Knowledge management in consultancy involved LPS implementation projects via social media

Lean production systems (LPS) have been adopted by numerous organizations to improve their performance. Many enterprise implement LPS by inviting external consultants and using social media to promote this collaboration. Social media provide a channel for enterprise employee and external consultants to communicate and exchange their respective knowledge as a form of their reaction to others or surrounding (Hines et al. in Am Antiq 23(3):312, 29; Hu et al. in Prod Plan Control 27:550–562, 31; Kipping and Armbrüster in The burden of otherness: limits of consultancy interventions in historical case studies, Buchkapitel, Routledge, 37). Using a combination of content analysis and sentiment analysis, this study comprehensively analyzed the effect of sentiment expression to knowledge interaction taking place on social media. Three major influences could be culled from the paper. The case study implies that, through social media, both consultant and organizational employee could play a more proactive role in the knowledge interaction, and sentiment expression makes it more effective.

Lean production system; Consultant; Social media; Knowledge management

Introduction

In past decades, global competition has increased on uncertainty of demand and customer expectations [[14] ]. The precondition for the old Taylor-Ford model that all manufactured products were certain to be consumed by market has disappeared. Instead, customer expectation become a baton and high production volumes should be more alert to changeable customers’ demands through a robust manufacturing process without waste [[3] ]. And lean manufacturing philosophy as the paradigm to this concept has been introduced and drew a dramatic attention from 1990s [[8] , [28] ]. A successful implemented Lean manufacturing will bring the enterprise with “continuous flow manufacturing, customer-driven production, flexibility, waste elimination, zero defects, visual management, safe and orderly working environment, and customer-perceived quality.” [[49] ] and how to implement lean manufacturing has been an attractive topic for researchers all the time [[2] , [61] , [65] ]. In these researches the establishment of implementation model and employee impact factors have been discussed focusing on the lean manufacturing information acquired from customers and their attitude on this. Several kinds of impact factors have been proposed by these researches [[48] ]. Hence, an emerging area of interest within LPS research and practice is the knowledge interaction between employee and consultants.

Nowadays technological components has become inevitably involved in organizational knowledge management [[26] , [35] ]. Social media is useful for supporting people-to-people connections (i.e. personalization in Hansen et al. [[26] ] and people-to-document accesses (i.e. codification in [[26] , [45] ]). Social media refers to online services that support social interactions among users through highly accessible and scalable web-based publishing techniques [[20] ]. It has the potential to support the multi-way communication between users at relatively lower costs and higher level of efficiency compared to the traditional communication channels [[25] ]. Given that a large number of work-based friendships emerged [[9] , [21] , [53] ], they also result in the use of personal social media technologies for work-related purposes [[34] ].

Despite that social media in organization has been used for a long time, these research assumes that the knowledge shared on social media is neutral in sentiment [[60] ]. And social media applications host a large volume of evidences that reflect people’s reaction to events [[42] , [45] ]. Analysis of social media data seems particularly useful when unexpected and emergent events occur and it’s important to understand how significant the role internet media plays in these events [[39] ]. Hence, during the knowledge interaction users do perceived and affected by these, it is necessary to analysis this affection.

Scholarly attention has been delved into the use of social media in organization to enhance the employee knowledge management [[16] , [22] , [44] , [63] ]. Based on self-reports or case studies, researchers have set up method on the antecedents or consequences of social media behaviors, and leave what employees actually post online to be researched [[82] ]. Although these social media has been researched and their effect has been conformed on disseminating work-related content [[74] ], there are still some questions for the external consultant using for knowledge management. For one, how should external consultant use social media to manage knowledge effectively. Second, could ones’ emotion expression on social media be helpful for external consultants to facilitate their knowledge transfer. This paper uses a combination of qualitative case study and content analysis to analyze the use of social media for KM in the progress of Lean implementation projects in Chinese enterprises.

The outline of the paper is structured as follows. The next section presents the literature about two pivotal themes, i.e. KM in LPS and social media. Then a theoretical framework of integrated KM strategies and social media go after that. In Sect. 3, the data collection and analysis procedures are introduced. In Sect. 4, by using the case study, the process of KM in LPS is presented and explained. Section 5 discusses major findings obtained from the paper. At last, the paper concludes with the implication for managers and scholars.

