Maurice Kügler

Connect Me! Antecedents and Impact of Social Connectedness in Enterprise Social Software

Companies are increasingly adopting social software to support collaboration and networking. Although increasing their employees’ connectedness is a major driver for organizations to deploy enterprise social software (ESS), the social connectedness concept itself is still not sufficiently defined and conceptualized. The study therefore provides a richer perspective on social connectedness’s role in an ESS context. The authors thus investigate (1) social connectedness’s antecedents and (2) its impact on employees’ individual performance. With a survey-based investigation among 174 employees of an international business software provider headquartered in Germany, the authors show that both reputation and a critical mass significantly influence employees’ social connectedness. The authors further find that reputation’s effect is significantly stronger than critical mass’s effect and that social connectedness influences employees’ individual performance positively. The findings are discussed in the light of psychological studies and deduce implications for theory and practice.

The Impact of Organizational Social Web Site Usage on Work Performance: A Multilevel Structural Interaction Perspective

Recent research endeavors have shown that knowledge sharing improves not only organizational idea development and innovation, but also work performance. In that matter, IS researchers have mostly focused on macro level analyses. We address this by developing a multilevel model for investigating the impact of organizational social web site (SWS) usage on individual and team performance. Our paper addresses this gap by drawing on existing guidelines for multilevel theorizing. We propose that team SWS usage impacts individual and team performance through its improved structural collaboration capabilities. Organizational learning, social capital, and network theories serve as the theoretical basis. Ultimately, we present a multilevel model as the foundation for future empirical research. Our researchs contribution lies in the theoretical derivation of a multilevel model.

Design and Implementation of a Performance Measurement System for the German Trade Sector

Managers in today’s trade companies need information management tools that provide them with relevant information in a flexible way. This chapter addresses this need by proposing a performance measurement system particularly suited to managers’ information needs in the German trade sector. Their information needs are determined by applying the success factor method and by analyzing empirical success factor research on the German trade sector. According to the identified information needs, the trade scorecard (TSC) is proposed, a performance measurement system for managers in the German trade sector. The TSC is then implemented as a prototype in a business intelligence environment that supports flexible, real-time access to company data.