Knowledge Management, Social Networks & Innovation

Introduction

The development of socializing and the creation of unexpected networking flows are generated through incessant ways of sharing knowledge. In regards to the consistent changes in the external business landscape, the internal axioms of management depend on the regulatory influences of knowledge sharing and the adoption of innovative techniques into business processes. An important aspect of a successful business is consequentialism through activities of knowledge sharing entailed within the prospective platform of social media usage. Exaggerated on the diverse facts of knowledge through social media presence to promote business innovation, the current report aspires to present a synopsis of applications of knowledge management activities in encouraging business innovation at one of the leading construction companies of the UK, Balfour Beaty.

Role of Knowledge management on business development at Balfour Beaty

Effective knowledge management and business development are interlinked with each other. Considering the intense level of competition in today’s world, it is integrally important to have a proper platform for effective knowledge management. The prospects of social media sites are adding on to the wider development of perceived success factors for integrating knowledge management with business innovation and development. The current success rate of social media sites, including the live sites that claim maximum attention from a global audience has formed an efficacious platform for sharing of knowledge.

In regards to the sharing of information via these social media sites, it is found that any business organization having close connectivity of workflow, delivers an ideal form of knowledge sharing and informed decisions. Balfour Beaty is labeled as one of the leading international infrastructure and construction companies that strategize to use the social media platform for extensive knowledge management. The level of innovation at the organization can be witnessed through indented inclusions of social media presence committed to encouraging knowledge sharing and effective management of the same.

The organization has effortlessly occupied the top spot in the UK construction index and has been dedicated to moving toward the consistent comparative analysis of the leading competitors on the row. Balfour Beaty is engaged in using extensive research on social media to enable the management to have wider opportunities for shared information and objective identification. With the use of the social media platform, the organization tends to create an open corporate culture that engages employees of the company within one common scale of operation. In any kind of engagement intervening towards corporate social responsibility, the organization uses the different social media sites including placing tweets and using Facebook posts to promote incessant conversation.

With the use of this platform for knowledge management, the organization aspires to help build the expertise of the employees by encouraging the sharing of opinions and ideas among the employees with different thought processes. The recent findings from the company report develop an understanding of possibilities of collaboration among the employees and develop a wider frame of the network to get connected to more possible stakeholders for the company.

Features of knowledge management

At Balfour Beaty, the focus is on combining engineering expertise with strong investments and aggressive research and development. Having a significant emphasis on knowledge sharing, the organization successfully integrates the workplace conditions of different location offices and accumulates the expert experiences and knowledge to formulate potential opportunities for high-end innovation and business development. The level of competition that the company faces is immense, thus apart from stressing on knowledge sustainability, the organization equally places implications on competing for the use of social media campaigns and following each of the important tweets that the competitors come up with.

The Facebook page of the company is optimized to engage the employees of the organization from all locations across the globe and support engineering expertise. This engineering expertise is substantiated by the scalability and balance sheet of the annual financial results and enables the management to deliver complicated business changes and requirements. One of the main features of the company's expertise in knowledge management is to make extensive use of social media to not only connect to the stakeholders but also with the customers. Having a global strategy with a pinch of local subjectivity, the organization specializes in creating a robust platform for facilitating sharing and exchange of business ideas that ultimately lead to unexpected innovations.

The process of knowledge management at Balfour Beaty is characterized by specific attributes including the following:

• Development of a prudent workplace that allows the employees of the company to communicate on specific issues and thereby generate abilities to adapt faster
• Balfour Beaty can optimize and customize the business operations, including their presence in the social media sites to allow the employees to have free access to the website information and social media pages
• There is a creation of Cross-Platform Accessibility through the use of the social media platform to not only encourage employees but also allow the customers to have firsthand information of the company
• There are opportunities for extensive Peer-to-Peer Interactions, providing better opportunities for sharing of innovative ideas and thought processes
• One very important feature of the knowledge management system at Balfour Beaty recognizes provisions for rigorous research and procurement of information

Development of organizational learning approach at Balfour Beaty

The success of an organization depends on the possibilities of developing organizational learning based on assessing the core aspects of the operation. It is the process through which the organization tends to create, retain and transmit knowledge across all the sections of operation and improvise by procuring valuable ideas from the staff members. This process can directly impact the potential chances of employee retention, followed by proactive sharing of information and learning. The explicit process of the organizational learning approach can be seen through the prism of three quintessential prospects of learning and development.

Management training, overall management development, and organizational development contribute to the formation of a comprehensive organizational learning approach. Recognizing the importance of the same, Balfour Beaty focuses on developing a wider chain of networks to encourage employees to get connected. A significant portion of this activity is done through the social media platform. According to the reports procured from the traffic assessments of the social media sites and relative frequencies, it has been noted that Balfour Beaty at present leads its presence in social media.

Intending to develop a compact arena for knowledge sharing and staff participation, the organization shows evidence of advocating its presence across numerous social media sites likely, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. This leads to an overall settlement of the company operations, by stressing on prospective ideas of leading change through manifestations of an evolved organizational learning.

Social media management at Balfour Beaty

Balfour Beaty has been marked as the leading UK construction company that possesses an exclusive presence on social media sites. Having accounts and relative pages in almost all the popular sites, likely, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, the company shares a dominant position on the social media platform. According to the report procured from the survey conducted by digital marketing specialist, LexisClick, it has been found that the company not only uses the social media channels to get connected with the customers and evaluate their purchasing patterns but also uses the same for synergizing possibilities of exchange of ideas and knowledge.