Literature review Knowledge management in LPS implementation

Womack et al. [[78] ] popularized lean concept in manufacturing through their book The Machine that Changed the World. The discussion about the evolution of LP is continuous and various kinds of explanations and implementation methods has been proposed and researched [[28] , [49] , [65] ]. From single Just-In-Time (JIT) philosophy to “house of lean”, lean production system comprehends a complex knowledge system including tools and philosophies [[59] ]. In practice, however, it becomes more difficult for most enterprises to adopt the knowledge of lean production by themselves. In many cases, consultants become their important knowledge provider and process director [[79] ]. Knowledge interaction between consultants and enterprise employees plays an important role in this process. For the purpose of this paper, three KM strategies that consultants used to manage this process [[12] ] are:

Management of knowledge for participants;

Management of content knowledge from participants; and

Management of feedback knowledge about participants.

First, management of knowledge for participants refers to KM strategies that organizations use to manage knowledge flow from external consultants to participants. Continuously, the reported outcomes of the application of LP is inconsistent. One of the reasons for this is the improper understanding of LPS by both the managers and employees of an organization [[1] ]. Continuous knowledge flow directed from the consultant to the organizational members is a prerequisite to assist their decision-making and behavior-doing [[17] ]. Before organizations implement LPS, it is necessary to create lean awareness programs for all the employees at different hierarchical levels in the organizations [[7] ]. This enables members to better understand the objectives of LP, their efforts, as well as their rewards [[62] ].

Second, management of knowledge from organizational members refers to KM strategies that organizations use to manage knowledge flow from members to consultants. In order to build successful LP implementation project, consultants also need many kinds of information and knowledge including organizational vision, operational situation and shop floor workers’ experiences and advices [[13] ]. Consultants need to incorporate these context knowledge into their terminology to make themselves more likely to be understood by organizational members during their communication [[31] ]. To be understood and accepted by organizational members is crucial for the success of the LP implementation project [[73] ].

Third, management of knowledge about organizational members refers to KM strategies that external consultants used to manage knowledge flow of members’ feedback on the LPS implementation guidelines, rules and procedures that were issued to the shop floor [[31] ]. Organizational members’ feedback contain their present attitude, understanding, thinking and difficulties for external consultants to provide advanced advices to improve their performance [[24] ]. With the accumulation of members’ feedback, external consultants will explore members’ present needs and further desires on LP knowledge [[43] ]. This also enables consultants to gain a sense of the sentiment on the ground so that their clients can receive “useful” advice in their preferred ways.

Social media

Social media is constituted by a set of communication technologies that support social interaction among users. Social media supports an inclusive scope of social interaction from close relationship to strangers and from life to work [[5] ]. “It is a group of Internet-based applications that are built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” [[36] ]. Social media removes constrains from a recipient to a publisher and some new knowledge could be emerged from traditional recipient in organizations.

Analysis on social media has pay attention to knowledge management, and in practice people not only share knowledge but also react to some events [[41] ]. Users’ reaction to events could be divided into “positive” and “negative” ones roughly, such as “amused” and “bored”. Users cope with changes and challenges they perceived actively and flexibly. They do not simply fear events, instead they will draw on a heterogeneous set of strategies, which can be more or less effective depending on the adaptive function they serve (e.g. active search for information vs. denial) [[68] ]. A qualitative analysis which takes into account all dimensions of valence (positive, negative, neutral, ambivalent) was proposed by Skinner et al. [[68] ], that identified more than 400 lower order ways of coping that belong to 12 higher order categories or coping families; each family includes strategies divided in affective, behavioral and orientation or cognitive dimensions. Apart from seeking to contribute to the understanding of communications during organizational related works, such theory-driven explorations of users’ expressions are scarce in social media research in general. To address this gap, we situate our consideration of emotional valence and categorize affective expressions in exploring the effects of users’ dispose on the knowledge interaction with others by adopting the coping classification scheme by Skinner et al. [[68] ].

KM in LPS implementation and social media

Social media equips employees with the ability to share knowledge about their work or organization [[18] ] and engage in relationships with other professionals [[58] ]. Social media services have distinct technical features that unleash passion among users to engage in knowledge sharing [[56] ]. The openness and participation properties of social media entwine users and content, which makes it suitable to develop an interactive and dynamic knowledge management in working place [[27] ]. Based on their respective features, the three knowledge management strategies facilitated by the four identified social medias services are analyzed and listed in a support framework as shown in Table 1.

