Corporate Communication Related Knowledge Sharing by Professional Workers through Social Media
Aitziber Núñez-Zabaleta, Anjel Errasti-Amozarrain
(Department of Financial Economics II, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain)
Abstract: Social Media has become increasingly popular in recent years, providing an efficient way to maintain and make new business contacts, share information and create knowledge. They have been shown to facilitate business relationships and building social capital using Social Networking Sites and other Web 2.0 tool. Both professionals and companies are thus facing new challenges in the way they use social networks and in how they enhance their business purposes and relationships with other professionals and companies by sharing useful information. If companies have developed and implemented a social media strategy with a communicational approach in the last decade, workers are increasingly making greater personal use of social media for business purposes. This paper analyses the opinion workers have of the usefulness of Social Media to share information and get knowledge related to their businesses. We consider professional workers, whether employees or self-employed, to be those people whose work requires a certain level of qualification. Data was collected from 283 workers in the Basque region of the northeast of Spain through a survey, and in order to better understand their responses, six in-depth interviews were conducted among the respondents of the survey.
They were then asked about some points related to the use of these tools. Specifically, they were asked to rate six items in order to discover their opinion regarding the usefulness of social media. Two items were related to the benefits of the networks to contact with foreign professionals and the other four to assess the usefulness of the networks as regards accessing information of professional interest, entering discussion groups leading to new business ideas and to share knowledge in general.
Contingency tables have been used to conduct independence tests for verifying whether there are significant differences for six variables studied: three related to the actual worker (gender, age and type of worker) and three related to the nature of the firm that employs them (size, economic sector, and type of consumer it sells to). Statistically significant differences were found for the type of worker (self-employed) and the economic sector
where the company operates.
The results show the opinions regarding the usefulness of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for sharing information and obtaining knowledge are highly rated by professional workers. This means they acknowledge the potential of Web 2.0 tools for the purpose referred. Surveyed workers appreciate the willingness of other professionals to share their knowledge and experience, while SNS are also used to disseminate information among professional specifics groups. In short, the information, ideas and experiences acquired through conversations that take place in SNS lead to business opportunities.
Key words: business networking, social media, knowledge creation, information sharing, self-employed,
