Exploring Co-presence Enabled Collaboration in Social Computing Inspired Enterprise Systems

This research describes the findings from an interpretive case study that explores the interplay between social computing (SC) and enterprise systems (ES). A fundamental shift is evident in how organisations become more effective through the adoption of SC capabilities. As process centric ES continues to pose challenges, an SC inspired, people-centric ES has become a medium for efficient interaction and collaboration across the divisions of an organisation. In this organisational reality, we explore the role of virtual co-presence of users on collaboration in ES. Our findings indicate that virtual co-presence enabled interactions, when focused and sustained over time, could facilitate collaboration for sharing of knowledge. An understanding of how users interact in mediated encounters contributes to our knowledge of how focused interactions may enable collaborations in ES. By drawing on the findings, the research seeks to outline some implications for the practice of a collaborative ES for the contemporary organisations

Supporting Multi-agent Coordination and Computational Collective Intelligence in Enterprise 2.0 Platform

In this paper, we propose a novel approach utilizing a professional Social network (Pro Social Network) and a new coordination protocol (CordiNet). Our motivation behind this article is to convince Small and Medium Enterprises managers that current organizations have chosen to use Enterprise 2.0 tools because these latter have demonstrated remarkable innovation as well as successful collaboration and collective intelligence. The particularity of our work is that is allows employer to share diagnosis and fault repair procedures on the basis of some modeling agents. In fact, each enterprise is represented by a container of agents to ensure a secured and confidential information exchange between intra employers, and a central main container to connect all enterprises’ containers for a social information exchange. Enterprise’s container consists of a Checker Enterprise Agent (ChEA), a Coordinator Enterprise Agent (CoEA) and a Search Enterprise Agent (SeEA). Whereas the central main container comprises its proper agents such as Selection Agent (SA), and a Supervisor Agent (SuA). JADE platform is used to allow agents to communicate and collaborate. The FIPA-ACL performatives have been extended for this purpose. We conduct some experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach

The potential of implementing Enterprise Social Networks in Portuguese companies

The objective of this study is to understand what is the potential of successfully implementing enterprise social networks in the workplace of Portuguese companies. This dissertation aims to understand if employees and managers of Portuguese companies see the advantages of having access to enterprise social software, if they believe this technology fits their job requirements, and if they are likely to use and implement it in their companies. In order to answer the main questions of this dissertation, an online survey is conducted within companies from different sectors. This survey is built based on the literature review around enterprise social technology and enterprise 2.0, as well as the theoretical model of Dishaw and Strong (1999). To provide insights, a statistical analysis was made to the survey results, including descriptive statistics, mean comparisons and multivariate linear regressions. According to the results of this study, the majority of employees are not using enterprise social networks in the workplace. Also, although most of employees require management promotion to adopt the technology, the majority states that these tools are adequate to their job needs and acknowledge its advantages. Besides, the majority of managers state an intention to use the tool and implement it in the future, since they acknowledge advantages and fit to tasks. This dissertation thus shows that enterprise social networks have an opportunity to be present in the infrastructure of Portuguese organizations, especially in companies with significant co-­‐worker and partner volume of contact and with employees and managers who understand the value of accessing this technology

Social media adoption in workplace by teams for knowledge work: Benefits, Barriers and Enabling Factors

Nowadays, business companies cannot be seen merely as a physical place where employees execute their daily functions. The progress and the development of technologies has made possible the continuous interconnection and interaction among co-workers, allowing to carry on own activities also if are not physically present. It became a key factor for companies or teams geographically separated which need to unit their efforts to achieve a shared goal. The aim of many companies and workers it is, indeed, to use these new technologies not merely to communicate with remote team members, but rather to take advantage of their tools in order to improve knowledge work in workplace day by day. Although there is a general agreement about the development in the future of these platforms, many companies and workers have still not understood completely the potential benefits. Thus, the aim of this work is to find and define a number of benefits from the organizational and collaborative point of view regarding the implementation of a social media platform within companies. Moreover, in order to make aware the subjects interested, here it is proposed also a number of challenges during their usage, that they will be faced during the implementation and the exploitation of the system. Finally, considering the bounds between knowledge sharing and enterprise social media platforms, with the willingness of people as common factors of both, will be analysed also this relationship in order to find the enabling factors for knowledge sharing which can make easier the social media adoption in teamwork and organizations

Enterprise Social Network: Capabilities, Key Enablers and Obstacles - Call for changes within the digital age.

Today’s work environment is currently undergoing radical changes and although the aware-ness of social collaboration is growing within organizations, they still struggle with the digital transformation and thereby with the integration of Enterprise Social Network (ESN). Our study aims to investigate the role of ESN within the todays’ organizations. Specifically, it intends to build on previous research about social network technologies in a business’ context, and to provide an understanding about the required capabilities in terms of organizational, cultural and structural readiness as well as the key enablers and possible challenges faced dur-ing the adoption of ESN and hindering a more efficient use. Our study shows, that ESN could foster information and knowledge sharing, organizational learning and social capital. It reveals, that implementing an ESN offers great advantages, reaching from transparent infor-mation and knowledge exchange, over a faster join generation of new ideas to the possible containment of an ever-increasing e-mail flood. However, our study also outlines, that organi-zations still have to overcome barriers such as management and leadership support, cultural barriers, driving individuals engagement or integrating the ESN within existing business pro-cesses and infrastructure in order to reach the full potential and succeed with the adoption of the ESN. Nevertheless, we emphasise when an organization has recognised the significant benefits to be gained by incorporating an ESN within the business’ context, the value and improvements in activities induced by the ESN will become visible and then, one would rec-ognise that it has been worth the investment

Uudenlaiset arvonluontitavat verkostoissa – Tapaustutkimuksia joukkoistamisesta, parvityöstä ja pelillistämisestä

For years, value creation has been a hot topic in both academic and business literature. Perceptions of value and value creation have changed over time in parallel with economic changes and technological developments. In the early 21st century, we are approaching towards digital service economy where businesses and organizations are increasingly seeking new ways to benefit from business opportunities mostly enabled by the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies. However, due to the novelty and vast number of different concepts not much is known about value creation through social media and recently emerged ICT-based approaches. The purpose of this study was to increase general understanding on social media and ICT-related value creation by exploring different novel value creation approaches in intercompany networks. The study was conducted as a qualitative business research with theoretical and empirical parts. The theoretical part consisted of an extensive literature review focusing on the two key aspects of the study: value creation and novel social media and ICT-based value creation approaches. The empirical part consisted of a multiple case study with three different cases: Konecranes GrabCAD Challenge, xTune and Kaleva Innopinion Campaign. The data was collected with a netnography including participant observations and focused interviews. The participant observations were conducted in case-related online environments and we interviewed four different persons from the case organizations. As a result, this research identified the current trends in value creation and described how they differ from more traditional views by exploring different characteristics that epitomize novelty. The study also introduced several frameworks and models for analyzing and visualizing value creation in networked environments. In addition, the research identified several recently emerged novel value creation approaches that essentially build on social media and other ICT-based approaches, and focused more intensively on crowdsourcing, swarm-work and gamification through the case studies. In conclusion, the case studies revealed that social media and modern ICT are in essential role in enabling value creation and several characteristics of novelty in the cases