Enterprise Social Media at Work

Dyrby, Signe Sofie Doctoral Thesis Enterprise Social Media at Work PhD Series, No. 1.2016 Provided in Cooperation with: Copenhagen Business School (CBS) Suggested Citation: Dyrby, Signe Sofie (2016) : Enterprise Social Media at Work, PhD Series, No. 1.2016, ISBN 9788793339675, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg, https://hdl.handle.net/10398/9264 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/208958 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ ENTERPRISE SOCIAL MEDIA AT WORK Signe Sofie Dyrby The PhD School of LIMAC PhD Series 01.2016 PhD Series 01-2016 ENTERPRISE SOCIAL MEDIA AT WORK COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL SOLBJERG PLADS 3 DK-2000 FREDERIKSBERG DANMARK WWW.CBS.DK ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93339-66-8 Online ISBN: 978-87-93339-67-5 1 Enterprise Social Media at Work Signe Sofie Dyrby Supervisors: Tina Blegind Jensen Michel Avital LIMAC PhD School Copenhagen Business School Signe Sofie Dyrby Enterprise Social Media at Work 1st edition 2016 PhD Series 01.2016 © Signe Sofie Dyrby ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93339-66-8 Online ISBN: 978-87-93339-67-5 LIMAC PhD School is a cross disciplinary PhD School connected to research communities within the areas of Languages, Law, Informatics, Operations Management, Accounting, Communication and Cultural Studies. All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 3 Acknowledgements I am thankful to the many people, who have inspired and encouraged me throughout my Ph.D. work. The support from these individuals has enabled me to explore new territory, challenge my existing ideas and discover new sides of myself and my work. Without them this study would not have been possible. First, I would like to give a special thanks my two supervisors Tina Blegind Jensen and Michel Avital. Tina, you have been a true inspiration. Your passion and drive is utterly impressive and I am deeply grateful for the guidance and support you have provided me with over these past 3 years. You have taught me to pursue my research interest with dedication and hard work and you continue to impress and inspire me with your approach to research and scholarly work. To Michel, I am very grateful for all your valuable advice and guidance. Working with you has made me a better researcher. I have been immensely inspired by your knowledge of the field and your ability to challenge the status quo and take risks. To you both, I thank you for challenging me, for our many stimulating discussions and for all your efforts in our collaboration. I have been greatly inspired by your respect for the craft and have enjoyed unpacking complex issues in a serious yet cheerful dialogue. Without your optimism, support and encouragement this study would not have been completed. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the department of IT Management for creating an enjoyable and stimulating research environment. Special thanks goes to Matthias Trier, Mads Bødker and Rob Austin for providing me with valuable feedback during the process of my Ph.D. I also thank Anni Olesen for always being there to help. I thank Lucas Introna for providing me with the opportunity to visit Lancaster University and engaging with me in great discussions about my work and research in general. I also thank Frantz Rowe and Allen Lee who have provided me with valuable feedback on my dissertation at the ECIS and ICIS doctoral consortium respectively. I would like to thank the case companies for opening their doors to me and allowing me to look into their worlds. Especially, I thank all the participants who 4 took the time to share their experiences with me and reveal unexpected and highly interesting insights. I also thank my committee, Matthias Trier, Marleen Huysmann and Richard Boland, for taking an interest in my research and for providing me with great feedback. I am humbled by having such prominent scholars read and comment on my work. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for their unconditional support throughout this Ph.D. process. A special thanks goes to my parents and my grandmother who with their continuous encouragement and willingness to listen have given me a place to reflect and regroup. I would also like to thank Elisabeth and Michelle for their great friendship and cheerful spirit. Finally, I have no words to express the gratitude I owe Chris for always being there for me. You have been my rock throughout this process and I am deeply grateful for all your support, your patience and advice, and for laughing and crying with me. I could not have done this without you. Signe Dyrby Copenhagen, January 2015 5 Abstract This PhD thesis is concerned with the social dynamics of Enterprise Social Media (ESM) at work. As ESM technologies are making their way on to the organizational scene, knowledge about how to understand and work with these media are in demand. Existing knowledge about ESM in organizations highlights the technological features and the new possibilities for organizational work that these media bring forward. However, the open and perpetual display of organizational connections and conversations on ESM also presents a unique opportunity for studying the role of social interactions and relationships that underlie organizational work on these platforms. The purpose of this PhD thesis is to examine ESM in light of its social dynamics and the implications of these for organizational work. In the context of this research, social dynamics refer to the interactions and relationships between actors in the organization. Conceptually the social dynamics of ESM at work are investigated in the light of three domains of ESM, sociality and work and their intersections. The investigation builds on the empirical setting of three organizations utilizing the ESM technology Yammer and involves the examination of the organizations’ use of the platform through methods of interviews and observations onsite and online. The thesis makes three central contributions to our understanding of the social dynamics of ESM at work. First, the thesis adds to existing perspectives on ESM in organizations by integrating the three domains of ESM, sociality and work. While the literature has so far treated these domains separately or in pairs, this research demonstrates how the social dynamics of ESM in organizations arise between the functionalities of the ESM technology, the sociality of the organizational members, and the work practices carried out. Second, the thesis presents a social fabric framework as a way of explaining, interpreting and understanding the social dynamics of ESM at work. Mapping the social fabric of the organization on ESM provides valuable insight into the dynamic and diverse nature of the relationships that form on the platform and how these create the basis of work. Third, the thesis contributes a relational constructivist perspective to the 6 study of the social dynamics of ESM at work that emphasize the study of relationships between actors rather than the study of individual actors. Considering the social dynamics of ESM in organizations through the social fabric framework provides researchers and practitioners with a new way of understanding and theorizing about ESM at work. 7 Dansk Resume Denne ph.d. afhandling omhandler de sociale dynamikker omkring brugen af Enterprise Social Media (ESM) i organisationer. I takt med at ESM teknologier gør indtog i organisationer er viden omkring hvordan vi kan arbejde med og forstå disse nødvendig. Formålet med denne ph.d. afhandling er at undersøge ESM i lyset af de sociale dynamikker som platformen introducerer i organisationer samt hvilke implikationer dette har for det arbejde der udføres i disse organisationer. I denne afhandling betragtes sociale dynamikker som sammenspillet mellem interaktioner og overordnede forholdsmønstre mellem aktører i organisationen. De sociale dynamikker er således ikke begrænset til individer i organisationen men inkluderer interaktioner og forhold mellem individer, teknologien og arbejdet der udføres i organisationen. Konceptuelt undersøges de sociale dynamikker omkring ESM i lyset af tre domæner: ESM, socialitet og organisatorisk arbejde. Undersøgelsen bygger på empirisk materiale fra tre case organisationer der gør brug af ESM teknologien Yammer og involverer studiet af organisationernes brug af ESM teknologien gennem interviews og observationer i organisationerne og online. Afhandlingen bidrager med tre centrale konklusioner vedrørende de sociale dynamikker omkring brugen af ESM i organisatorisk arbejde. For det første, bidrager afhandlingen til eksisterende perspektiver på ESM i organisationer ved at integrere de tre domæner ESM, socialitet, og organisatorisk arbejde. Mens eksisterende litteratur har behandlet disse tre domæner separat eller i par, demonstrerer denne afhandling hvordan de sociale dynamikker omkring ESM opstår i sammenspil mellem funktionaliteten af ESM teknologien, socialiteten mellem medlemmerne af organisationen, og de organisatoriske arbejdsprocesser. For det andet, præsenterer afhandlingen et social fabric rammeværk som et værktøj til at forklare, fortolke og forstå de sociale dynamikker på ESM i organisationer. Kortlægning af social fabric på ESM giver værdifuld indsigt i den dynamiske og differentierende natur som beskriver de forhold mellem medarbejdere som formes på ESM platformen samt hvordan disse skaber basis for 14 “Web-based platforms that allow workers to (1) communicate messages with specific coworkers or broadcast messages to everyone in the organization; (2) explicitly indicate or implicitly reveal particular coworkers as communication partners; (3) post, edit, and sort text and files linked to themselves or others; and (4) view the messages, connections, text, and files communicated, posted, edited and sorted by anyone else in the organization at any time of their choosing.” (Leonardi et al. 2013:2) In comparison to existing organizational technologies, ESM provides an added layer of visibility and transparency of conversations and knowledge that were previously only visible to the people directly involved in the dialogue or knowledge exchange (Treem and Leonardi 2012). The increased visibility and transparency of connections and information is presumed to provide the organizational members with a greater insight into the knowledge and interests of their colleagues, as well as use this knowledge as part of the work they do in the organization (Günther et al. 2009). At the same time, the preservation of information on the digital platform allows organizational members to visit and revisit content when they wish and creates a knowledge repository in which organizational knowledge and experience is preserved (White and Lutters 2007). These added functionalities attribute the ESM platform a role of enhancing and enabling organizational members to carry out their work, as well as developing and maintaining connections internally within the organization. In a recent report, Gartner (2013) observed that a majority of the social business efforts, such as ESM, in organizations will not achieve this intended benefit due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology. So while the technological features of ESM offer opportunities for communication and work, organizations are also facing challenges of how to understand and incorporate ESM technologies within the organization. 