Understanding the impact of knowledge sharing through enterprise social networking (ESN) on service innovation

As the service sector has grown significantly in recent years, researchers are paying increasing attention to the co-creation and the application of knowledge in the service innovation. Knowledge sharing maybe a key driver of service innovation, as it encourages decisions to apply knowledge into products, services and organizational designs. The emergence of social media technologies, especially enterprise social networking (ESN), has made knowledge sharing easier, but has also led to some negative outcomes. These negative outcomes are low productivity, interpersonal conflict and possibility of leaking out sensitive information. The purpose of this study is to understand how knowledge sharing through ESN can influence innovation in the service industry, and how the strength of this relationship is affected by the governance of ESN. The paper puts forward a conceptual model and explains how it will be examined used mixed methods. We report on on-going data collection and emergent findings on our preliminary data acquired from interviews. The study will help managers understand how ESN can be used to support innovation in the service industry.