Table of Contents Table of Contents
Previous Page  58 / 372 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 58 / 372 Next Page
Page Background

發言或緘默:心理安全與自我效能在社會資本影響社群網站使用者知識分享行為上所扮演的中介角色

58

strict membership definition, insofar as the structure of a social network is concerned.

Furthermore, knowledge sharing on Facebook is usually not limited and does not revolve

around specific topics, and as such, users may need a wide range of knowledge. In Facebook

users’ interpersonal networking configurations, structural characteristics such as “centrality”

and “betweenness,” as defined in social networking analyses, are difficult to describe and

rarely examined, not to mention their impacts on users’ perceived psychological safety and

subsequent knowledge sharing behavior. The non-significant causal links between structural

social capital and users’ psychological safety and knowledge sharing behavior may indicate a

less important role of structural characteristics in shaping knowledge sharing on Facebook.

Fourth, the results reveal a positive causal relationship between psychological safety

and knowledge sharing self-efficacy. Thus, psychological safety acts as a precursor of

knowledge sharing self-efficacy on Facebook. Edmondson (1999) shows that a team’s

psychological safety mediates the effects of team leader coaching and support on team

learning behavior; a similar reasoning in organizational behavior can also be applied to

Facebook, in that users’ psychological safety perceptions can raise their confidence in

knowledge sharing.

5.1 Implications

According to Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998), social capital is the sum of the actual and

potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of

relationships possessed by an individual or social unit. The findings of the current study

reveal that social capital exists on SNSs, especially the cognitive aspects of social capital,

which exhibit the greatest impact on users’ psychological safety, knowledge sharing self-

efficacy, and knowledge sharing behavior. In addition, this study finds that users’ knowledge

sharing self-efficacy has a positive impact on their knowledge sharing behavior, consistent

with previous results (e.g., Ardichvili et al., 2003; Cabrera et al., 2006; Kuo and Young,

2008). By examining the social capital → psychological safety → knowledge sharing self-

efficacy → knowledge sharing behavior loop of causal relationships in SNSs, this article

provides concrete insights for researchers and practitioners into the internal functioning of

SNSs. This study provides useful guidelines to and pinpoints key psychological factors for

marketers facing the challenge of running successful SNSs or using SNSs as their marketing

platforms.

Traditional wisdom views structural and relational social capital as the most crucial

elements in encouraging SNS users’ willingness to share knowledge. However, our research