Some of the most exemplary projections of the company in social media sites could be seen through its popular video series aired on YouTube with the name of Meet the Expert. This video series served as one the most powerful representations of sharing innovative ideas and knowledge about the construction industry and creating an open platform for extensive interactions. The viewers of the video got to know about descriptive ideas on the construction sector and the relative innovations along with opinions shared from the experts of the company. Having such an exponential presence in the social media site, the organization marked a 20% improvement in terms of social media reach.

Additionally, the company through its Twitter account created a stir in the construction sector. With regular new Tweets on the site, the company reached a milestone figure of 50,000 followers, which is perhaps the largest among all the other construction companies in the UK. Thus, it can be stated that Balfour Beaty effectively uses social media channels to deliver real-time company information and create opportunities for industry conversations on construction and infrastructure. This not only helps in the exchange of information but also engages the local communities to develop subjective knowledge of the industry and its challenges.

Knowledge management through social media in business innovation at Balfour Beaty

As per the readings of The Construction Index, it has been found that among all the leading construction companies in the UK, Balfour Beaty seems to hold the topmost position. Conducting an independent audit on the external presence of the company on the social media channels, Balfour Beaty heads the race. It has been further found that Balfour Beaty has several Twitter followers compared to the number of Facebook fans of any other leading construction company in the UK. Arvid Linde of LexisClick finds that the social media presence of the company is so powerful that the netizens are more interested in viewing the pages of this company more compared to the others in the same sector.

The strategies used by the company are optimized to support their social media campaigns and it has been noted that Balfour Beaty uses 8K-strong Facebook prospects to have additional subscribers for the YouTube channel. The CTA button is linked to the videos that are based on the exchange of real-time knowledge and information more than the conventional B2B approach, to encourage the 'Call Us' approach for the audience (Balfourbeatty.com, 2020). Finding the reason to use the social media platform at such an exclusive level reflects on the company’s hunger to encourage systematic knowledge management and enable the organization to taste success through provisions of generations of innovative ideas.

Social media presence of leading construction companies

Aiming to spread the positivity of informed decisions, the company aggressively tries to make its presence felt in the social media channel. This is expected to evolve transparency in the business and promote higher staff engagement.

Opportunities for subsequent business innovation at Balfour Beaty

The adoption of innovative techniques in business has become an integral part of successful operations. Balfour Beaty expresses innovation through their relative acts and contributions towards gender equality and sustainability. The company makes voluminous engagement in the social media sites by using all the popular sites to make the brand presence felt among the visitors of these sites. The majority of the knowledge sharing and management for Balfour Beaty is done through Twitter and the messages are made exclusive and interesting to engage copious responses. It has been analyzed from the ideas of the visitors of the Twitter accounts and other social media sites that Balfour Beaty needs to focus more on innovation to enhance the productivity of their business.

Thus, from artifacts of public interventions, the company wishes to use Robotic Automation in the construction works. The expected project aims at making the construction site human-free by the year-end of 2050, encouraging robots and drones to channel and administer the operations (Valdez et al.2016). The project shall further focus on developing Building Information Modelling (BIM) manifested in the form of 3D printing tablets and supported by extendable 4D features. The project shall run on a round-the-clock basis and commission the incorporation of disruptive technologies in the construction procedures.

Main findings of the selected articles

In this article, Social Media Technologies’ use for the competitive information and knowledge sharing, and its effects on industrial SMEs’ innovation, Pérez-González et al. focus on finding the implications of technological innovations on supporting the decision making the process of companies. The authors of the article research on the impact of technological intervention as an essential aspect of company survival. The study specifically relates to the applications of technology on Small and medium scale enterprises with particular reference to Social Media Technologies (SMT).

The key findings of the study relate to the positive impacts of Social Media Technologies facilitating innovation within SMEs. It has been procured from the study that social media technologies have a strong influence on the decision-making procedure of companies, specifically small-scale companies. These social media technologies are used to gain external information and develop a comprehensive forum for encouraging the sharing of knowledge and promoting innovation in company performance. In consideration of the findings of the study, it needs to the stated that the authors have essentially featured on the particularities of gaining information about customer information that helps in developing a closer connection with the customers.

Therefore, the use of social media technology not only helps in driving excellence in business and innovation on the changes in business dynamics, but also promotes possibilities of developing compact apprehensions of social media contributing towards innovation and development of organizations.

Developing connections between the selected article and the above discussion

The selected article widely relates to the impact of applying social media technologies on driving business innovation and enabling business organizations to emphasize on knowledge sharing. The platform of social media is considered to be a prospective forum for allowing business professionals to exchange knowledge and encourage learning and development. From the above discussion, it has been found that the same aspect is being detailed and analyzed with a real-time example of Balfour Beaty. The only difference between the two discussions is the purview of the business operations of the respective entities. Balfour Beaty is a leading construction company in the UK with large-scale use of social media to encourage greater connectivity with the target audience.

The company operates on a global scale and uses the social media platform for not only to develop connections with the customers but also to promote the possibilities of sharing information and ideas. This has led the company to have a better placement in conducting research on customer attitude, purchasing behavior, and competitor analysis. The selected article equally shares the same fundamentals of study by focusing on the use of social media technologies in enhancing prospects of business; however, the focus of the article is on SMEs. Thus, it can be stated that by conducting a critical analysis of both the discussions, the core of the assessment remains the same while the perspective differs in the sense that the article focuses on SMEs, while the report discusses a large scale organization, named Balfour Beaty.

Conclusion

The findings of the above study contribute to the development of a critical understanding of the connectivity of social media as a global platform for knowledge sharing and effective management of the same. The report successfully provides an incision into the subject by establishing the linkage between KM and social media usage to be a great contributor to business innovation. The specified case study of Balfour Beaty supports the evidentiary report by providing empirical notes on the uses of social media pages and their contribution towards business growth and development.