Contribution of Social Media Use at Work to Social Capital and Knowledge Sharing: A Comparison between Chinese and Thai Employees

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore the
relationship between social media use at work and
knowledge sharing behavior. This study will also do a
comparative study between China and Thailand. Social
capital was introduced as a mediating variable. To further
study, this study selected trust, social networking, and
shared language to represent the three aspects of social
capital. Convenient sampling was employed to collect
data from the multinational corporations; partial least
square regression was used in analyzing the data. After
analyzing, positive relationship between social media use
at work and all mediating variables (trust, social
networking and shared language) was discovered.
However, the positive relationship between mediating
variables and knowledge sharing is different according to
the different culture. By the means of this article, the
cross-culture analysis illustrates the difference between
Thai and Chinese employees’ knowledge sharing
behavior, which provides an empirical evidence for
corporations to build a culture-based social media use
policy.