Wietske Van Osch

Enterprise Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities for Organizational Communication and Collaboration

Given the large investments in Enterprise Social Media technologies in organizational settings, this paper sets out to explore the challenges and opportunities that ESM technologies provide for organizational communication. Merging existing conceptual work on ESM with findings from thirteen appreciative interviews with professionals from a large multinational organization, our papers offers six areas of opportunities and challenges -- Social Capital Formation, Boundary Work, Attention Allocation, Social Analytics, Adoption and Use Incentives, and Governance and Control -- that could guide researchers and practitioners in understanding and informing the use of social media technologies in their most productive and impactful ways.

Social Media Research: An Assessment of the Domain's Productivity and Intellectual Evolution

The purpose of this study is to conduct a bibliographic investigation and meta-analysis of the full body of social media scholarship produced over eight years, since the domains emergence in 2004. A total of 610 journal and conference papers were carefully reviewed and subjected to bibliometric and meta-analysis techniques. A number of research questions pertaining to country, institutional, and individual productivity, as well as research design and data practices in the social media field, were proposed and answered. Our results reveal two main challenges faced by the field. First, the social media domain displays limited intellectual diversity in terms of productive and impactful actors—individual, institutions, and countries—as well as publications that have hitherto skewed the domains focus in a limited direction. Second, the research design approaches and data practices characterizing the domain seem to reflect methodological singularity characterized by a strong tendency for cross-sectional, individual-level, survey or case-based studies. Furthermore, speculative and anecdotal evidence, based on personal opinions and armchair hypotheses, is extremely widespread and stand in the way of the domains methodological and theoretical advancement. These challenges not only help to improve ones understanding of the identity and intellectual core of social media as a distinct scientific field but can also further prompt academic debate and careful (re)examination of the domains scholarly practices and assumptions to ensure its future advancement in the most productive manner.

A Cognitive-Affective Model of Perceived User Satisfaction (CAMPUS)

Affective dimensions of human-computer interaction design have the potential to elicit emotions and behaviours. However, there is little research into which affective treatments are systematically tested, let alone assessed in light of additional cognitive dimensions. In this study, we formulate and empirically test a Cognitive-Affective Model of Perceived User Satisfaction (CAMPUS) that displays high explanatory power (R2=.69). CAMPUS offers a comprehensive framework for assessing both direct effects of perceptions of cognitive and affective dimensions on satisfaction and the complex interplay between these two in terms of system design and use. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Team boundary spanning: strategic implications for the implementation and use of enterprise social media

Recent team boundary spanning literature has recommended a shift toward assessing the role of virtual tools – such as social media. Simultaneously the proliferation of Enterprise Social Media (ESM) points to the need to theorize and investigate the supra-individual usage of these tools, such as their usefulness for organizational groups. This paper responds to both mandates through a theoretical integration of the team boundary spanning and existing ESM literature. Using data from two studies – one qualitative and one quantitative – this papers addresses two important research questions regarding the empirical relationship between team boundary spanning and ESM for understanding (i) the types of team boundary-spanning activities that group members enact through ESM and (ii) the effects of ESM on extra-team stakeholders’ perceptions and reciprocating actions vis-à-vis the team boundary-spanning activities of these group members. The results of this study show that ESM, largely as a function of their visibility affordance, supports a narrow set of representational activities, but offers only limited support for information search and coordination. Furthermore, the findings reveal that ESM activity has a positive effect on extra-team stakeholders’ recognition and financial support of the representational ESM posts emanating from the boundary-spanning group. Important implications for theory, strategy, and design are discussed.

A Meta-analysis of Theories and Topics in Social Media Research

This paper offers an extensive meta-analysis of the theoretical evolution of social media as a domain of research. It examines the domains current intellectual core with respect to dominant topics and theories of study. Hereto a systematic examination of all 610 articles published between October 2004 and December 2011 was conducted for identifying popular research topics as well as dominant theories. Findings indicate an overall lack of theory as well as a dominance of socio-psychological topics and theories of inquiry. These findings establish a benchmark for tracking the state of the evolution of the social media domain, while focusing the readers attention on topics and theories requiring further inquiry.