1.1 Challenges for Enterprise Social Media at Work Using ESM at work refers to the activities and practices, which organizational members carry out on the ESM platform as part of their job. Interestingly the challenges of ESM at work are closely linked with its opportunities. Leonardi et al. (2013) highlight four communication-based opportunities for ESM in the form 15 of social capital formation (DiMicco et al. 2009; Steinfield et al. 2009), boundary work (van Osch and Steinfield 2013), attention allocation (Bateman et al. 2011) and social analytics (Gibbs et al. 2013; Zhang et al. 2007). Exploring these opportunities, van Osch et al. (2015) reveal how challenges emerge in the form of reluctance to share information online, privacy and confidentiality concerns, misplaced allocation of attention, and lack of formalization of the ESM communication. These challenges correspond to some of the well-known issues of technology use and adoption in organizational work in terms of providing incentives for technology use (e.g., Barrett and Konsynski 1982), establishing procedures and processes for technology adoption (e.g., Karahanna et al. 1999) and creating a link between work practices and the technological opportunities (e.g., Majchrzak et al. 2000). However, challenges of ESM also appear to manifest themselves in the organizational members’ task of navigating the ESM technology as a ‘social’ platform. Implementing an ESM technology highlights the social connections and networked community of an organization for everyone to see and be a part of (Millen and Patterson 2002). Consequently, it seems important to recognize that the open display of the organizational social network draws focus to challenges, such as inclusivity and connectedness related to the social dimension of work in the organization (van Marrewijk 2004). In this context, the increased focus on establishing connections and the development of social networks among organizational members presents a new awareness of the social aspects of organizational work (Wasko et al. 2004). One of the reasons why the use of ESM in organizations might encounter problems is that too little attention has been paid to understanding ESM in relation to, and as a part of, the organization’s social dynamics. While many organizations recognize the importance of how their members interact with each other and form social connections as part of their organizational life, articulating the meaning of these relationships and their implications for work remains challenging. The emphasis on the social network and the connectivity of the employees found in the premise of the ESM technology presents an opportunity for exploring the underlying social dynamics inherent in organizational work. 16 In studies of information systems in organizations, the entanglement between social dynamics and technology in organizations has been emphasized by numerous theorists (e.g., Leonardi 2011; Leonardi 2013; Leonardi and Barley 2008; Orlikowski 2007; Orlikowski 2009). These studies highlight how the social dynamics between individuals and the technology utilized are inseparable and continuously enact each other within the organization. In exploring the role of ESM within organizations, practitioners and researchers have placed heavy emphasis on the technological aspects in terms of functionalities and outcomes (Muller et al. 2012). Given the growing adoption of ESM technologies and the forecasts of the increasing role that these technologies will come to play in organizations, I would assert that it is important to consider the role of ESM in relation to the social dynamics it introduces for organizational work. In particular, I pursue an exploration of the social dynamics of ESM and how this influences organizational work. Through understanding these dynamics, we will be able to transcend the description of technological functionalities and the outcome of the ESM technology use towards a deeper understanding of the evolving social dynamics on ESM in organizations. 1.2 The Purpose of the PhD Research Based on the outline of the current situation of ESM in organizations and the challenges that the technology presents, I believe it is highly relevant to conduct research that can uncover and highlight central elements of ESM in relation to, and as a part of, the social dynamics of the organization. Through this study, I wish to add to the existing perspectives on ESM in organizations by providing an in-depth understanding of the social dynamics of ESM and the implications of these dynamics on organizational work. The research question guiding this investigation is: What are the social dynamics of enterprise social media in organizational work? The purpose of this research is to gain an understanding of the social dynamics of ESM at work. Social dynamics refer to the interplay of continuing interactions and 17 overall patterns of relationships between actors in the organization. In this context, the social dynamics do not depend on the organizational members alone, but also include interactions and relationships of technology and work within the organization. To address the research question, I approach the study through an investigation of the three domains of ESM, sociality and work, and their intersections. The three domains are considered as the following: the domain of ESM refers to the technology and encompasses its functionalities and uses; the domain of sociality refers to individuals associating with each other and how they form relationships based on these associations; and the domain of work refers to the work practices taking place in the organization in terms of the activities that are a part of the organizational work. Through this investigation, I wish to draw attention to how ESM at work can be studied and understood through the intersections of the different domains, with a focus on understanding the social dynamics of the ESM technology in the organization. Consequently, I wish to show how gaining insight into the social dynamics of ESM can allow a deeper understanding of the implications of ESM at work for both researchers and practitioners. The research adopts a constructivist perspective, focusing on the relational aspects of understanding ESM, sociality and work. The findings from this research are oriented towards an investigation