Dicuss about the Use of Social Media for Knowledge Management.
Globalization and developments in advanced technology have a big impact on the landscape of marketing and strategies of multinational marketing. Social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter have become one of the central parts of daily life around the world. In the present essay, social media and knowledge management in multinational organizations are described. Social media acts an important role in developing social capital. In addition, role of social media in supporting innovation and aiding problem solving are explained in the present essay. However, risks are also involved for using social media in multinational companies that are described in the essay along with exploring its benefits.
Zhang et al. (2015) asserted that internet enables to connect people through social networking like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. In multinational companies, highly accessible as well as scalable technologies are used in order to create social networks. Users can make interaction through several ways like blogs, emails, using Twitter and LinkedIn as well as instant messaging through Facebook and some other social networking sites. Social networks have become very powerful in facilitating communication. There is a rapid development in the membership of those results (Behringer & Sassenberg, 2015). It results to connect more number of people and help to develop and improve knowledge management in the multinational companies such as Flextronics and DBS Bank.
Uses of social media in multinational companies achieve effective knowledge management. It acts an important role in evolving technologies as well as advancement in sharing knowledge across the globe. Chua & Banerjee (2013) commented that the ability of defining, implementing as well as managing the opportunities in business depends on availability and information quality. Social media has become the glue of innovation and expanded through making social strategies. Social media like Facebook and Twitter allow to develop innovative ideas and accessible. It also allows people to make conversations and develop community, which facilitate exchange of information as well as sharing of knowledge in the organization.
In multinational companies, social media creates bridge between several corporate houses along with its stakeholders. In terms of sustainability in business, social media closes the gap on managing knowledge and business intelligence (Chua & Banerjee, 2013). It acts a vital role in sustainable communications as well as performance, which is valued by the stakeholders. Social media in sustainability as well as CSR communication becomes an opportunity for sharing knowledge. Monitoring, listening as well as dialoguing with the key stakeholders involved in the business offers competitive advantages in the business. Moreover, in terms of sustainability consulting, multinational organizations seek for integrating eco awareness in order to pursue long term sustainability. Hence, social media acts a crucial role for knowledge management in MNCs.
Use of social networks sites like Twitter and LinkedIn are gradually increasing in large multinational organization. Adoption of social network site is useful for broad distribution of information as well as knowledge. Majchrzak et al. (2013) mentioned that social capital explains the resources embedded in the social relationship along with interacting in a network. Social media becomes a mainstream that is used to modify personal relationships and allow people in contributing number of issues and produce new possibilities as well as challenges for facilitating collaboration. In addition, potential benefits of embracing as well as implementing social media have brought a massive change in multinational companies (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014).
Online knowledge sharing occurs while the internet is utilized as a medium of exchange. Popularity of web 2.0 technologies is recognized as social media. Collaboration tools like sites of social networking, blogs and podcasts, folksonomies and social bookmarking as well as crowdsourcing (Qi & Chau, 2016). These tools are useful to collaborate with each other and share knowledge between them.
There is a relation between social media and development of social capital in multinational organization. Chong et al. (2015) commented that social media generally founds in accruing bridge for social capital that provides benefits related with heterogeneous social ties like novel information that broadened of worldviews. Bonding social capital includes strong ties in team of work. Online networks provide evidence of social capital as well as exhibiting higher levels of making closure compared to the expected theoretical models. Social capital is assumed as one of the critical roles in implementing global strategy. Ellison et al. (2014) asserted that human resource management system of an organization is responsible for creating social capital. They examine challenges for building social capital in the organization.
One of the most general measures of the community is considered as social capital. Central premise of the social capital is the value of social network. Use of social media helps to create connections between people in the organization. Bridging of social capital discover general points of making intersection. Twitter is a useful tool in this case. There is social purpose of small that happens many times in multinational companies. It can be achieved with the help of social media (Munar & Jacobsen, 2014).
Social media is one of the best ways to reach out in existing as well as potential customers in a business organization. It takes benefits of making creativity. There are usually two ways in involving network in order to develop new products as well as services. Crowd sourcing is one of the ways in order to share solutions to a specific issue in multinational companies. The organization gathers, develops and rank them in contributing to reveal strong performers. In addition, use of social media allows people in submitting competitive ideas as well as innovations for the organization (Zhao, Park & Zhou, 2014).