A "Cloud Lifestyle": The Diffusion of Cloud Computing Applications and the Effect of Demographic and Lifestyle Clusters

Does a cloud lifestyle exist? If so, are people with a cloud lifestyle more likely to adopt and use cloud technologies? Whereas adoption studies have repeatedly analyzed dimensions of the technology, including usefulness and ease of use, for understanding peoples behavioral intention to adopt and use a novel technology, we currently have limited understanding of the effect of user characteristics, in particular various user lifestyles. Based on a U.S. national random sample of 402 non-cloud service users, we propose, analyze, and validate a multi-faceted model of adoption that integrates technological, demographic, lifestyle, and contextual variables for providing a holistic theoretical understanding of the adoption processes as well as practical insights regarding the target population - i.e., vis-a-vis a proposed Cloud Lifestyle - that is most likely to adopt cloud technologies.

A Strategic Social Action Framework: Theorizing and analyzing the alignment of social media affordances and organizational social action

ABSTRACT Social media is a relatively new and dynamic field dealing with the development and use of social media technologies by individuals and more recently by organizations. Although several frameworks and models have been proposed for studying social media, most provide only limited insights into the complex social activities that are supported by the strategic usage of social media in organizational settings. In this article, we take up this challenge and introduce a Strategic Social Action Framework for analyzing social media technologies and their strategic usage in and by organizations. This framework is based on Habermas’ theory of social action and the idea that social media platforms serve as sets of rules and resources that mediate strategic organizational (inter-)actions involving these platforms. We demonstrate the value of the framework by theoretically delineating the appropriateness of the framework to specific social media tools, as well as by empirically analyzing the strategic use of two publicly available social media platforms—Facebook and Twitter—by three large airlines—Delta, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and JetBlue. Our findings reveal that when implementing social media in organizational contexts, developers and managers should critically evaluate (a) the need for supporting a rich variety of action types, (b) the possible role of social media support in the specific action situation, and (c) the strategic alignment of social media affordances and specific social action categories. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications as well as directions for future research.

Disentangling the drivers of brand benefits: Evidence from social media marketing of two cosmetics companies

This paper explores the effect of brand social media messaging content (news, dialog, or contests) on perceived benefits (informational, social or hedonic) and consequent consumer brand engagement and purchase intentions in the context of two cosmetics companies. The primary goal of this study is to understand if (i) different content types result in different perceptions of brand benefits and (ii) if these distinct types of perceived benefits differentially affect the engagement intention, loyalty, and purchase intention toward the brand. Our findings suggest that distinct content types indeed lead to diverse perceptions of benefits - informational, social, or hedonic - and further highlight that only social and hedonic benefits are significantly associated with self-reported brand loyalty as well as engagement and purchase intention. Implications for research and practice.

Team Boundary Spanning through Enterprise Social Media: Exploring the Effects of Group-Level Diversity Using a Data Science Approach

Effective work groups engage in team boundary spanning, that is, the use of communication ties as conduits to critical external resources. With the proliferation of social media technologies in enterprise settings and the associated increase in visibility of communication ties, understanding their impact on boundary spanning becomes imperative to improving cross-boundary knowledge creation and management inside organizations. In this paper, drawing on log data from 415 unique work groups in an enterprise social media (ESM) system, we use a machine learning approach to automatically detect three distinct team boundary-spanning activities. Using zero-inflated poisson regressions, we further show the effect of group visibility as well as three distinct sources of group structural diversity -- geographic, functional, and hierarchical -- on the extent to which teams engage in boundary spanning through ESM. Implications for theory and practice around the use of data science approaches as well as visibility and diversity constructs for understanding team boundary spanning are discussed.

The Rise of the Promoters: User Classes and Contribution Patterns in Enterprise Social Media

Abstract The proliferation of enterprise social media (ESM) has created opportunities for employees to self-organize around common goals or interests. However, little is known about the different user classes that exist in ESM and the factors that drive contributions to ESM communities. Using multilevel analyses of secondary data from the ESM of a global organization, we find that (1) although ESM communities reflect a core-periphery structure similar to that identified in other forms of online communities, nearly two-thirds of the users represent promoters—a distinct class of users who use the platform primarily to post promotional content without viewing existing content created by others; and (2) despite individual differences in user type, the actual contribution to an ESM community is the result of an intricate interaction between a user’s disposition for participation and a set of group characteristics. Our findings suggest that recognizing the unique contribution patterns of different user groups is key to understanding participation in ESM communities.