Federica Fusi

Social Media in the Workplace: Information Exchange, Productivity, or Waste?:

Public managers play a central role in the adoption and smooth implementation of social media tools in the workplace, with local governments increasingly expecting managers to utilize these tools. Nevertheless, we know little about how public managers perceive social media use for work activities and what factors shape such perceptions. Preliminary research has shown that social media use in government may enhance task efficiency, but it may also increase management complexity and workload. In this study, we draw from current literature on e-government adoption and use to investigate the role of personal and organizational use of social media, organizational culture, digital threats, and technological capacity in shaping public managers’ perceptions of social media use. Combining data from a national survey of 2,500 public managers in 500 U.S. local governments, Census data, and data collected from city websites, we find that perceptions of social media tools in the workplace are influenced by the interplay of personal and organization use of social media, an organizational culture of innovation, and formal guidance on social media use. Technological capacity and perceptions of digital threats are not significantly related to perceptions of social media. We conclude with a discussion of what these findings mean for research and practice.

Wasting time on facebook?: when social media can be useful for local governments

Despite its wide diffusion, the impact of social media in professional contexts is still ambiguous. Some workers report an higher flexibility in their working hours, while others report an increase in the time they spent in working activities. In this paper, we investigate how city government managers perceive social media and which factors influence the usefulness of social media for municipal managers. Drawing from a survey of 2,500 managers in U.S. cities we argue that the diffusion of social media usage, the presence of social media policies or guidelines, and the technology capacity of the organization will positively affect the usefulness of social media for local manager outcomes.

Electronic monitoring in public organizations: evidence from US local governments

ABSTRACT Technology use in the workplace expands the ability to monitor employees through activities such as website tracking, email scanning, and social media monitoring. Monitoring is a fundamental aspect of the relationship between organizations, employees, and stakeholders and can affect perceptions of privacy, autonomy, and trust in the workplace. However, electronic monitoring is little investigated in public management research and we have minimal knowledge about the factors that prompt public managers to adopt electronic monitoring. Focusing on small- and medium-sized US municipalities, we investigate types of electronic monitoring and how organizational, sociopolitical, and technological factors shape electronic monitoring intensity. We test our hypotheses with data from a 2014 national survey of 2,500 local managers, website coding data, and US Census data. We find that electronic monitoring, especially monitoring online activities, is a response to organizational centralization, participation of internal stakeholders, social media use, and technology concerns.

Building Global Genomics Initiatives and Enabling Data Sharing: Insights from Multiple Case Studies

This genomics global governance research study presents the dynamics and the evolving nature of salient challenges that global genomics initiatives encounter in designing new models for data management, exchange, and collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and countries. Using a multiple case study approach, we assessed and compared organizational responses across diverse genomics initiatives. The richness of a comparative qualitative analysis clearly shows the complexity addressed by genomics initiatives and, importantly, expands current studies by moving beyond an open versus property regime dichotomy. Although we identify some common themes, fundamental differences emerge in the way genomics initiatives set goals, manage heterogeneity, define resources, devise governance, and enable data sharing. Such differences demonstrate the ongoing processes of adapting governance structures, management processes, and organizational design solutions that are implemented in response to different social, technical, and policy environments. We find that genomics initiatives largely benefit from and are shaped by the engagement with large communities of scientists to rethink and design shared rules and guidelines for data exchange and use. Our study provides direct guidance to future global genomics initiatives, but it also offers a benchmark for research in the omics field broadly, both in terms of design and methodological approaches to understand the emerging forms of scientific governance and innovation ecosystems.