Research On The Impacts Of User Participation Behavior In Intra-and Extra-Organizational Online Knowledge Sharing Communities

Online knowledge sharing communities have flourished in recent years,and the widespread application has been proliferated both within and outside the organizations.Within organizations,the incorporation of knowledge sharing communities is expected to facilitate the communication and knowledge sharing among employees.However,the effects of employees’ activities on these platforms on their job performance and idea generation remains unclear.In contrast,for those informally organized virtual knowledge sharing communities outside the organization,participants’ status distinction has been deemd as core internal motivation for their sustained participation,meanwhile,cultivating elite users could efficiently facilitate knowledge transfer and sharing within the community,which could further guarantee the overall activeness of the whole community.However,how the participants’ various activities jointly affect their social status in the community is still underexplored.In order to answer the above questions,our research encompasses the following three aspects:The first section of this dissertation focuses on exploring the effects of employees’ corporate blogging activities on their job performance within organizations.We classify employees’ blogging activities into work-and non-work-related.In the lens of Social Capital Theory,we further map these activities into the structural,relational and cognitive dimension of social capital,and uncover the varied effects of these dimensions on employees’ performance via considering employees’ self-efficacy as their heterogeneity.Employees’ idea generation has critical importance for organizational innovation.The second section of the dessertation explores the effects of employees’ corporate blogging activities on their idea generation.Employees’ idea generation is “constructive” and “prosocial”.In line with these two characteristics,we propose that employees’ “proactive creativity” and “group identification” will directly affect idea generation,and the online social relationships formed on corporate blogging will further affect proactive creativity and group identification.Based on analyzing the type and attribute of online relationships,we build a network tie “type-attribute” matrix,and systematically explore the influencing mechanisms of employees’ corporate blogging activities on idea generation.The research findings derived from the above studies provide salient theoretical and practical implications regarding how the companies could scientifically implement blogging platform and strategically regulate employees’ activities on the platform.The third section of the dissertation focuses on online question and answer(Q&A)community outside the organization.We investigate how the participants’ various activities in Q&A community jointly affect their social status in the community.Drawn on Situated Learning Theory,we classify and conceptualize participants’ activities in Q&A community into “meaning negotiation” and “identity construction”.Based on the coherent logic of Situated Learning Theory: Legitimate Peripheral Participation(LPP),we propose that a participant changes from a peripheral position to the central position through the interaction between their meaning negotiation and identity construction.The research model and related hypotheses are all verified via the data collected from Zhihu.The research findings could better guide the community to regulate participants’ activities and cultivate elite users in the community.