Applying systems thinking concepts in the analysis of knowledge sharing on WeChat.

This research is intended to theoretically investigate and analyse the characteristics of WeChat and its effect on knowledge sharing through a systems thinking approach. As one of the most popular mobile social application in China, WeChat has social attributes and the functions of multimedia interaction platform and has been gradually used in knowledge management practice. On one hand, comparing with virtual communities of practice, WeChat provides a more open and individual environment which break free the shackles of workplace relations. On the other hand, as a user-operated media and instant messaging software, WeChat has dramatically different structure with academic social network sites, such as ResearchGate and academia.edu and so on. It is found that these new emerging tools could be useful in sharing explicit and tacit knowledge through providing interactive and collaborative technologies. Meanwhile, these user-operated media are bringing new challenges for knowledge sharing. For example, they provide a high level of convenience for the diffusion of “false knowledge”. But there is still a poverty of literature to understand how and what might be the contributions and effects of social media on sharing different knowledge dynamically. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyze the effects of social media on knowledge sharing towards a systems thinking approach in order to provide a better understanding of social media users’ knowledge sharing behavior and important practical implications for the scientific and reasonable management of knowledge sharing. By conducting a study of the characteristics of knowledge sharing on WeChat, the subject, object, content, channel, and effect of knowledge sharing were analysed. The results show that WeChat present knowledge sharing opportunity that augment personal and organizational knowledge management in terms of tacit knowledge sharing, explicit knowledge sharing and false knowledge sharing.