Harri Jalonen

Predictive business – fresh initiative or old wine in a new bottle

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual analysis of the theoretical and managerial bases and objectives of predictive business. Predictive business refers to operational decision‐making and the development of business processes on the basis of business event analysis. It supports the early recognition of business opportunities and threats, better customer intimacy and agile reaction to changes in business environment. An underlying rationale for predictive business is the attainment of competitive advantage through better management of information and knowledge.Design/methodology/approach – The approach to this article is conceptual and theoretical. The literature‐based discussion and analysis combines the perspectives of business performance management, business intelligence, and knowledge management to provide a new model of thinking and operation.Findings – For a company predictive business is simultaneously a practical challenge and an epistemic one. It is a practical challenge ...

The Effects of the Internet of Things and Big Data to Organizations and Their Knowledge Management Practices

New technologies are promising us many upsides like enhanced health, convenience, productivity, safety, and more useful data, information and knowledge for people and organizations. The potential downsides are challenges to personal privacy, over-hyped expectations, increasing technological complexity that boggles us. Our point is this change requires scientific discussion from the point of management, leadership and organizations – that is, it is time to discuss the meaning of these challenges seriously also in terms of existing traditions of management science. This review type article discusses the nature and role of the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data and other key technological waves of ubiquitous revolution vis-a-vis the existing knowledge on management, organizations and knowledge management practices in organizations. Recent changes in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence and automation technology indicate that all kinds of intelligence and smartness are increasing and organizational cultures are going to change indicating fast changes in the field of modern management and management sciences. Organizational processes form the base for the knowledge-based decision-making. Developing and utilizing smart solutions – like the utilization of Big Data – emphasize the importance of open system thinking. Digitalized services can for instance create new interfaces between service providers and users. Service users create social value while they are participating in co-producing activities. Hence, the IoT and Big Data undoubtedly strengthen the role of participation in service production, service economy, innovativeness in-between organizations (as a joint processes) and leadership models incorporated in service-dominant –logic. Moreover, IoT, Big Data, and especially digitalization bring about the renaissance of knowledge in decision-making.

Social media and emotions in organisational knowledge creation

Social media increases the connectivity of people inside and outside an organisation. It is not just the implementation of communication technology, but the transformation of working and organisational cultures. The paper presumes that social media provides new opportunities to the organisational knowledge creation process by amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as crystallising and connecting it to an organisations knowledge system. The process depends fundamentally on the individuals tacit knowledge and its conversion into organisational explicit knowledge. Knowledge conversion is not a linear and sequential process, but a process which is affected by the individuals emotions. This paper explores the interplay between knowledge and emotions in the organisational knowledge creation process in the context of social media. The paper concludes that knowledge and emotion shared in social media contribute to the social identity, which increases the odds of altruistic behaviour towards others in a way that benefits the organisation.

A framework for dealing with fundamental knowledge problems through social media

Purpose – This paper aims to argue that the value of social media in knowledge management (KM) can be evaluated on the basis of how social media helps to overcome four generic knowledge problems – i.e. uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity and equivocality. Drawing upon the relevant KM and social media literature, the paper discusses the four knowledge problems surrounding the KM and presents a framework for overcoming them through social media. Design/methodology/approach – A literature synthesis involving inductive interpretation of qualitative research was used. Findings – The paper shows how different knowledge problems can be approached through social media: uncertainty can be reduced by decent problem formulation and effective information acquisition, complexity can be simplified by increasing knowledge process capacity and decomposing problems, ambiguity can be dissipated by sensemaking and equivocality can be encountered by creating trust and allowing polyphony of perceptions. Research limitations/im...

DANCING WITH THE PARADOX — SOCIAL MEDIA IN INNOVATION THROUGH COMPLEXITY LENS

This paper discusses the social media paradox in the context of innovation. Innovation is defined as a knowledge intensive process of seeing and doing things differently, whereas social media refers to new ways of being connected. Social media has revolutionised the ways how knowledge is produced, shared and accumulated through social interactions within the organisation and across the organisations boundaries. From an organisational perspective, this raises the question of how social media influences — enabling or inhibiting — its ability to see and do things differently. Social media offers tempting opportunities but also poses new threats. It is a paradox involving contradictory forces. Despite growing interest among academics, there is a lack of understanding of the possibilities of social media in the specific context of innovation. This paper fills the research gap by arguing that complexity concepts offer a new type of language to understand social media. Seeing interaction as intrinsic to innovation activity, complexity thinking opens the paradox of being in charge but not in control.

The knowledge-innovation nexus in the welfare service ecosystem

This paper makes two contributions on knowledge-intensive innovation research. Firstly, it identifies and elaborates on the knowledge problems present in the welfare services innovation ecosystem. Secondly, drawing on relevant theoretical approaches, this paper discusses the managerial implications these knowledge problems pose for stakeholders involved in innovating welfare services. The identified knowledge problems are uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity; uncertainty refers to a lack of information or factual knowledge about something, complexity arises from the intricacy and connectivity of the various elements, and ambiguity stems from multiple interpretations. The paper also presents the managerial implications for each type of knowledge problem; uncertainty can be reduced by the acquisition of more information and knowledge increased by creating connections within the ecosystem, complexity can be minimised by increasing knowledge capacity and decomposing problems, and ambiguity can be addressed by structuring the unknown into a frame of reference.

Social Media Analytics Empowering Customer Experience Insight

The potential of social media in marketing communications is widely acknowledged, but in terms of making use of social media enabled analytics there are still uncovered possibilities for marketers. The focus of this paper is on analyzing the customers’ affective experiences appearing in the social media content. Through action design research, a framework that enables to analyze affective experiences from social media content is developed. The novelty of the framework is that it takes into account the different emotion families as well as the intensity of the affective experience, taking a one step further of the generally used sentiment analysis techniques in social media context. Through this kind of framework, the marketers are able to better catch even the weak emotional signals of the customers and to guide the customer to more valuable emotional path. This paper presents the developed framework and its pilot testing, carried out as part of a wider research process involving two research projects and researchers from three different universities.

Developing a Conceptual Model for the Relationship Between Social Media Behavior, Negative Consumer Emotions and Brand Disloyalty

Companies have been facing the dark side of social media. Particularly, the odds of customer complaints and brand insults have increased tremendously. Social media has given a voice to disappointed consumers. They use the voice when they feel negative emotions, for example, due to product failures, service problems or unethical behavior. It seems reasonable to expect that the more ubiquitous social media becomes, the more it persuades people to share also their negative experiences. However, although social media raises new challenges for companies, it also gives them new opportunities. Social media enables companies to trace disappointed customers, evaluate their impressiveness and communicate with them. The conceptual paper aims to develop a model for the relationship between social media behavior, negative consumer emotions and brand disloyalty. The argument of this paper is that although social media gives consumers more power which is manifested in sharing negative emotions related to the company, the effect this has on brand disloyalty depends on the company’s behavior.

Utilising Social Media for Intervening and Predicting Future Health in Societies

Background: The aims of this paper are to describe 1. systematic reviews describing the relation between social media and health and 2. previous research on utilising social media for predicting health on a population level. Method: A literature search utilising PubMed was performed in March 2014.

Social Networking Sites SNSs: Smart Platforms for Public Service Innovation?

The paper argues that social networking sites SNS can be exploited as smart platforms for fostering public service innovation. Exploring and discussing SNSs in public service innovation through the complexity lens, the paper shows that SNSs enable new opportunities and pose new threats, depending on the perspective. The paper speaks for open and democratising innovation, which accentuates that not all ideas and knowledge critical to innovation reside within an organisation, but are dispersed in the organisations external environment.