Internet provides opportunity for micro business entrepreneurs to gain business management knowledge in a more efficient and effective manners, such as by joining an online community. Existing literature has been focusing on the importance of individuals who actively post content (posters), while most participants in an online community passively consumer the content (lurkers). The role of knowledge lurking behaviour-collecting and propagating information-is increasingly important to explain the usefulness of joining online community for micro business entrepreneurs. Hence, this study aims to examine the benefit of lurking behaviour in promoting entrepreneurial self-efficacy and subsequently the business performance. An online survey was conducted to 158 Indonesian micro business entrepreneurs obtained from the database owned by an entrepreneurship unit of a public university in Indonesia. The data was analysed using PLS SEM as it is suitable to predict the outcome variable especially where the predictors consist of multidimensional variables. The analysis results demonstrated empirically that lurking behaviour increases business performance when the entrepreneurs gain entrepreneurial self-efficacy from lurking and so are more confidence in their capacity to manage the business. Although it was found that digital literacy of the entrepreneurs does not empirically strengthen nor weaken the efficacy of lurking behaviour in promoting business performance, it could be because the content posted in online community generally have been curated by the posters. On the other hand, digital literacy will be important to select and filter public information in different context of the study.

Authors:
Widya Paramita, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Nurul Indarti, Gadjah MAda University, Indonesia

About the Presenter(s)
Widya Paramita is an assistant professor at Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia

See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule

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