Social Media and Organizing – An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Wiki Affordances in Organizing Practices

The evolution of social media has introduced novel possibilities for work and interaction in organizations. The wiki technology is one important kind of social media technologies that is increasingly used to facilitate the creation and sharing of organizational knowledge within communities. Given the increasing use of social media in organizations and the lack of knowledge on their consequences for organizing, we use an affordance lens to explore the enactment of organizational wiki affordances. Using qualitative data obtained through interviews, field visits, and documents from two multinational organizations –CCC and IBM– we first identified eight affordances that describe various wiki possibilities and practices. We then identified four properties of these affordances including multiplicity, referential, situatedness, and communal. These properties represent the main contribution of the paper in that they extend the notion of affordance by theorizing new concepts that describe relational dynamics, situated and contextual conditions, and social factors involved in enacting, perceiving, and exploiting affordances. All correspondence must be addressed to the main author: Osama Mansour ([email protected])</p

Psychology of Business Intelligence Tools: Needs-Affordances-Features Perspective

This study applied the Needs-Affordances-Features (NAF) framework to study psychological motivations behind the use of Business Intelligence (BI) tools especially when the use of such tools is voluntary. Our findings suggest that psychological needs motivate the use of BI tools that provide 13 affordances to fulfill five psychological needs, namely autonomy, competence, relatedness, having a place and self-realization. These affordances were identified through a review of six publicly available BI tools. This study posits that three groups of affordances––creation, collaboration, and communication––explain the relationship between psychological needs and applications of BI. This study generates important implications for BI research by providing an overarching framework for the affordances of BI tools as a whole and explaining the importance of psychological needs that motivate the use of BI tools. The results also provide a new lens and common vocabulary for future studies and design of BI tools

The use of social networks sites (SNSs) among university students: how far do they learn

The study investigated the pedagogical affordances of SNS and its relationship on student engagement. A sample of 300 students responded to this quantitative research using a self constructed questionnaire. The hypothesized model has been tested to determine the relationships between pedagogical affordances and student engagement. This model underpins the theory of constructivist of interactions that promote learning; connectivity and collaboration through Web 2.0 technology. Using Multiple Regression Analysis, the model is able to explain the significant relationships of connectivity, assessment and feedback and collaboration in predicting student engagement when learning via SNS. The implications of the study are discussed based on theory, practical importance and methodology of research

Understanding the Impact of Knowledge Sharing through Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) on Service Innovation

As the service sector has grown significantly in recent years, researchers are paying increasing attention to the co-creation and the application of knowledge in the service innovation. Knowledge sharing maybe a key driver of service innovation, as it encourages decisions to apply knowledge into products, services and organizational designs. The emergence of social media technologies, especially enterprise social networking (ESN), has made knowledge sharing easier, but has also led to some negative outcomes. These negative outcomes are low productivity, interpersonal conflict and possibility of leaking out sensitive information. The purpose of this study is to understand how knowledge sharing through ESN can influence innovation in the service industry, and how the strength of this relationship is affected by the governance of ESN. The paper puts forward a conceptual model and explains how it will be examined used mixed methods. We report on on-going data collection and emergent findings on our preliminary data acquired from interviews. The study will help managers understand how ESN can be used to support innovation in the service industry

An Affordances Apparatus for Enterprise Social Media

The current paper addresses one of the core yet complex issues in the study of technology in organizations: the relationship between the social and the material. Many scholars in the field of Information Systems have used the notion of affordance as a lens to investigate and theorize this relationship. However, knowledge contributions in this area are often abstract and impractical, or at least compel further conceptual development. This paper uses a relational view of affordances to study organizational social media affordances based on empirical data collected about the use of the Wiki technology at two large multinational organizations—CCC and IBM. It theorizes four key mechanisms—referring to other affordances (referential), collectively enacting significant affordances (communal), situation-dependent exploitation of affordances (situatedness), and exploiting other opportunities for action (multiplicity), that embody the interaction between the social and the material. These mechanisms make up what is labelled in this paper as ‘the affordances apparatus’. The apparatus provides a conceptual structure for the interaction between social and material features that shows operational dynamics and processes underpinning the perception, enactment and exploitation of affordances. This apparatus is the main contribution of the paper in that it gives researchers a conceptual tool for investigating affordances as relational constructs between the social and the material. It also helps in understanding how people navigate the use of technology features relative to their intentions and goals

IT Affordances and Consumption Values Perspective for the Use of Social Commerce

Social commerce is growing throughout the world. This paper develops a framework based on affordance theory and theory of consumption values to understand which consumption values motivate feature-enabled affordances to satisfy buyers and sellers and how that impacts the overall transactional experience on the platform. Additionally, the paper also fills the gap in the literature regarding seller\u27s selling behavior which is relatively understudied. The study focuses on Facebook Marketplace as the online social commerce platform (OSC). This research will help system designers to design better social commerce platforms and identify features that need improvement or changes. Additionally, the findings from this research will create a better understanding of buyer and seller behavior and their motivations of using social commerce platforms

Leveraging Social Media for Work Value: Social and Work Affordances

The reasons that people using social media is going beyond personal socializing. Many individuals leverage the social and work affordances of social media to enhance work performance and complete tasks. This study proposed a framework of social media enabled work value based on social psychological theories including social affordance and social presence. We explore how different affordances (social, work, and negative affordances) of social media affect the social value (social presence) and work value perceived by the users. The effects of social affordance, work affordance, and negative affordance were examined. The proposed model was empirically evaluated on a sample of 194 social media users. The results provide support to the themes (1) both social and work values are increased by social and work affordance; (2) negative affordance, however, would not affect the work value; (3) increasing social presence could not enhance the work value. Several suggestions are provided

What Influences Employees to Use Enterprise Social Networks? A Socio-Technical Perspective

The adoption of enterprise social network (ESN) for greater employee engagement and knowledge sharing practices within organisations is proliferating. However, ESN investments have thus far not resulted in expected gains in organisational benefits due to underutilisation by employees. Limited understanding of the implications of ESN use leads to a paucity of recommendations for effective use within an organisation. This research-in-progress paper seeks to determine the factors influencing the use of ESN among employees in a large Australian utility organisation, with the aim of contributing to a practical understanding of the key success factors of the use of this new workplace social platform. Our preliminary findings indicated that the employees’ ESN behaviour tends to be influenced by socio-technical factors, including technological (i.e. platform and content quality), organisational (i.e. top management support and ESN facilitating conditions), social (i.e. critical mass and communication climate), individual (i.e. perceived benefits, knowledge self-efficacy and time commitment) and task (i.e. task characteristics) factors. This paper concludes that a successful implementation of ESN in an organisation involves the nexus between these five factors and provides several recommendations about how ESN use can be enhanced

Combining social media affordances for organising collective action

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