in the

form of routines and to use it to enact its strategy.

Managerial Summary:Integrating knowledge from

across a firm is a critical source of competitive advantage.

Firms are increasingly implementing internal social media

sites to promote knowledge sharing among their

employees. Our analysis indicates that employees’curios-

ity about nonwork-related and work-related interactions

motivate them to use the sites. The integration of non-

work and work content allows employees to identify peo-

ple with valuable knowledge, and gauge the passable

trust that they need to share knowledge on the sites or

offline. Paradoxically, the nonwork-related content that

attracts users to the sites can become a source of tension,

thwarting the production of knowledge to enact firms’

knowledge-based strategies. To foster work-related

knowledge sharing, managers should accommodate

nonwork-related interactions on social media.

Received: 1 August 2015 Revised: 15 December 2016 Accepted: 23 December 2016 Published on: 2 January 2018

DOI: 10.1002/smj.2739

922 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smj Strat Mgmt J. 2018;39:922–946.

KEYWORDS

Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge-Based View, Social

Media, Trust, Strategy-as-Practice

1|INTRODUCTION

When asked in the early 1990s why Hewlett-Packard invested so many resources trying to imple-

ment new technologies to help employees share knowledge more effectively, then CEO Lew Platt

famously replied, “If only HP knew what HP knows we would be three times more productive.”

In line with Platt’s exhortation, there is ample evidence indicating that firms may not always

know what they know (Argote & Ingram, 2000; Grant & Baden-Fuller, 2004). Strategy scholars

would argue that lack of awareness about a firm’s own knowledge affects the firm’s ability to be

productive as well as the vital issue of competitive advantage. As Haas and Hansen (2005) sug-

gested, “competitive performance depends not on how much firms know but on how they use what

they know.”If firms possess unique and inimitable knowledge, then they will be more likely to

enact strategies that enable them to outperform their competitors (Felin & Hesterly, 2007; Grant,

1996; Liebeskind, 1996). Consequently, knowledge sharing among employees is critical to an effec-

tive knowledge-based strategy. In fact, Eisenhardt and Santos (2002) argued that effective knowl-

edge sharing within organizations is essential if firms wish to create and execute knowledge-based

strategies.

Scholars who study the relationship between knowledge and strategy argue that technology is a

primary way by which firms can execute their knowledge-based strategies (e.g., Hansen, Nohria, &

Tierney, 1998). Like Hewlett-Packard, many other firms such as McKinsey, Accenture, IBM,

Spencer Stuart, and Boeing have adopted technologies in hopes of enabling effective knowledge

transfer among employees. However, a rich literature shows that technologies implemented to foster

knowledge sharing often fail to result in knowledge integration among employees, and consequently,

make it difficult to encapsulate knowledge and spread it across the firm (See Alavi & Leidner, 2001

for review). For example, Haas and Hansen’s (2007) study of technology-mediated knowledge shar-

ing in a management consulting firm showed that electronic databases save employees time on certain

tasks, but did not improve employees’ability to share knowledge in ways that led to knowledge inte-

gration across the firm, and consequently, negatively affected the firm’s ability to execute its strategy.

One possible reason that technologies used to facilitate knowledge sharing in organizations fail

to produce knowledge integration and subsequent use at the firm level is because knowledge and

practice are intimately connected (Brown & Duguid, 2001). Orlikowski (2002, p. 250) observes that

knowledge is “enacted—every day and over time—in ‘people’practices. [This view] leads us to

understand knowledge and practice as reciprocally constitutive, so that it does not make sense to talk

about either knowledge or practice without the other.”Building on this work, scholars who adopt a

Strategy-as-Practice perspective (Golsorkhi, Roeleau, Seidl, & Vaara, 2010; Jarzabkowski & Spee,

2009; Whittington, 1996), argue that knowledge sharing within organizations is a core component

of doing strategy (Jarzabkowski, 2004, p. 529). Although sharing about strategy processes is clearly

important, sharing about mundane operational tasks is often more important for the enactment of a

knowledge strategy (Chia & MacKay, 2007). If a firm bases its competitive strategy on uniquely

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