Christian Meske

Adoption and Use of Social Media in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

In recent years, social media have been increasingly adopted in enterprises. Enterprises use social media as an additional way to get in contact with their customers and support internal communication and collaboration. However, little research is devoted to the adoption and internal usage of social media in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are of high social and economic importance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the adoption, usage, and benefits of social media in SMEs as well as potential concerns that may prevent a wider adoption of social media in SMEs. Therefore, a survey of decision-makers in German SMEs was conducted. Findings based on 190 responses indicate that SMEs started to use internal social media (e.g., wikis, blogs) in order to support collaboration among employees and to improve knowledge management. However, SMEs still face problems to manage adoption and to identify relevant business values. Based on our results, we derive several implications for SMEs, in particular how to overcome the obstacles to a wider adoption of social media.

From Top to Bottom

Social media, such as social networking platforms, are increasingly gaining importance in enterprise contexts. Enterprise social networking (ESN) is often associated with improved communication, information-sharing and problem-solving. At the same time, ESN has been argued to diminish the role of formal influence in that users increasingly derive authority from their contributions to the network rather than from their position in the organizational hierarchy. Others argue that ESN will diminish influence considerably by producing more democratic and inclusive communication structures. Yet, these assertions have so far remained largely unexplored empirically. Against this background, we explore what influence both a user’s position in the organization’s hierarchy and a user’s contributions on the network have on the the ability to elicit responses from other ESN users. We draw on a unique data set of more than 110,000 messages collected from the ESN platform used at Deloitte Australia. While we find evidence for both kinds of influence, our data also reveals that informal influence has a stronger effect and that, as the ESN community matures over time, communication structures become indeed more inclusive and balanced across hierarchical levels. We contribute a set of propositions that theorize the ways in which influence and communication pattern are shaped during the process of ESN emergence. Our results further underline the potentials of ESN to improve organic, user-driven communication and knowledge sharing within firms.

A role model-based approach for modelling collaborative processes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel role model-based approach for modelling collaborative business processes. The authors present an architecture for subject-oriented business process modelling relying on the role concept and the demonstration of collaboration patterns expressed by role models. Design/methodology/approach – The authors present a literature review and they identify requirements for collaborative business process modelling. Moreover, roles are introduced as the enabling concept for collaborative business process modelling. The concept of roles offers a dynamic type aspect as a linking element to business process modelling as well as the ability to model collaboration aspects as they are central elements of social software. Findings – The authors propose a role-based approach to use the potential of social media for business process modelling of collaborative processes. The approach helps to overcome traditional business process modelling drawbacks like “model-reality...

Adoption of Social Media for Internal Usage in a Global Enterprise

The articles provides a case study of a social media adoption process in a multinational enterprise. Moreover, a framework of social media adoption is presented and discussed. Based on interviews with decision-makers we identify success factors and best practices.

Determinants of Social Network Adoption: A Country-Level Analysis

This study explores the main determinants of social network adoption at the country level. We use the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework to investigate factors influencing social network adoption. We utilize cross-sectional data from 130 countries. Results indicate that social network adoption, at the country level, is positively influenced by the technological maturity, public readiness, and ICT-laws sophistication. Technological, organizational, and environmental factors account for 67% of variance in social network adoption. These findings provide initial insight into the usage of social network sites at the country level, as well as the main factors that influence public adoption. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Maßnahmen für die Einführung unternehmensinterner Social Media

ZusammenfassungBasierend auf einer Interviewreihe unter den DAX-30-Unternehmen wurden Aktivitäten der Unternehmen in verschiedenen Reifestadien ihrer Social-Media-Nutzung ermittelt. Es wird gezeigt, dass oftmals eine klare Zielstellung für die Einführung von Social Media fehlt. Hieraus resultieren nachfolgend Probleme, die durch die mangelnde Erfassbarkeit eines Return on Investment sowie durch die komplexen Motivations- und Anreizstrukturen in Social Media verstärkt werden. Der Beitrag beschreibt, welche Maßnahmen und Rahmenbedingungen den Erfolg von Social Media im unternehmensinternen Einsatz begünstigen können.

Social Collaboration and Gamification

Despite the fact that enterprise social software solutions such as IBM Connections and Microsoft Sharepoint are able to increase the communication as well as the collaboration among employees, companies are constantly confronted with the necessity to improve their employees’ motivation to interact with the system. Since gamification has been identified as an effective tool to enhance user acceptance, software developers adopt an increasing number of gamification elements to take advantage of it. Based on an in-depth analysis of the international market leaders in enterprise social software solutions, this chapter examines the implementation of gamification elements and critically reflects on how well they fit with the current insights of flow research in motivational psychology. We argue that current gamification elements predominately aim at the augmentation of the users’ extrinsic motivation whereas intrinsic motivation has mostly been ignored. Furthermore, we identify a trend in which gamification solutions primarily focus on rewarding quantitative improvement of work activities, neglecting qualitative performance. Subsequently, current solutions do not match recent findings in research and ignore risks that can lower the employees’ motivation and work performance in the long run.

Cloud Storage Services in Higher Education – Results of a Preliminary Study in the Context of the Sync&Share-Project in Germany

In recent years, a growing number of institutions in higher education is in progress to adopt cloud storage services. This paper describes the Sync&Share NRW-project in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) with a target audience of up to 500,000 users and presents the main results of a preliminary large-scale survey at the University of Muenster with more than 3,000 participants. The results of the analysis indicates a very high demand for an on-premise cloud service solution in German higher education with mobile access, a storage volume comparable to commercial offerings, collaborative features such as simultaneous work on text documents and, above all, high data protection standards.

Impact of Mobile IT Consumerization on Organizations – An Empirical Study on the Adoption of BYOD Practices

The last few years have seen more and more employees using their personal mobile devices for work-related tasks. This phenomenon is part of a broader trend known as IT consumerization. Enterprises and employees have recognized that they might profit from these developments and implemented “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policies, but they also have to face new challenges. This study investigates which types of employees adopt BYOD and how they benefit from it. To address these questions, the authors conducted a survey with 219 participants. Participants were classified into adopter types based on the Diffusion of Innovation Theory. The results indicate that early adopters and the early majority use their personal smartphones more often for work-related tasks than laggards, and that innovators and early adopters more often receive work-related email on their personal smartphones than other adopter types. It is concluded that DOI can successfully be applied to explain BYOD adoption behavior. Differentiated management strategies have to be applied in order to address the whole workforce.

How does the world connect? Exploring the global diffusion of social network sites

This study explores the main determinants of social network adoption at the country level. We use the technology‐organization‐environment (TOE) framework to investigate factors influencing social network adoption. The authors use cross‐sectional data from 130 countries. The results indicate that social network adoption, at the country level, is positively influenced by the technological maturity, public readiness, and information and communication technology law sophistication. Technological, organizational, and environmental factors altogether accounted for 67% of variance in social network adoption. These findings provide a first insight into the usage of social network sites at the country level, as well as the main factors that influence public adoption. Implications for research and practice are discussed.