Information Systems for “Wicked Problems” – Proposing Research at the Intersection of Social Media and Collective Intelligence

The objective of this commentary is to propose some fruitful research direction built upon the reciprocal interplay of social media and collective intelligence. We focus on “wicked problems” — a class of what Introne et al. 2013 call “problems for which no single computational formulation of the problem is sufficient, for which different stakeholders do not even agree on what the problem really is, and for which there are no right or wrong answers, only answers that are better or worse from different points of view”. We argue that information systems research in particular can aid in designing appropriate systems due to benefits derived from the combined perspectives of both social media and collective intelligence. We document the relevance and timeliness of social media and collective intelligence for business and information systems engineering, pinpoint needed functionality of information systems for wicked problems, describe related research challenges, highlight prospective suitable methods to tackle those challenges, and review examples of initial results

Measuring Outsourcing Relationship Quality: Towards a Social Network Analysis Approach

Outsourcing initiatives are complex undertakings requiring careful management of the client/vendor relationship. While monitoring the vendor’s performance is common practice, insight into the status of the ‘soft’ aspects of the relationship, such as trust, is often not available, although research highlights the social aspects as a critical success factor. However, monitoring the softer facets’ quality is difficult: Vendor managers track the status of the soft aspects, if at all, using survey tools among involved staff. This has shortcomings because it does not only capture subjective perceptions, but also interrupts the daily business of the participants. To develop a more objective instrument that collects data without interfering daily business, we draw on social network analysis. We suggest an approach that will eventually allow managers to monitor relationship quality in an efficient and objective way. The results suggest metrics to measure the soft factors of a relationship, such as trust and commitment

Behavioural Dimensions for Discovering Knowledge Actor Roles Utilising Enterprise Social Network Metrics

The identification of distinct user roles is an important theme in social media research. However, for Enterprise Social Networks (ESN), the use of social media within organisations, research identifying such roles is still lacking. Yet, understanding user roles, in particular regarding their knowledge con-tributions and communication behaviour, might usefully support companies in managing critical knowledge resources. Against this backdrop, in this research-in-progress paper we derive 16 metrics characterising the participation behaviour, message content and structural position of ESN users of an Australian professional services firm. Based on a factor analysis, we identify four distinct dimensions of ESN user behaviour: Contribution & networking, information provision, contact dispersion and invisible usage. With this research we contribute to the literature by transferring concepts and meth-ods of organisation science and social media research to an ESN context. Further, our approach forms the basis for the identification of different types of knowledge actors, which might ultimately help to improve organisational knowledge transparency