Abstract

Nowadays, we are in the midst of another social-technical revolution stimulated by the interaction between the human desire for efficiency and connectivity. During such revolution, the pace of life and work are becoming increasingly fast and usually erratic. Therefore, people are required to be more responsive and effective in dealing with changes happening in their lives. Social media are the predominant online offerings created in such revolution for fulfilling people’s needs of shaping social relationships. Besides serving users’ socialization purposes, social media have also rapidly changed the way individuals interact with others and even the way of learning, thinking and working. With the comprehensive use of various social media, individuals can perform information processing (e.g., information acquisition, assimilation and sharing) and external representation (e.g., shaping relationship, coordination and conflicts solution) more easily and frequently, which may further help them to develop their personal capabilities in dealing with changeable environments. However, there is limited research and empirical evidence regarding the bright sides of the diverse use of social media on the development of users’ individual capabilities in coping with dynamic environmental changes. Drawing upon the theories of media system dependency, boundary spanning and dynamic capability, this study thereby proposes that the comprehensive use of social media can be transformed into an individual’s dynamic capabilities through two important mechanisms: information processing and external representation. This study contributes to the literature by revealing how individuals can better deal with changing environments in the social media era and establishing the conceptualization and operationalization of individual dynamic capabilities.

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