An Agent-mediated Approach to Promote Knowledge Sharing Through Enterprise Social Networks

Broadening adoption of social network tools within the enterprise suggests a new and valuable source for insight into the social structure through organizations. While online social media tools are being evolved by enterprises in recent years, the social media are used much for knowledge sharing. This paper focuses on how enterprise social network builds within and between the departments and utilize an agent-based model of social networks to clarify employees with critical network positions who other employees trust to them for receive knowledge. The structure of the paper is: first, the concept of the social network and trusting are described in the social network environment with effective knowledge sharing construct through the enterprise social network. Next, the paper presents complex network models which be used for agent based simulation. Finally, the last part investigates the agent based model to impact knowledge recipient trust on sharing knowledge through the enterprise social networks. Our results show the position of critical employees in the network and network with high trust between employees keeps close social proximity to people who actively share knowledge.