First, MBS (Micro-blogging services) enables participants to contact each other via micropost. This serves as an avenue for users to share knowledge about their work or organization [[18] ]. In fact a lot of individuals use MBS to propagate knowledge, such as tips of their experience or knowledge points. In these tips, posters add their own emotion to make them interesting and appealing. MBS enables direct communication between coworkers [[15] ]. Employees can learn from and respond to each other’s ideas, questions, opinions and accomplishments [[69] ], and draw out knowledge when they are followers and followees. Moreover, employees also voice their satisfaction or dissatisfaction as well as their experiences and frustrations in their work through micropost. This helps participants to better understand others’ potential concerns [[82] ].

Second, social networking services (SNS) supports to build interconnects among different kinds of employee, including the transfer of the enhanced communication and facilitated knowledge [[51] ]. Managers provide knowledge for general employees to keep them timely informed of changes in their department, corporate department and organizations [[33] ]. Receivers gain not only the materials but also senders’ attitude about them. Sometimes receivers’ responses to the issues includes their identity, approval or worries. The interconnect also allows managers to gain knowledge from employees by comprehending how they react to such changes [[47] ]. In that these shared knowledge could be easily accumulated and reviewed, managers have more chances to formulate employee’s preferences and proliferation.

Third, IM (Instant messaging) is used in the workplace for cooperation [[46] ]. With IM, employees generally develop a knowledge management process to adopt different kinds of knowledge coming from employees into their common knowledge. IM, a cost-effective technology, enables consultants to conveniently communicate and interact in real time with colleagues and supervisors [[50] ]. However, there are problem of someone’s perplexity or rejection. Based on this, consultants provide detailed knowledge and gather specific information to help employees to eliminate negative feeling. And through the accumulation of these detailed information, consultants gain the knowledge for later collaboration [[54] , [57] ]. With this kind of synchronicity and real time knowledge interaction, much information which may be omitted in the traditional communication could be saved on IM.

Fourth, CDF (Corporation discussion-forum services) (also referred to as web forums, Internet forums, message boards, discussion boards, bulletin boards or forums) are web applications of discussions and the posting of user-generated content [[4] ]. On forums, users are free to express their ideas by posting questions and answers [[66] ]. Organizational forums are also used to facilitate communication among employees, especially inter-department communication. Moreover, DF can promote knowledge exchange of employee-to-employee know-how, which may be monitored to unearth knowledge about employee, such as focus point, and attitude.

Methodology

This paper uses a combination of multiple cases research method and content analysis to analyze the extent to which the use of social media supports KM in some LPS implementation projects. Qualitative case studies provide rich and natural data to explain ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions as well as ‘what’ questions [[81] ]. Contents collected from social media were coded in a number of categories “following a theory-driven (top down) approach and closed coding. This included the 12 coping families and the three adaptive function categories proposed by Skinner et al. [[68] ] but only considering the affective dimension” [[68] ]. Initially, the data were coded based on the lower order categories or ways of coping associated with the 12 higher order coping families. And next the data were divided and advanced into three higher order adaptive function categories.

Content analysis is a qualitative research technique used to analyze the existing communication record or textual documents. Content analysis also could be used to analyze emotion on internet [[64] , [75] ]. Following Ford [[23] ] procedures, content analysis provides the means to analyze the data generated by the use of the focus group technique, such as social media. Content analysis is also less susceptible than other direct observation modes to some data-contaminating errors stemming from the subjects’ awareness of being studied, their preferences in giving certain responses over others, and the influence of researchers and measurement processes on their responses [[77] ]. Next, data were coded in a number of categories following a theory-driven (top down) approach and closed coding. This included the 12 coping families and the three adaptive function categories proposed by Skinner et al. [[68] ] but only considering the affective dimension.

In this study, we observed four lean consultant projects undertaken in TJU consulting company. We accessed to the consulting company through one researcher, and hence we got permit to collect online data of these enterprises related to LP projects. According to the research purpose, we selected the enterprises that adopt different social media services to facilitate daily work within the organization and the collaboration among employees. In these enterprises, the social media services are partially or totally active. Initial questionnaires were granted in these enterprises to investigate their respective features in the use of social media, and then we selected four kinds of most popular ones, namely weblog (MBS), wechat (SNS), QQ (IM) and corporate discussion forum (CDF).

