Task and Social Information Seeking: Whom Do We Prefer and Whom Do We Approach?

Yunjie Xu, Hee-Woong Kim, Atreyi Kankanhalli
2010 Journal of Management Information Systems  
Yunjie (Calvin) Xu is an associate professor in the Department of Information Management and Information Systems at Fudan university, China. He received his Ph.D. in management information systems from Syracuse university. His research interests include information-seeking behavior in online and offline settings, development and modeling of online social networks, electronic commerce, and knowledge management. recent work by Dr. Xu has appeared in the abstraCt: Employee information-seeking
more » ... ior shapes the formation of organizational communication networks and affects performance. However, it is not easy to facilitate, particularly through information technology, and its motivations are not well understood. recognizing two broad categories of information-that is, task and social information-this study investigates and compares the antecedents of task and social information seeking. Deriving from the relational communication perspective, informational and relational motivations are modeled as the two main antecedents of source preference and sourcing frequency in dyadic information seeking. through a survey of employee dyads, our findings indicate that perceived information relevance is a significant antecedent of source preference for both task and social information seeking, whereas perceived relational benefit is significant in the context of task information. the results also show that perceived relational benefit has a stronger effect on source preference in task information seeking than in social information seeking. Furthermore, preference for a source is a significant antecedent of the frequency of sourcing in both contexts. this study provides an explanation of the formation of organizational communication networks. It suggests that organizational information and communication technologies not only need to support information delivery but must also facilitate relationship management for the seeker.
doi:10.2753/mis0742-1222270308 fatcat:5w3kwmfzn5cfvkfmx27lu2vrte