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This study aims to investigate how psychological motivations influence the knowledge-sharing intention of employees and how these effects are moderated by traditional Chinese culture.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in China to test the research model. The target samples comprised MBA students who have enough practical experience, as well as considerable academic experience.

The results suggest that anticipated reciprocal relationships, anticipated extrinsic rewards and sense of self-worth exert different effects on knowledge-sharing intention. In addition, traditional Chinese culture plays different roles in the relationships among these three psychological motivations and knowledge-sharing intention. Specifically, guanxi orientation positively moderates the effect of anticipated reciprocal relationships and negatively moderates the effect of sense of self-worth. Face gaining negatively moderates the effect of anticipated reciprocal relationships and positively moderates the effect of sense of self-worth. Face saving negatively moderates the effect of anticipated reciprocal relationships and sense of self-worth.

A few studies in extant knowledge management (KM) literature provided insights into how traditional Chinese culture could directly affect knowledge sharing. The authors depart from these studies by integrating these characteristic indigenous concepts (i.e. face and guanxi orientation) into this study. The authors offer an indigenous cultural view of how these indigenous concepts truly influence an individual’s psychological states and inclination in KM literature. Through this approach, the results confirm that these cultural factors do play an important role during the formation of knowledge-sharing intention and reveals several important research findings.

Organisations have widely adopted enterprise social media (ESM) to improve employees' task performance. This study aims to explore the mediating role of perceived task structure on the relationship between ESM usage and employee task performance. The authors investigate the moderating effects of perceived team diversity on the relationship between ESM usage and perceived task structure.

The authors conducted a questionnaire survey in China on 251 working professionals who use social media in their respective organisations.

Results showed that employees' perception of task structure considerably mediates the relationship between ESM usage and task performance. Findings also confirmed that perceived team diversity negatively affects the relationship between ESM usage and perceived task interdependence.

Practitioners and/or managers should pay attention to the effect of ESM usage on employee's perceived task structure. Furthermore, they should focus on the level of team diversity when adopting ESM to enhance task performance.

This study contributes to the knowledge of perceived task structure in explaining the effect of ESM usage on task performance based on communication visibility theory. This work presents the relationship among ESM usage, perceived task structure, perceived team diversity and task performance. Moreover, this research enriches the literature on ESM usage by investigating the moderating roles of perceived team diversity whilst presenting the negative effects of perceived team diversity.