Second, content analysis was used to collect data from the four social media services [[52] , [71] ]. Considering the difference of using frequency, we increased the number of samples as the popularity increases. Specifically, the collected data comprise the following:

• 130 microblogs posted by consultants along with their conversations from microblog;
• 150 posts contributed by either consultants or employees along with their comments from WeChat;
• 180 fragments happened within the lean production implementation teams from instant messaging such as QQ;
• 80 discussion threads initiated by employees from organization business forum.

After the data were collected, they were textually analyzed through unitizing and categorizing [[11] , [72] ]. The process of unitizing means selecting the smallest informative ones that quote directly from participants of research-focused group [[67] ]. The identifying, isolating, and concentrating portions of the text appeared potentially relevant in KM and emotions.

The cases of LPS implementation Background

We selected the enterprises from TJD consulting company which is a specific LPS consulting company. It has provided LP implementation services many enterprises and helped clients to create a total value reaching to ten millions. The clients of TJD consulting company are different in LP level. Some of them did not implement LPs in organizations ever before, while others have implemented LPs for a time and want to formulate an advanced LPs in organizations.

These selected enterprises are also supporters of using social media. Commonly, these enterprises take several kinds of social media to manage the knowledge flow inclusively from management to employee, from employee to manager and among employees. The background information of the selected enterprises is introduced in Table 2.

Expressions of sentiment on social media

Two categories of affective expression were found, namely Self-confidence and Support seeking. Specifically, participants express their self-soothing or seek reassurance from others to become more confident. Affective expressions of self-soothing could be found in the following sentence:

This week, we will accomplish the working criterion, though to fulfill them need another time.

These expressions seemingly imply participants’ positive attempt to self-calm and raise confidence in their coping with task. Also associated with this is accepting responsibility for choices and being confident in them, such as:

To heighten our productivity, our organization is trying on redesign organizations’ production lines, I do believe we will have a substantial increasing.

This kind of participants’ confidence also could be found in dealing with the threats:

…from our working on value flow chart, I have summarized several key points to accomplish it. Namely …….

This expression seemingly shows that the participant is convincing her or himself that she/he did well because this person made something different and more effective, and displays her or his successful experience to colleague.

The self-confidence category also included concerns about their colleague, which can be found in expressions such as:

Be careful, I have just experienced a hard time to produce a work standard. It means that I had to recollect many details in work.

This implies that these participants find themselves encountered with a difficulty and remind others who were not informed about the situation, i.e. people who did not implement temporarily. However, with the tasks unfolding participants conveyed other expressions which indicated raising confidence in them. This confidence was mainly produced in humorous messages, which even included self-deprecating with their effort to cope with the situations and thus experience the situation in a more positive way:

Though we have been dog tired for several days, we have hoping in redesigned production lines eventually.

In the samples collected afterwards, another category was found. Participants who used this strategy expressed an adjustment to the new conditions and tried to adapt to them in the best way. This means, for example, expressing acceptance of the new “regulation” about works required by LPS. This advanced form of expression makes a positive mental restructuring of the situation through the use of humor, in order to minimize the associated stress. This way of expressing has example on social media as follow:

Great! Thanks for 6S, even my office become clean and lean now.

The affective dimension also implies negative expressions of affect such as worrying, doubts, anxiety and so on. On participants’ social media, some complaints about the undergoing situation could be found, including negative expression of sentiment such as whining or other forms:

The LPS has bring my work more additional requirement, but I still don’t know what we will accomplish.

It is too boring that we have depicted value flow chart for several times. Would we success in this time?

Other examples of negative sentiment emerged in participants’ expression of doubt about the outcome of LPS implementation.

We have implement 6s for several weeks, but I don’t know why we need to do this.

Within this category, there are doubts on the outcomes of LPS implementation, when they learn other cases in other enterprises.

LPS implementation is really useful? Why there exist so many reported failure in using it?

In addition to this, participants of enterprise showed their worries about the procedure of LPS implementation:

Two warehouses had accomplished their improvement last week, and shouldn’t turn to us. Why they unfold their work in our workplace?

In another situations participants adopt a coping strategy associated with Negotiation, where they saw the situation in the other people’s “eyes” and comment on tasks beyond their individual perspective, such as:

Today consultant Li introduced us with new method on value recognition, we do hope it’s useful to our work.

