438 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS—PART C: APPLICATIONS AND REVIEWS, VOL. 31, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001 Information Seeking in Social Context: Structural Influences and Receipt of Information Benefits Rob Cross, Ronald E. Rice, and Andrew Parker Abstract—Research in the information processing, situ- ated learning, and social network traditions has consistently demonstrated the importance of social networks for acquiring information. However, we know little about how organizational re- lationships established by a relative position in a formal structure or social relationships established by interpersonal processes in- fluence whom is sought out for various kinds of information. Prior research suggests that people often receive some combination of five benefits when seeking information from other people: 1) solutions; 2) meta-knowledge (pointers to databases or people); 3) problem reformulation; 4) validation of plans or solutions; and 5) legitimation from contact with a respected person. This research builds on that work by assessing the influence of organizational and social structures (such as similarity of job function, hierarchy, task interdependence, physical proximity, influence, trust, friend- ship, and gender) on receipt of these benefits from other people in a physically distributed organization. Task interdependence is the strongest and most consistent predictor of information seeking. However, social relations also affect the receipt of informational benefits, especially as they become more representational and affective. Implications are suggested for the study of social capital, computer-mediated communication, and organizational learning. Index Terms—Information, networks, relationships. I. INTRODUCTION W ITH the evolution of knowledge management (KM), we have seen increased emphasis placed on understanding and supporting processes of knowledge creation and sharing within and across groups in organizations [16], [21], [26], [35], [99], [106]. However, outside of work on communities of prac- tice (CoP) there has been little research on knowledge creation and sharing within informal networks of employees. Given the centrality of social interaction as a vehicle for knowledge cre- ation and learning, it is important to better understand these processes from a social network perspective. While research is placing increased emphasis on the social context of knowl- edge creation and sharing, there is much yet to learn in terms of both the kinds of information that people seek out from other people and the characteristics of relationships that dictate who is sought. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the influence of two categories of relationships—organizational Manuscript received October 21, 2001; revised November 2, 2001. R. Cross is with the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA, and also with IBM’s Institute for Knowledge Management, Cambridge, MA 02142 USA (e-mail: robcross@virginia.edu). R. E. Rice is with the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1071 USA (e-mail: rrice@scils.rutgers.edu). A. Parker is with the IBM’s Institute for Knowledge Management, Cam- bridge, MA 02142 USA (e-mail: andparke@us.ibm.com). Publisher Item Identifier S 1094-6977(01)11256-3. and social—that might facilitate or constrain the flow of various kinds of information within a group. We will begin by briefly reviewing research establishing the importance of the social context of organizational knowledge creation and sharing. We then identify five categories of in- formational benefits typically derived when seeking informa- tion from other people as well as review relevant research re- garding potential structural influences on receipt of these infor- mation benefits. This review serves to motivate a general re- search question concerning the relationship between organiza- tional and social structural influences and receipt of informa- tion. The methods section describes the sample and site, the overall procedures, and the measures used in assessing these relationships. The results section presents bivariate and mul- tivariate relationships among these variables, highlighting the separate roles of organizational and social structural influences. Finally, the discussion section considers implications for future research and practice involving social capital, computer-medi- ated communication, and organizational learning. II. BACKGROUND A. Social Context of Organizational Knowledge Creation and Sharing Many early KM initiatives involved the implementation of distributed databases and organizational processes to ensure capture and sharing of lessons and reusable work products [32], [33], [73], [85], [93]. These so-called knowledge repositories bridge boundaries of time and space, allow for reuse of work products, and provide one form of memory with which an organization can learn over time. However, many of these approaches have conceptualized knowledge as something that exists outside of social interactions. Such perspectives overlook the fact that the creation and interpretation of knowledge is inherently a social process [7], [67], [107], [100], [101]. Evidence accumulating over the past 30 years has consis- tently demonstrated the importance of social relationships for acquiring information [3], [16], [32], [69], learning how to do one’s work [15], [60], [75], [97], and collectively solving cognitively complex tasks [48], [70], [105]. While we know social networks significantly effect how people find and assimilate information to do their work, re- search has less thoroughly explored two aspects of information seeking in social networks. First, we know relatively little about the specific ways in which people benefit when they obtain information from other people. The situated learning literature has richly demonstrated the importance of relation- ships for learning at work [15], [60], [75], [106], but these 1094–6977/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE