Enterprise Social Networks – Contributions to Research with respect to Actor Roles in Knowledge Management, the Role of Formal Hierarchies, and Network Evolution

In recent years, a new class of information technologies, called social media, has soared in popularity, and increasingly becomes part of people’s daily lives. Although originally designed for private use, an increasing number of organisations have begun to adopt social media for organisational purposes (Kane 2015). ). However, social media in general and OSN in particular cannot only be used for marketing purposes. Indeed, they can be used by a company along the whole value chain (Chui et al. 2012). In addition, social media can help organisations to support communication and collaboration within the organisation and to “work more effectively across geographic and cultural boundaries” (Kane 2015, p. 1). Already in 2012, a study estimated the economic impact of social media, mostly gained from more efficient communication and collaboration between USD 900 billion and USD 1.3 trillion (Chui et al. 2012). However, publicly available social media services cannot support all needs of an organization. Thus, with enterprise social networks (ESN) a new class of social media services designed for internal use has emerged. In recent years, many organisations have started implementing ESN on the one hand to foster internal collaboration, communication, and knowledge-sharing (Aral et al. 2013; von Krogh 2012). Against this background, the two subject areas that this dissertation focuses on are of increasing interest to both research and practice: First, this dissertation addresses research on OSN (Subject A) as OSN are amongst the most popular and most widely used social media services. Thus, this leads to a steadily growing number of publications in most major outlets of the global information systems (IS) community (Richter et al. 2011). To assess the knowledge and the research fields that have been predominantly addressed by the IS community so far (Scandura and Williams 2000), this dissertation aims to provide a structured literature overview on the prior IS literature, including the recent developments in the field as well as fields that need to be addressed in further research. Here, five research fields that already have been addressed as well as ten research gaps are described and discussed. Second, this dissertation aims at adding to research on ESN (Subject B). As noted, the potential of ESN for knowledge management, has been noticed by organisations and led to an increasing demand to better understand their role in knowledge practices like information seeking, knowledge sharing or expert finding (Bharadwaj et al. 2013; Herzog et al. 2013; Richter et al. 2013In this line of argument, there is a need to investigate different actor roles in ESN usage (Trier and Richter 2015) to better understand the role and potential of ESN as well as their users’ behaviour (Koo et al. 2011). Next to identifying and characterising value adding users, two measures fort he classification of users based on their amount of sharing and seeking knowledge were proposed. Here, it could be shown that users who actively share their knowledge in the ESN have a central position in the network structure. Formal organisational hierarchy is an essential and pervasive organisational characteristic, which might influence the creation of social relations and communication in ESN. Practice-orientated contributions argue that ESN can lead to flatter organisational hierarchy in companies (McAfee 2009). However, it is still largely unanswered, whether and how formal organisational hierarchies influence users’ networking behaviour in ESN and if these effects inside the ESN differ from those in the work place outside the ESN. Within this dissertation the significant effects of formal hierarchies on interaction behaviour within the ESN could be shown. Nevertheless, they seem to be weaker inside the ESN and seem to decrease in time. Moreover, it has to be considered that the underlying networking structures are not static. Indeed, the structure of an ESN is highly dynamic as more and more users are participating and creating new relations to other users (Ghosh and Ganguly 2014). While the evolution of other social media networks already has been investigated (cf. e.g., Ghosh and Ganguly 2014; Kumar et al. 2010), scarce attention has been paid to the structure and evolution of ESN. Against this background this dissertation investigated how the structure of an ESN changes in time as well as what are drivers for the creation of new relationships between the users. Here, a significant correlation between network centrality and new social relationships was found

Assuming Data Integrity and Empirical Evidence to The Contrary

Background: Not all respondents to surveys apply their minds or understand the posed questions, and as such provide answers which lack coherence, and this threatens the integrity of the research. Casual inspection and limited research of the 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10), included in the dataset of the World Values Survey (WVS), suggested that random responses may be common. Objective: To specify the percentage of cases in the BRI-10 which include incoherent or contradictory responses and to test the extent to which the removal of these cases will improve the quality of the dataset. Method: The WVS data on the BFI-10, measuring the Big Five Personality (B5P), in South Africa (N=3 531), was used. Incoherent or contradictory responses were removed. Then the cases from the cleaned-up dataset were analysed for their theoretical validity. Results: Only 1 612 (45.7%) cases were identified as not including incoherent or contradictory responses. The cleaned-up data did not mirror the B5P- structure, as was envisaged. The test for common method bias was negative. Conclusion: In most cases the responses were incoherent. Cleaning up the data did not improve the psychometric properties of the BFI-10. This raises concerns about the quality of the WVS data, the BFI-10, and the universality of B5P-theory. Given these results, it would be unwise to use the BFI-10 in South Africa. Researchers are alerted to do a proper assessment of the psychometric properties of instruments before they use it, particularly in a cross-cultural setting

Leading Towards Voice and Innovation: The Role of Psychological Contract

Background: Empirical evidence generally suggests that psychological contract breach (PCB) leads to negative outcomes. However, some literature argues that, occasionally, PCB leads to positive outcomes. Aim: To empirically determine when these positive outcomes occur, focusing on the role of psychological contract (PC) and leadership style (LS), and outcomes such as employ voice (EV) and innovative work behaviour (IWB). Method: A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, using reputable questionnaires on PC, PCB, EV, IWB, and leadership styles. Correlation analyses were used to test direct links within the model, while regression analyses were used to test for the moderation effects. Results: Data with acceptable psychometric properties were collected from 11 organisations (N=620). The results revealed that PCB does not lead to substantial changes in IWB. PCB correlated positively with prohibitive EV, but did not influence promotive EV, which was a significant driver of IWB. Leadership styles were weak predictors of EV and IWB, and LS only partially moderated the PCB-EV relationship. Conclusion: PCB did not lead to positive outcomes. Neither did LS influencing the relationships between PCB and EV or IWB. Further, LS only partially influenced the relationships between variables, and not in a manner which positively influence IWB

Concept Mapping Strategy For Academic Writing Tutorial In Open And Distant Learning Higher Institution

Universitas Terbuka (UT) an open and distant higher education institution of Indonesia conducts the in-service teacher education program. In order to complete the program, the students – mostly teachers - have to submit the final academic paper. In fact, most of the UT students have difficulty to write this academic paper. UT offers an academic writing course to solve this writing program. Most of the student view academic writing still as a difficult assignment. Most of the students view academic writing as a difficult assignment to complete. UT has to find an appropriate instructional strategy that can facilitate student to write the academic writing assignment. One of the instructional strategy that can be selected to solve the academic writing problems is concept mapping. The aim of this study is to elaborate the implementation of concept map as an instructional strategy to facilitate the open and distance learning students io complete academic writing assignments. A design based research was applied to measure the effectiveness of using concept mapping strategy in helping students to gain academic writing skills. The steps of research and development model from Borg, Gall and Gall which consist of instructional design and development phases were implemented in this study. The result of this study indicated that students were facilitated and enjoyed the process of academic writing used the concept map strategy