In external-consultant-involved LPS implementation project, enterprise employees are uncertain about their experiences of coping with their working environment. It is difficult for enterprise employees to believe consultant understanding their work totally.

Use of Micro blog

Sina-weibo is one of the most popular MBS in China that provides users with broadcasting media of micro-posts with capacity of no more than 140 words. Apart from text, these micro-posts often include photos which make the text more interesting and easy to understand. The users of MBS could be divided into followers and followees and their identities could also be reciprocated without any constraint [[12] ]. The followers share what they are reading, thinking and experiencing in their daily lives, and receive all tweets from the followees. As reported by the end of 2012, there were 46.2 million daily users [[83] ].

In lean implementation project, external consultants use microblog to provide knowledge in a mixture of text and photos for the client employees, including new plan, real template and prevailing views. For instance, a consultant posted two photos about 6 s implementation and explained the necessity of change. Consultants acquire context knowledge from employees who express their expectations, interpretation and common ideas to the specific work or whole projects via microblog. On MBS, consultants give some posts about the newest progress in project with short comments which often stimulate employees to comment on the posts too. And in many cases, consultants will be prompted in responding to the knowledge acquired from employees. Tweets on project tasks enable consultants to know employees’ concerns and do good to further investigation.

Sometimes consultants reveal issues on Sina-weibo in order not only to introduce the content itself, but also to provoke employees’ some kinds of activity emotions when they perceive enterprise employees’ confidence scarcity. So in these posts consultant would express their “feelings” first. For instance, consultants show photos of the workplace before and after 6 s, and emphasize the importance of this change. Some employees response with “it becomes clear and convenient” and emoticons such as smiles or strong. And then, from plenty of texts and emoticons, consultants could learn how well his issues was accepted by employees. Learning this, consultant has more information about what kind of issues could draw more attention from employees.

Use of Wechat

WeChat is one of the most popular SNS that allows users to construct, present, and maintain their profiles. Wechat provides different ranges that permit users to send and receive content. The first level is individual communication. And second level is to share some content in his/her “Moments”, which could be accessed by user’s friends. At last, some users get registered as “official accounts”, and send regular updates to their ‘subscriptions’. Nowadays there are many lean production consultancy individuals or organizations who opened official accounts.

Lean production system includes both the instruments for management and the culture for organization. With the development in LP implementation, both practitioners and researchers have realized the importance to make client employees to understand LP, not only knowing “how”, but also knowing “why”. Through Wechat, consultant provides a wide range of knowledge for client employees in lean production system’s articles including LPs developments, explanation of tools application, and some famous enterprises’ lean implementation or innovative implementation cases. Besides, this consultant has also “Reproduced” from peers. In practice, these articles provide employee with reference on how to develop LP in their own work. For instance, consultants share some articles talking about how to become good group leaders, before shop floor redesign. Consultant also draws knowledge from employees through reviewing employees’ “Moment”. Through reviewing those accumulated articles, photos and texts related to their working, consultant could learn about employees’ context knowledge. Through WeChat, consultant could also draw knowledge from employee by polling questionnaires, including the questions such as “in your opinions, which LP tasks bring your working with most obvious improvement”. The outcomes of questionnaires are helpful for consultant to learn employees’ recognition of project. Learning this, consultant could design work plan considering client employees’ features of behaviors, preferences, expectations, levels of satisfaction, and in turn comprehend employees’ participant.

Some articles on SNS are constructed by only lean production knowledge and others are “Inspirational” stories or successful cases. For this, articles generally describe things with emphasis on obstruction from different aspects [[30] ]. When reading this articles, employees could be affected and express their feelings in several sentences or simply “like” it. Sometimes employees also share some articles that they think useful to improve their work [[32] ]. These articles represent consultants’ or employees’ emotion on lean production culture, lean production tools, ways of lean production implementation and can be more persuasive. From responses, consultants’ could feel their influence on others, which could be used as reference for choosing contents.

Use of QQ

QQ is one of the most popular IM tools which have been used for more than 10 years. It allows message passing between individuals and groups. Though many Chinese enterprises take it as individual entertainment at the beginning, now many of them have established several QQ groups for working purposes. Nowadays many organizations possess several groups to facilitate the transfer and communication of members’ information in and between departments. In this situation, there is a large amount of task-related knowledge that could be transferred, discussed and saved.

In LPs implementation, external consultant and employee often construct “Lean group” to discuss problems and exchange information. In the lean implementation project, consultants use the instant messaging to communicate and provide knowledge in a form of replying to solve day-to-day problems in their daily work. Some lean production instruments are complex for client employee to grasp, so proper directions are essential in some difficult points. For example, though there are prior explanations, it is still prevalent to reveal waste residue in the process by employee themselves. So they need to discuss their questions with consultant on QQ in some times. In this process, external consultants’ professional knowledge could be interwoven with context knowledge for employee to propose many scenario descriptions about their works and organizations. And as an informal communication channel, instant messaging permits participants to express personal thoughts freely, and consultant could enhance their understanding of participants. In addition, consultants actively react to these questions, and participants tend to be engaged correlatively, which has a positive effect on the participants to generate new knowledge.

Different from previous kinds of interaction, communication on social media is more equilibrium between two speakers. Usually IM can be used at any time in the work for people to express their sentiment generated in work [[6] ]. External consultants could perceive it and do some reaction. For instance, employees has little experiences on lean production implementation, and they will show worries or disinclination about tasks. Facing these sentiment, consultants’ ignorance or delay of response can result in employees’ hesitation in work.

Use of CDF

Corporation discussion forum has been proliferated in use to facilitate employee learning and get technology support. Through the post, employees propose and reply their interested questions and obtain reciprocity and reputation on it. Organization also takes some measures to facilitate this kind of communication.

On enterprise discussion forums, external consultants could share knowledge with client employees through providing answers and engaging in their discussion. Answers from external consultants not only provide them with guidance and advice, but also make them to be aware of the importance of their advice on consultants. At the same time, posts on forums could be retrieval and subjoined with new content. Some posts could have dozens of replies for several months. Thus, this enterprise discussion forum could be used to help not only accomplishing tasks but also increasing their knowledge accumulation for future work. This knowledge also enables external consultants to have a full consideration about organizations. According to the number of participants and posts, external consultant could identify and pay more attention to some hot points in discussion no matter on line or off line.

Posts on enterprise discussion forums was short and concerned on only some specific questions at the beginning. But with the discussion developed by different partners, questioners show more interest in some answers. Respondents sometimes also comment on others’ answers and show their needs to others. Consultants could track these interesting points and provide answers in suitable ways.

The ways that the consultant uses social media for KM and interaction of emotion are summarized in Table 3.

Discussion

This research explores the effect of social media on knowledge interaction between external consultant and enterprise employees in LPS implementation projects, and concludes three main findings. First, social media has been recognized as knowledge management tools by organizations. But LPS implementation to enterprise employees means changes that need to be dealt with. So with the knowledge interaction on it, consultant and enterprise employees transferred knowledge to cope with changes in their work. In many times this bidirectional knowledge transfer contains participants’ sentiment [[38] , [76] ]. On social media, consultant displays many different kinds of LP knowledge including LP tools’ introduction, LPs and cases of LPs implementation. Sentiment transfer exposed on social media helps external consultants to decide which knowledge is suitable. Specifically employee becomes the source of knowledge for external consultant. With the context knowledge drew from employees of organization, consultants develop LP to implement issues considering the features of client enterprise. Consultant also acquires employees’ feedback by monitoring their comments and knowledge sharing in order to gain a sense of the sentiment among them [[62] ]. What’s more, consultants can acquire knowledge about employees by monitoring what is being discussed among employees to gain a sense of the sentiment on the ground [[70] ]. The different features of social media generally compensate for each other to mutually reinforce their overall function [[11] ]. Specifically in these enterprises, when new tasks are in perform, external consultant will provide tools about knowledge on MBS and use IM to interweave their knowledge with employees. From SNS and CDF, consultant gets feedback from employees.

Second, the roles of enterprise participants will be redefined through the use of social media as transforming passive task from the executive to positive knowledge creation ones. For the relationship between consultants and participants, there are different opinions to describe it. The latest one is that participants are deemed as the consultants who contribute knowledge and ideas in a project [[31] ]. Discussion and implementation of ideas contributed by participants during the project further foster participants’ loyalty [[10] , [55] ]. For instance, during the optimization of operating procedures, the consultant should show courtesy to acquire knowledge from participants. Through online communication, participants have the chance to express some “redundancy” information that is helpful for consultant to understand and improve the operating procedures. From the “redundancy” information, consultant learns not only what is working but also participants’ opinion on their present working and future developing intention. In addition to understanding the participants’ thoughts, consultant also offers lean production knowledge through WeChat or micro blog. In this kind of targeted knowledge transfer, participants are more likely to understand and get themselves adapted. The widespread support of lean production knowledge can thus be attributed to the manner through which consultant collaborates closely with client employees.