Utilization of social media brings several advantages for innovation. Wisdom as well as creativity of people is enhanced outside of workplace. It increases likelihood of people through picking up and developing innovative ideas, which might be unrecognized unless it is used. Outside perspectives of particular customers along with possible customers can have issues and scopes. Furthermore, it increases customer loyalty as well as brand advocacy, which comes from having any offer from the company. Zwetsloot et al. (2015) commented that lower costs while developing new products and enhancements are seen more certain for market success. On the other hand, the causes of subsidiaries are detected as the parent organization of multinational organizations assign works to a particular subsidiary. Thams, Alvarado-Vargas & Newburry (2016) stated that the subsidiary can be innovative through adding value and assuming operational responsibilities. The significance of being innovative as well as economic determinants in theory and practice is helpful to support innovation in multinational companies.
Business of a multinational organization searches to develop customer base and improve sales that run into similar types of issues. In case of increasing brand awareness, it is required to look into the budget for putting into the ration ads or the billboards. With the help of social media, cross-post content can be developed. As stated by Ventola (2014), a simple and effective method for increasing the destination of the social medial marketing is to post the contents to several social networks. It also allows connecting with a large number of audiences. Social media as well as platforms offers powerful targeting tools s compared to old media. In case of reaching to large number of audiences but having lack of financial supports, social media helps to reach the audiences and analyze behavior of customers. Social media also involves with the brand of a multinational organization like Flextronics.
Facebook is one of the useful ways for understanding demographic breakdown of the audience. It is also helpful to decide preferences and support by division of gender, age and religion. Social media assists through spreading in global network.
Installing application and use of social media in multinational organizations can bring risks in several aspects like innovation. According to Westerman, Spence & Van Der Heide (2014), lack of long of motivation is seen for using social media in MNCs. In addition, lack of written agreements can be the result for using social media in organizations. There are also difficulties seen in order to manage large-scale project as well as maintaining relationship in working with crowd sourced staffs of the organization. Social media can cause reputation of the company through making negative publicity. In addition, legal issues also may arise whether the organization provides improper comment regarding the organization. Creating approval procedure in engaging junior and inexperienced staffs for any type of communication in social media can be risky for the organization.
There are also securities issues like hacking that can be caused for using social media in multinational organization. It also causes bugs and spyware for the organization. It is difficult to protect secret information in order to avoid the hacked account. In this aspect, the organizations require enhanced security system. Moreover, social media allows the organization to make interaction directly with the customers. Use of social media excessively can be addictive and results waste of time for the employees. In addition, insufficient controls in authentication can cause security issues for the organization. Usage of social media can cause cross site scripting and cross site request forgery. Phishing is one of the attacks that can be caused for using social media in MNCs. Furthermore, social media can cause information leakage and flaws of injection.
Use of social media brings several advantages in multinational organizations. It increases exposure and improve brand awareness for the company. Social media is helpful to find customers for the company. Learning about the audiences and target customers can be achieved through social media. It provides insight knowledge about the customers and help to discover creative methods in order to reach more number of people. Sometimes customers are unable to reach out. Social media can be useful to post complaint and there are several customers use social media for contacting with the organization and expect response from them. Social media is used to give instant feedbacks to the consumers. In addition, social media allows achieving competitive analysis for the organization.
Proper use of social media can increase sale of the organization. Social media is also one of the inbound marketing tools that assist in collecting leads as well as developing list of email. Alexander (2014) stated that each social media profile adds marketing mix is the gateway of website. Hence, each of the contents provides scopes in acquiring new customers. Social media is used like melting pot of distinctive ways of people with several backgrounds and behaviors. Social media is useful for a multinational organization to improve rankings of search engine. Search engine optimization is vital in order to achieve higher page rankings. It helps the organization to increase business of the company.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn act a vital role in increasing business of a multinational organization. Use of social media can bring advantage for the staffs and management of the organization. It is one of the great tools used for knowledge management of an organization. In addition, sharing of knowledge in multinational organizations can be achieved through the use of social media. It also assists to develop social capital in the organization. Furthermore, social media supports innovation in a company, which is one of the most important components in order to achieve competitive advantages in the business. However, several risks are involved in using social media in multinational organizations that need to be minimized in the organization.
In order to minimize the risks involved in using social media in multinational organization, it is required to take some actions and restrictions in the usage of social media inside the company. Multinational organization like Flextronics requires enforcing policies to reduce the threat associated with usage of social media in the organization. Sufficient anti-automation would be helpful to minimize the risks associated with the usage of social media in organizations. Moreover, security program for end user and enabling desktop security would assist to mitigate the issues. The organization need to implement policy for sharing content and access in the social sites in the organization. Installing of anti-malware software would be useful to mitigate phishing and threats for information integrity.
References
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