Driving the Use of Enterprise Social Media at Work: A Framework for Employees’ Adoption

More and more organizations are using enterprise social media (ESM) to improve the efficiency of communication and collaboration. Although many studies have tried to investigate employees’ adoption of this technology, most only provide limited insights and fail to capture the differences between ESM and other information systems used in organizations. In this article, we introduce a framework for enterprise social media adoption at the individual level. Our framework is based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and enterprise social media affordances. It is necessary to divide employees’ usage behavior into three types: not use, contribute, and lurk. We propose that the affordances initiate new types of factors that drive the three types of employees’ usage behavior differently

Enterprise social networking and service innovation: a governance perspective

To innovate, firms need to share knowledge across their different functions. An increasing number of organizations are using enterprise social networking (ESN) for knowledge sharing internally because it is more effective than traditional knowledge management systems. However, ESN use can also have some negative outcomes; for example, it may distract employees from their work and overload them with information, while also providing a channel for leaking confidential information. This study aims to understand how knowledge sharing through ESN affects the level of innovation in firms from the service industry and how this relationship is affected by the governance of ESN. Using data from a survey of 104 participants from global financial firms, we find that the level of innovation in firms is enhanced by the use of ESN for knowledge sharing, and that governance positively moderates this relationship. The paper concludes with some theoretical and practical contributions

Affordances for the sharing of domain-specific knowledge on enterprise social media

Despite the general belief that enterprise social media (ESM) transcend traditional boundaries and offer access to knowledge in various domains, there has been a lack of understanding and empirical evidence for employees’ willingness to expend the effort to share such knowledge when approached. This research-inprogress proposes that employees would be more willing to share domain-specific knowledge if they perceive the relevant ESM affordances for reducing the effort of codifying such knowledge. Preliminary results of a survey indicate that perceiving the affordance of visibility increases employees’ willingness to share domain-specific knowledge, but the affordance of editability does not have a significant effect. Implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed