This dissertation investigates the ways in which distributed workers in a global high-tech organization engage with the affordances of enterprise social media for their everyday knowledge sharing practices. Drawing on the scholarship of process of knowing, I elaborate on how communication visibility, enabled by the use of enterprise social media, is closely intertwined with the situational, relational, and material aspects of knowing. To offer an in-depth understanding of emerging knowledge sharing practices among globally distributed workers, I employed a mixed-methods approach analyzing different types of data including quantitative, social network, and qualitative data. The findings highlight the visibility paradox: communication visibility facilitates knowledge sharing, yet brings into high relief existing knowledge disparities among diverse groups, which in turn reinforces status differentials. Illustrating the intended and unintended consequences of technology adoption, this study disentangles the complex interrelationships among visibility, status hierarchies, and process of knowing. Although an enterprise social media platform was implemented to improve knowledge sharing across borders, emerging usage patterns ironically contributed to exacerbating knowledge disparities, which subsequently reproduced status asymmetry in the organization. This study builds a granular understanding of the paradoxical influences of visibility on knowledge sharing by presenting three central themes: knowledge (awareness of knowledge conversations vs. awareness of knowledge disparities), connectivity (connections as resources vs. connections as challenges), and power (leveraging panoptic effect vs. controlled by panoptic effect). These three constructs of knowledge, connectivity, and power are important status signals that are shaped by the visibility effects. This dissertation contributes to expanding the scholarship of organizational knowledge and paradox as well as extends practical insight into the management of technology, knowledge, and diversity in a global organization.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Communication, Information and Library Studies
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_7475
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (x, 218 p. : ill.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Social media
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Heewon Kim
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore19991600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
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Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.