Third, consultant could promote knowledge dissemination through considering employees’ sentiment on social media. Consultant could make their lean production knowledge becoming more contagious in the way of hiding in a concrete context. To consultants’ emotion, different kinds of social media provide complementary methods. On Weibo, considering the constraint on word count consultants need to indicate their emotion tendencies when they comment on specific issues such as criticism or objection to some behaviors in lean production implementation, or appreciation on them. Weibo provide more options to users to share their knowledge and emotions. Beside publishing images and brief explains users also could publish complete articles. These articles also implies authors’ emotion to lean production. For instance, authors may record in a process of lean production implementation, not only what they did but also the meanings of them. The meaning generally point out authors’ emotion on it. From communication on IM, consultant should also pay attention on employees’ attitude and emotion. In different emotion employees’ will describe their questions by using different words. For instance, facing the cases proposed by consultants, some employees seek specific solutions actively while some others express their worry about the difficult in work. In order to make the implementation process smooth, consultants could better response to negative emotion first. Otherwise with the ignorance of their negative feelings employees are more likely to lose enthusiasm to contribute their knowledge to the task. To employees, the boundary between work and life is blurred on social media [[40] ], and they published contents with emotions on it. On Weibo employees have more chances to express their agreement on followers’ point. And for articles on SNS, employees could express their feeling generated from articles or posts without considering correctness. On IM, communications are mostly about works [[19] , [80] ], and contain employees’ worries about difficulty and satisfaction to others’ help. This kind of satisfaction also appear on enterprise discussion forum, when questions are solved. With KM on social media, emotions provide new tools for consultants to motivate employees to accept and apply lean production in their work.

Conclusion

By now, LP implementation has developed from a single tool to holistic LPs application. To accomplish this kind of complexity, many LPs implementation projects have involved external consultant. Knowledge interaction plays an important role to implement LPS successfully. In many organizations, social media has been used for the purpose of knowledge management as well as knowledge exchange between external consultants and employees. This study makes a preliminary exploration on it through a synthesis of content analysis and sentiment analysis. In this process, the use of social media has transformed the organizational members from knowledge receiver into knowledge contributor, making their role more significant. In addition, sentiment interactions between consultants and employees are also considered in this study. This paper demonstrates the engagement of participants through various social media services such as Micro Blog, WeChat, instant message tools such as QQ, and corporate discussion forum. In particular, Micro Blog and WeChat are used for transferring general knowledge for participants, whereas, on instant message and discussion forum, consultants and participants exchange information and knowledge for particular questions.

There are also inherent limitations in this paper that should be acknowledged. The data we collected does not follow a whole LPs implementation process. And we analyzed users’ sentiment in one-off communication without description of its changes. This study analyzes the communication content between one consulting company and its clients, and the generalization of the findings is limited.

For managers and consultants, through a case study of LP implementation, this paper illustrates that the use of social media expands the channel of knowledge acquisition for both external consultant and employee. The implications suggest that mangers should encourage employees to interact with external consultants through social media. The interaction made external consultants to have more chance to obtain organizational context knowledge, which helps external consultants to collect suitable training material and work out LPs implementation guidelines. Advanced employees’ feedback is also important for external consultant to continuously revise and improve guidelines and procedures used in LPs implementation. For external consultant, the use of social media removes the restrictions of time and space out from their knowledge exchange with employees. A myriad of social media services could be used together to manage knowledge about new works and to help employee to explore ways of best use.

For scholars, though the use of social media between organizational employees has been widely studied, its use between external consultant and employee is still uncommon. In this study, we comprehensively discussed the knowledge management on social media, and in future researchers could study the offline and online knowledge interaction simultaneously to explore the promoting or hindering relationship between them. Second, in this study, we mainly researched the strategy development of external consultant, and emotion interaction in one-off communication. New research could study the emotion in the whole work progress and its impact on other factors, such as social capital. This can offer insights into dynamic process of knowledge transfer and permit consultant to develop adept strategy. With these future researches, a more effective form of knowledge interaction on social media between consultant and employee can be developed.

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