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Enterprise social media can be the organizational transactive memory in which the knowledge dialogue provides users with the metaknowledge to support knowledge transfer. The purpose of this study is to examine a mediation model to show how perceived critical mass, openness and affiliation climate affect organizational knowledge transfer through the mediation of improving the metaknowledge of who knows what and whom.

To test the mediation model and corresponding hypotheses, this study employs structural equation modeling analysis using 264 valid questionnaires.

The study found the two mediators fully explained the effects of the three preconditions on knowledge transfer.

These results help us to better understand the benefits of enterprise social media and the functions of transactive memory in organizations.

Enterprise social media (ESM) are widely adopted in the organizations with the aim of improving employees' work performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of work context characteristics on the relationships between proactive motivations and usage behaviors of ESM communication and task collaboration feature sets.

Questionnaire surveys were used to gather data from 307 randomly chosen Chinese employees, who were also ESM users. The research model was examined using linear regression methods with the SPSS 24 software package.

The results indicate that work context characteristics (i.e. task interdependence and perceived organizational support) had significant moderating effects on the relationships between proactive motivations and usage behaviors.

By extending the model of proactive motivation to the ESM context, this study directly addresses how users can be energized to use ESM features.

Enterprise social media platforms (ESMPs) are web 2.0-based computer media tools that facilitate knowledge sharing by employees. The purpose of this paper is to outline the potential of ESMPs in both enabling and hindering knowledge sharing from the perspective of affordances.

This is a conceptual paper which integrates the literature on ESMPs’ affordances and knowledge sharing.

This paper finds that prior research on affordances only considered artifacts without much attention on the role of individual goals and organizational context. ESMPs may both enable and hinder knowledge sharing by affording different user behaviors contingent on artifacts, individual goals and organizational context.

The results of the paper will help managers and ESMPs designers to better understand the potential of ESMPs and pay attention to the positive and negative impacts of ESMPs in the process of knowledge sharing.

The paper derives a new categorization of affordances based on individual goals and organization context and portrays a model to describe how and when these affordances enable knowledge sharing through the development of transactive memory system and social capital and hinder knowledge sharing through overload, groupthink and privacy invasion.

This paper aims to investigate whether and how enterprise social media (ESM) affordances affect employee agility.

Adopting self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines a model in which the four ESM affordances (i.e. visibility, association, editability and persistence) impact employee agility through the three basic psychological needs satisfaction (i.e. perceived autonomy, perceived relatedness and perceived competence) of employees. Mplus 7.4 was used to analyze survey data gathered from 304 employees who used ESM in the workplace.

The authors’ findings show that all four ESM affordances contribute to perceived relatedness and perceived competence; visibility and association affordances also have positive impacts on perceived autonomy; and all three psychological needs satisfaction positively impact employee agility.

First, this study adapted SDT to explore how ESM influences employee agility. Second, this study enriches the relevant research on the antecedents of employee agility and also provides new evidence and theoretical support for employee agility. Third, this study effectively expands the antecedents and outcomes of employee basic psychological needs satisfaction in the domain of ESM and agility.

In the digital age, enterprise social media (ESM) use is becoming more prevalent in the workplace. The “group” function is a very important part in the use of ESM. This paper explores how the characteristics of employees' task requirements affect their group participation behaviors on the ESM.

Based on information processing theory, the authors establish a two-stage research model to explore the impact of task characteristics on employees' online group participation behavior in the context of ESM. Data were collected using a survey of 341 Chinese employees.

The results indicate that (1) task interdependence was positively correlated with participation in small closed groups; (2) task complexity was positively correlated with participation in small groups, large closed groups and open professional groups and (3) task non-routineness was positively correlated with participation in small groups, large closed groups and open professional groups.

This study builds on the literature on task characteristics, information processing theory and employees' online group participation behavior, contributing to the research on ESM in the field of information systems and providing guidance for enterprise practice.

This study aims to explore whether and how task characteristics affect employee agility in the context of enterprise social media (ESM).

Adopting the social network ties perspective, this study examines how task characteristics (i.e. task complexity, task interdependence and task non-routineness) affect employee agility by promoting their social network ties (i.e. instrumental ties and expressive ties) and how ESM visibility moderates their relationships. Data gathered from 341 ESM users in workplaces were analyzed using Smart-PLS 3.2.

First, task complexity, task interdependence and task non-routineness have positive effects on instrumental and expressive ties, which in turn influences agility; Second, instrumental ties have a stronger effect on employee agility relative to expressive ties; Finally, ESM visibility positively moderates the effects of task complexity and task non-routineness on social network ties.

The findings provide guidance for organizational managers on how to use task characteristics and ESM to improve employee agility, as well as insights for social media designers to optimize ESM functions to improve agility.

