Using Enterprise Social Media for Collaboration

The use of social media inside an organisation is receiving increased attention and many commentators are optimistic about its potential benefits. This paper contributes to understanding the nature of the phenomenon and evaluates Enterprise Social Media, using the lens of intellectual capital theory. A number of important advantages are apparent and it is clear that these increase as the organisation becomes more adept at developing associated culture and working practices. Introduction Social media has " democratized " corporate communication (Kietzmann et al., 2011: p11) and has been adopted as an important channel for customer engagement in recent years (Barwise and Meehan, 2010). The channels are primarily used to communicate with consumers: Facebook brand pages; corporate Twitter feeds and blogs; LinkedIn groups; and even company-owned brand communities (e.g. the Harley Davidson Community). While there is still some debate on the extent to which social media marketing generates a return on investment (Hoffman & Fodor 2010), the opportunities to improve customer engagement are significant (Sashi 2012) and few CEOs will publicly deny the need for these channels to engage in dialogue with consumers. Conversely, the use of social media for internal communication, collaboration and sharing of ideas is not so universally accepted (West, 2013). However, the adoption of 'social' software is seen as an opportunity to foster individual creativity and to collaboratively develop new ideas and solutions within internal communities (Haefliger et al. 2011). A new type of working environment (referred to as Enterprise 2.0) has been predicted for some years now (McAfee, 2006). The vision is for organisations to take advantage of the " technological and ideological foundations of Web 2.0 " (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010: p 60) to allow free and easy collaboration between employees. Compelling evidence is presented in case studies of firms such as IBM and Burberry that such collaboration leads to: enriched working environments; greater employee engagement and commitment; improved product and process innovation; and enhanced customer value (Bjelland and Wood, 2008; Gouillart, 2012). There appears to be cause for optimism that 'social' software may be a catalyst to a wide range of workplace and economic benefits, but enterprise software implementations require great care and attention in order to avoid disappointment (Brown and Vessey, 2003). To this end, there has been a recent call for a theoretically rigorous review of the use of 'social' software in the collaborative creation of knowledge within a firm (von Krogh, 2012) …