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This paper aims to develop a research model that explains how instant messaging (IM) technologies enable employees to be empowered.

The paper uses survey of 253 Chinese work professionals with respect to their use of IM tools at work.

IM does empower work teams via shaping the social networks and facilitating knowledge sharing in the workplace, resulting in heightened team performance.

The survey was conducted in China so generalization to other national contexts is tentative. It focuses on the bright side of IM, but neglects the dark side, e.g. security concerns and work interruptions.

IM is not only a social tool, it also has the potential to contribute to work teams. However, IM cannot achieve better work performance alone. Its contribution to strengthen the social networks at work is also critical. These social networks at work can enable employees to overcome psychological barriers to knowledge sharing.

Studies of IM in the workplace have not previously considered social network perspectives, nor the value of such IM‐facilitated social networks for work performance. This large scale survey of work professionals across four locations in China provides evidence for the considerable positive impacts of IM on work.

The paper aims to combine TMS with knowledge management outcomes to investigate their impact on team performance based on an integrative research framework. Two types of social ties (instrumental ties and expressive ties) are also investigated as moderators to explore their impact on the relationship between TMS and knowledge quality.

The authors conduct a survey to test their research hypotheses. Their final data set consisted of 249 individuals from 61 teams in 34 companies.

Results indicate that TMSs have a positive impact on team performance mediated by knowledge management outcomes. The authors further found that instrumental ties could strengthen the relationship between specialization and knowledge quality, while weakening the influence of coordination on knowledge quality. In contrast, the results showed that expressive ties weaken the relationship between specialization and knowledge quality, while strengthening the influence of coordination on knowledge quality.

This study involved a cross‐sectional design instead of investigating team work from a long‐term perspective. Future research could conduct a longitudinal project to investigate how TMSs form and how TMSs at different levels of maturity may affect team performance through perceived knowledge satisfaction. Further, the authors only examined a few of the factors as intermediate outcomes of KM from the knowledge perspective rather than the capability of the team.

When initiating KM projects, managers should focus on employees’ perceived knowledge satisfaction since the essence of KM is to focus on people, specifically the way people think, work and interact. Simply assigning employees with different types of expertise into a single team is unlikely to produce the desired results unless they can develop mutual credibility and coordinate their tasks effectively. To achieve such outcomes, they will need to feel comfortable in their work context – and comfortable to exchange knowledge with their team members.

The authors’ research makes significant contributions to research and practice. This study advances theoretical development in the areas of TMS and KM by illustrating their combined impact on team performance. It contributes to a better understanding of how TMS can enhance team performance through KM mechanisms. Moreover, while the relationship between TMS and team performance has been confirmed in previous research, the underlying mechanisms have seldom been explored. This study fills the gap by considering KM outcomes, comprising knowledge quality and perceived knowledge satisfaction. Although both have been shown in previous research to be related to performance, the authors investigated them specifically as mediators between TMS and team performance through a KM perspective. The present research proposes and confirms the positive influence of perceived knowledge satisfaction on team performance. The study also highlights the need to examine TMS’ dimensions separately, not as a single construct.