The evolutionary implications of social media for organizational knowledge management

Social media has become a widely-adopted technology over the past decade, affecting organizations in myriad ways. One of the most important is the effect on organizational knowledge management, in which social media overcomes many of the limitations of previous generations of knowledge management technologies. In this paper, I explore the effects of social media on organizational knowledge management. In doing so, I argue that social media is not a monolithic class of technologies, but a diverse and evolving technological infrastructure that supports and changes the way people communicate and collaborate. Key aspects of social media have gone through a technological evolution over the past decade from cloud computing, to mobile technologies, and into analytics. Each of these shifts has distinct implications for organizational knowledge management, many of which have yet to be fully realized. Furthermore, trends suggest that social media will continue to evolve with emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality, which will further influence how organizational knowledge management is practiced. This evolutionary perspective suggests we may be closer to the beginning than the end of how social media will affect organizations and their knowledge management practices. As such, a broad perspective on social media may provide many open areas for research in coming years.