Using Social Media Tools to Enhance Tacit Knowledge Sharing Within the USMC
Abstract
Social media usage has exploded over the past several years. Individuals are using social media tools to stay constantly connected to friends, family and co-workers. Companies have learned to leverage these same technologies both externally and internally. These emerging social technologies, applications and platforms are an excellent way for geographically separated people to connect, communicate and share knowledge in novel ways. The United States Marine Corps (USMC) continues to communicate primarily through telephone, email and reports. The valuable resource of tacit knowledge contained within veterans of operations spanning from distributed counterinsurgencies to complex humanitarian assistance efforts is usually shared via face-to-face interaction and informal networks. Academic literature and industry adoption indicate that social media tools are now familiar and mature enough to provide an additional or even substitute conduit for this type of rich tacit knowledge sharing. How can social media tools be used to improve USMC tacit knowledge sharing? This research explores the extant use of Web 2.0 enabled social tools for the purpose of tacit knowledge sharing. A case study of a USMC unit identifies knowledge sharing pathologies, and presents use cases for the application of social tools to address these pathologies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA589653
Entities
People
- James P. Mastrom Jr.
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School