This study provides empirical evidence to explain the roles of task characteristics and social network ties in influencing employee agility, thus clarifying the inconsistent findings in extant research. The moderating effects of ESM visibility on the relationships between task characteristics and social network ties are also examined, thus providing further insights on the positive role of ESM in organizations.

Enterprise social media (ESM) usage has gained considerable momentum within organizations. The purpose of this paper is to seek a better understanding of ESM usage based on the task environments and the technology affordances of ESM.

This study is based on a survey consisting of 556 usable responses. Regression methods are applied to analyze the data.

This study finds strong support for the positive impact of task-technology fit on ESM usage. Considering separately, task equivocality had no impact; task interdependence had a negative effect on ESM usage; bridging social capital had a positive effect; and bonding social capital had a marginal impact on ESM usage.

This research incorporated social capital into discussions of task-technology fit. A 2×2 matrix based on task equivocality and task interdependence was developed, which may be extended to other contexts or technologies.

ESM implementation should account for both task environments and the appropriate technology affordances. Individuals access bridging social capital to a greater extent than bonding social capital using ESM, and they do not use ESM when the task environments alone are considered.

This is an original study that considers task environments and technology affordances in the context of ESM usage. The findings offer valuable and timely contributions to both scholars and practitioners.

This study aims to explore how communication visibility affects employees’ work engagement from the negative perspective of employees’ perceived overload in the context of enterprise social media (ESM) and the role of ESM policies in the relationship between communication visibility and perceived overload.

This study examines how communication visibility (i.e. message transparency and network translucence) affects employees’ perceived overload (i.e. information overload and social overload), which in turn affects employees’ work engagement, and how ESM policies moderate the relationship between communication visibility and perceived overload. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis was conducted on data gathered from 224 ESM users in workplaces.

Communication visibility has significant positive impacts on perceived overload, perceived overload has significant negative impacts on work engagement and ESM policies negatively moderate the relationships between communication visibility and perceived overload, except for the relationship between message transparency and social overload.

The findings provide new insights for organizational managers to formulate ESM policies to mitigate perceived overload and guidance for ESM developers to improve ESM functions to alleviate perceived overload.

This study provides empirical evidence to explain the role of communication visibility and perceived overload in employees’ work engagement, which contributes to the existing literature on the negative impacts of communication visibility.

As an increasingly popular tool for product exploration, online communities have an important impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how visiting behaviors in online communities affect consumers’ offline purchasing behavior. The moderating role of two dimensions of consumer visiting behaviors (visiting depth and visiting breadth) also receives attention. Moreover, the impact of consumer visiting behaviors on offline sales for different types of online communities is also the focus of this paper.

To test the empirical model, the authors collected data on consumers’ visits to an online real estate platform with local housing sales data. In addition to the baseline regression analysis of the data with the help of Stata 17.0, the study also analyzes the robustness of the results through several methods.

The authors focus on an online community for newly-built housing and find that consumer visits to the focal online community have a positive impact on offline sales. Visiting breadth has a negative moderating effect on this relationship, and no statistically significant moderating effect is found for visiting depth. Further, our empirical exploration finds that consumer visits to competitive online communities have a positive impact on offline focal product sales, but visits to complementary online communities have no statistically significant effect on offline sales.

Our findings contribute to the understanding of consumers’ cross-channel purchasing behavior and provide new insights into how visiting behaviors in online communities affect consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Online Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platforms are becoming increasingly popular globally in recent years. Our knowledge of how to develop and manage the digital platforms that make P2P lending possible, however, is limited. Through an in-depth examination of the strategies deployed and actions taken across the various stages of development of Tuodao, one of the most successful online P2P lending platforms in China, the purpose of this study is to develop a process model of P2P Lending Platform Development to address this knowledge gap.

The case research method was adopted for this research, and a total of 16 informants were interviewed. The informants were composed of representatives of Tuodao’stop management, organizational IT functions as well as its various business units.

Our study reveals that the development of a P2P lending platform can unfold in a specific sequence across three stages, and the development of a particular side of the platform should be emphasized in each stage (i.e. Partners, followed by Lenders, and then Borrowers). Each stage is also distinctive in terms of their strategies and platform configuration outcomes, which are elaborated on in our paper.

Our process model contributes an in-depth view of how P2P lending platforms should be established and nurtured to complement the existing studies in this rapidly growing research area. In addition, our study also hints at the strategies that can facilitate the various stages. Our model can potentially serve as the foundation for formulating guidelines for the managers of P2P lending platforms, so that they are able to optimize the development of their platforms and extend the benefits of P2P lending to a broader base of customers.