Media Characteristics and Social Networks-enabled Knowledge Integration in Cooperative Work

With the increasing variety of information technology applications, knowledge integration in cooperative work with social interaction has emerged as an important research topic. Knowledge practically is transmitted via various communication media in distributed environments and most existing literature examines knowledge management both from computing and social techniques but ignoring the effects of media characteristics. As a complement to previous research, this study proposes a comprehensive model of knowledge integration (MoKI) by incorporating valuable views of media characteristics and social networks which provides a new prospective for knowledge management. To our knowledge, this is the first research to show the mechanism of knowledge integration from a synthesized lens of the uncertainty reduction theory and the transactive memory systems. This robust and new research model is supported by the investigation of knowledge integration practice in ABC Company which can be used to explain the most knowledge integration phenomenon for communication media-enabled cooperative works in contemporary society.