Helper, Sharer or Seeker? - A Concept to Determine Knowledge Worker Roles in Enterprise Social Networks

In order to manage knowledge work, companies need to understand how knowledge is shared, integrated, translated and transformed in organisational practice. However, knowledge work often happens in informal organisational structures, thus, making it difficult to identify and understand the occurring knowledge practices and participating actors. Enterprise Social Networks (ESN), i.e. internally accessible social networking services, have evolved as important platforms for knowledge work. Facilitating knowledge interactions between users, the analysis of ESN data might be well suited for characterising and identifying knowledge actions and different knowledge worker roles. Drawing on an existing knowledge worker role typology as well as findings from social media research, this paper develops a conceptual basis that serves as starting point for determining knowledge worker roles using ESN data. The next steps of this research involve the empirical testing of the typology using data obtained from a