Freelancing in the Economy 4.0

In the last years social media are increasing their importance in the context of digital freelancing by letting companies offer projects to external professionals through the Web. However, the available platforms for digital freelancing are still far from supporting the ecosystem of companies and professionals during the implementation of complex projects through an accurate definition of the required skills, roles, interdependencies and responsibilities. This chapter presents a roundup of the available systems of support to freelancers. The goal is to identify the essential features and structure of a comprehensive social media able to effectively manage and support the potential of an “economy 4.0” characterized by a free and flexible circulation of highly skilled professionals, that can be aggregated to support the needs of organizations.

Employee Wellbeing English Language Proficiency a Key to Knowledge Sharing and Social Interaction

This chapter discusses the significance of employee wellbeing at the workplace and self-perceived English language proficiency as a predictor variable. The importance of employee wellbeing has been recognized all around the world. To generalize the findings of previous literature this study has examined the proposed model in the context of telecom MNCs in Pakistan. This chapter starts with what is wellbeing at the workplace? And moves towards it significance in the context of developed and underdeveloped countries. Further, this chapter explains the empirical findings of the proposed model. The results revealed a strong correlation between self-perceived English language proficiency and dimensions of employee wellbeing at the workplace. This is a very important chapter for both researchers and managers.

Use of Social Media for Knowledge Sharing by Instructors in a Higher Education Institution

Against the backdrop that universities are required to generate and disseminate relevant and applicable knowledge for the general good, and with the understanding that social media can be an effective vehicle for such knowledge sharing practices, this study explored the use of social media for knowledge sharing by academics at a university college in Ghana. The study thus examined how instructors use social media for sharing academic knowledge, the factors that promote such knowledge sharing practices, and the barriers to effective knowledge sharing in the academic environment. 47 instructors participated by completing an online questionnaire, whilst 7 participated in focus group discussions. Findings reveal a regular, though not daily, use of social media platforms for academic knowledge sharing. Personal, technological and institutional factors were determined to be contributing in fostering as well as hindering such activities. Implications of these findings as well as suggestions for future research are accordingly discussed.

Demystifying the Power of Digital to Become a Cleverer Enterprise

New challenge in all industries is to catch up with the digital revolution. There are some pioneers and some followers in all industries but it is inevitable that digits catch every company by its claws. Our research aims to put forward the dynamics of the digital era or in other words new economy. Companies with a good level of digital maturity and thus high digital quotient become the leaders of their industries. Of course it is in some sectors digitization has become more obvious compared to others, but it is a rising trend in every industry, one can appoint. Banking sector is casts a great example how digital quotient and its factors come into play. Our research tries to define the new concept of digital quotient and illustrate a good practice by evaluating the strategies of a leading bank in Turkey.

Knowledge Management and Social Media in Tourism Industry

The chapter aims to provide an overview of the role of social media for knowledge management in tourism industry. Respect than traditional tools, the social media penetration within such industry is growing thanks to opportunity for travelers and travel professionals to access critical tourism knowledge everywhere and every time. Prior research has mainly focused on how social media are changing the tourism industry, while it is lacking enough the contribution of these technologies to managing touristic knowledge. This chapter seeks to shed light on how social media support knowledge management, with particular attention to knowledge creation, sharing, and preservation processes, in tourism industry. In particular, while knowledge creation and sharing process have attracted the attention of scholars, knowledge preservation via social media seems be still in its infancy stage.

Consumer Behavior, Trust, and Electronic Word-of-Mouth Communication

Social media platforms have become a major forum for consumers to interact with firms and other individuals. Drawing on both the customer-dominant logic and the theory of planned behavior, the present chapter aims to advance understanding and encourage research on the variables that drive consumers' online purchase intention. Al though there is a general agreement in recognizing the importance of social media platforms as a source of information about consumer behavior, a complete theorization of the variables that affect the relation between behavioral intention and online purchase intention is still lacking. The proposed theoretical model is an extension of the theory of planned behavior and incorporates trust and electronic word-of-mouth communication as part of the customers' online purchase intention. Finally, the theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed.

The Role of Knowledge Transfer in Modern Organizations

This chapter reveals the overview of knowledge transfer; knowledge transfer, labor mobility, and labor diversity; knowledge transfer and subsidiary perspectives; barriers to knowledge transfer; knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity; knowledge transfer and knowledge acquisition; knowledge transfer and virtual teams; and the advanced issues of knowledge transfer in modern organizations. The process of transferring knowledge is an ongoing progression of learning, adjusting, and improving. At the organizational level, knowledge transfer manifests itself through changes in the knowledge of a unit. Most successful knowledge transfer efforts actively involve both the source of the knowledge and its receiver. Establishing performance expectations for those who will use the knowledge further quantifies the value of the transfer. Companies considering or using knowledge transfer processes, should continuously evaluate their social media readiness. The benefits of knowledge transfer for workplaces include the increases in productivity, speed, agility, profits, and growth.

Social Media and Social Networking

Social media is a powerful communication tool that facilitates the interaction and provide an efficient interconnection among different roles in many fields such as business and media. The power of social media forced its responsibility for the vast dissemination of different information during real time events. Many social networks have emerged since the 90s; however, many of these networks have been abandon while the success of others in providing intelligent and active communication made them the most famous recently. Some examples of these successful social networks are Facebook, and Twitter. In this research, we provide the readers with the main concepts of social media and social networks, and their relation with other fields. We also discuss the current situation with providing the emerging trends and challenges of both fields.

Social Media Influencers and Consumer Online Engagement Management

With the popularity of social media, social media influencers have been playing an increasing role in modern marketing. However, there is little research on the impact of social media influencers on consumer brand engagement. To fill this gap, this chapter develops a conceptual framework to examine the impact of the endorsement by social media influencers on online brand engagement. The authors use social distance theories to construct several propositions to provide a deep understanding. They suggest that traditional celebrities and social media influencers have different social distance, therefore generate different types and degrees of consumer online engagement. And the product characteristics moderate the effectiveness of the different types of celebrity endorsement.

The Role of Social Media Tools in the Knowledge Management in Organizational Context

The advancement of the economy based on knowledge makes knowledge management critical for organizations. The traditional knowledge management systems have presented some shortcomings on their implementation and management. Social media have demonstrated that are not just a buzzword and have been used increasingly by the organizations as a knowledge management component. This chapter was developed aiming at exploring and critically reviewing the literature of social media use in organizational context as a knowledge management component. The review suggests that, while traditional knowledge management systems are static and often act just as knowledge repositories, social media have the potential for supporting different knowledge management processes that will impact on the organizational culture by encouraging on participation, collaboration and knowledge sharing. Despite their recognized impact on knowledge management processes, some uncertainty remains amongst researchers and practitioners and is associated to the difficulty in understanding and measuring their real impact.