of the underlying social and material relations that form the social dynamics of ESM at work. From an empirical perspective, the study is approached in two stages. Initially, a pilot study involving the use of social media in the context of a political campaign provides preliminary insight into the sphere of social media and helps frame the research interest. Secondly, the main part of the research is based on the study of organizational use of the ESM platform Yammer across three different case organizations: an IT consultancy, an industrial power and automation company, and a health organization. Demonstrating different degrees of Yammer use and success, the research of the three case organizations provides a comprehensive representation of how ESM is a part of work. The research offers three important contributions. First, the study adds to existing perspectives on ESM in organizations by offering insight into the three areas of 18 ESM, sociality and work in the context of ESM at work. Second, the research presents a social fabric framework that encompasses all three domains of ESM, sociality and work in the study of ESM in organizations. The utilization of the social fabric framework to describe and work with ESM within the case organizations provides a valuable language and approach for evaluating the current situation as well as directing future work. Third, the research highlights how taking a relational constructivist perspective provides analytical potential in the investigation of ESM at work by shifting the focus from the individual actors to the relationships between them. Considerations of practical implications reveal how expanding our understanding of ESM at work through the integrated domains of ESM, sociality and work provides managers with valuable insight into how to work and succeed with ESM. 1.3 Thesis Structure The thesis consists of a cover chapter and a collection of four papers. In the cover chapter, I synthesize the research conducted in the papers. The cover chapter is not only meant to summarize the research but also to complement the papers. The cover chapter is divided into five chapters. In the first, I introduced the study and provided the background of the PhD research. Chapters two presents a review of existing perspectives on ESM in organizations and provide a reflection on what these perspectives offer for the understanding of ESM at work. This chapter is intended to review and evaluate existing perspectives and position my research. In the third chapter, I summarize my research design and describe my research philosophy, methodological considerations and case organizations, as well as provide an account of my research process. The fourth chapter explores a unified perspective of ESM, sociality and work for understanding ESM at work. This chapter is structured through the different insights gained from the ongoing research and highlights how each of the research perspectives adds to the understanding of ESM at work. The final chapter presents the conclusions and considers implications for research and practice. 19 The four papers follow the concluding section and are ordered in the sequence in which they are written. In relation to the overall thesis, the papers address different aspects of ESM, sociality and work. An outline of the central aspects in each of the papers is provided in Table 1. Table 1: Overview of Papers and Focus Papers ESM Sociality Work 1. Strategic Use of Social Media in Political Campaigning: Perceived Affordances and Actual Use of Facebook X X 2. The Effect of Enterprise Social Media on Organizational Work X X 3. Reshaping Organizations: Enterprise Social Media and the Changing Social Order of Organizational Practice X X 4. Weaving Enterprise Social Media into the Social Fabric of Organizations X X X The four papers are presented below with a brief summary of each and how they relate to the overall work of the thesis. 1. Dyrby, S. and Jensen, T.B. Strategic Use of Social Media in Political Campaigning: Perceived Affordances and Actual Use of Facebook. A version of the paper published as Jensen, T.B. and Dyrby, S. (2013). Exploring Affordances of Facebook as a Social Media Platform in Political Campaigning. In Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on Information Systems - ECIS 2013. Best paper 1st runner up. The paper included in this dissertation is an extended version of the ECIS paper. This paper addresses the domains of ESM and work through an investigation of Danish political parties’ strategic use of the social media platform, Facebook, in their campaign. The paper pursues the following research questions, 1) What do political parties perceive Facebook to afford in their campaign strategy? 2) How 20 are these affordances reflected in the political parties’ actual actions? and 3) Which strategic considerations can the link between perceived affordances and actual use add to the discussion of social media use in political campaigning? The investigation was based on interviews with the people responsible for social media in seven Danish political parties, as well as posts and comments made on the parties’ Facebook walls before, during and after the Danish general election in 2011. Utilizing an ‘affordance approach’ (Treem and Leonardi 2012), the collected data was coded in two stages. First, the interview data was analyzed by posing the question, ‘what does Facebook give the political parties the opportunity to do?’ Second, the Facebook comments and posts were analyzed by asking, ‘what did the political parties then actually do?’ The findings revealed the political parties’ perceived affordances of using Facebook for political campaigning in terms of what they wanted to facilitate, project and enhance. The subsequent investigation of the parties’ actual use of Facebook showed that the majority of the intended affordances were acted out in practice; however the findings also highlighted that certain aspects were neglected by the political parties and that new types of affordances surfaced through the actions on the Facebook platform. The findings led us to suggest several strategic considerations for working with social media in the context of political campaigning in terms of 1) planning the social media strategy based on the perceived affordances, 2) operationalizing expected opportunities into actual use, and 3) performing ongoing evaluation of the balance between perceived affordances and activities to determine continuous use. The findings from this paper address the two domains of ESM and work, emphasizing the importance of thinking strategically about both the perceived affordances and the actual actions carried out when working with social media. Applying the affordance approach in this study demonstrated the importance of considering the processes of bringing perceived affordances into actions on social media. While the paper did not deal directly with ESM but rather focused on the social media platform Facebook, it nonetheless provided insight into working with social media technology according to a specific set of perceived affordances and activities. Furthermore, the work in this paper fuelled my interest in researching social media in the context of organizations and organizational work. 21 2. Dyrby, S., Avital, M. and Jensen, T.B. The Effect of Enterprise Social Media on Organizational Work. Paper accepted for JAIS Theory Development Workshop at The International Conference on Information Systems – ICIS 2013. The paper included in this dissertation is an extended version of the JAIS Theory Development paper. This theory development paper addresses the domains of ESM and sociality by investigating the effect of ESM on organizational work and demonstrating how this effect depends on the interactions between organizational members on the ESM platform. The paper pursues the research question How do enterprise social media affect organizational work? The investigation led to the development of a theoretical model outlining how the influence of perceived ESM affordances on organizational practice is mediated through interaction on the ESM platform. Reviewing the literature on ESM in organizations, five main groups of perceived ESM affordances were discovered in terms of how ESM afford distribution, association, amplification, contextualization and preservation of information and people. The process of active actualization was described as the point where the perceived affordance was manifested in actions carried out by an individual or a group (Bernhard et al. 2013; Strong et al. 2014). On the ESM platform, this process of actualization was argued to take place in the interactions between individuals as they carry out activities of posting and commenting on the platform. The theoretical investigation yielded six theoretical propositions and a model outlining how the perceived affordances of ESM can be actively actualized through interaction between individuals on the platform. The theoretical reflections revealed that the interactions between the organizational members on the ESM platform rely on the micro-level action and reaction of organizational members through posting and commenting, as well as recognizing each other’s contributions through likes. The findings emphasized the importance of interaction on the ESM platform for a perceived affordance to be actualized into actions on the platform and to influence organizational work. The findings from this paper address the two domains of ESM and sociality through the investigation of the role of interaction on the ESM platform in the 22 active actualization of perceived ESM affordances. Building on the findings concerning the actualization of affordances in paper 1, this investigation revealed how the effect of ESM on organizational work require considerations of not only the perceived affordances of the technology, but also of the active actualization of these affordances through the interaction between organizational members on the platform. 3. Dyrby, S. Reshaping Organizations: Enterprise Social Media and the Changing Social Order of Organizational Practice Paper accepted and presented at The 30th European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium 2014. This paper addresses the domains of sociality and work through an investigation of the organizational social order that influences practices of knowledge management in an organization adopting ESM. The paper pursues the following research question: What social order guides practices of knowledge management on enterprise social media? The investigation presented the case of an IT consultancy adopting the ESM technology Yammer and drew on historic accounts of technology use within the organization as well as interviews with organizational members. The analysis of the collected data was carried out using Foucault's (1977) dispositif analysis to examine and understand the social order that emerged as the result of ESM adoption in an organization. Dispositif analysis describes how a certain ‘thing’ has worked or continues to work predisposing to the patterns of relationship that guide practices in a collective (Raffnsoe et al. 2014). In particular, the research in this paper investigated the use of ESM for the practice of knowledge management and outlined the underlying dispositif that come to guide the practice of knowledge management as the ESM technology becomes more dominant. The findings revealed two dispositifs, describing how knowledge management practices are enacted first through a dispositif of hierarchy and, after the ESM adoption, through a dispositif of network. Taking a historical perspective on organizational work in the study of the case organization emphasized how the 23 changing dispositif influenced the interactions and practices of the organizational members. This study showed how the adoption of ESM technology acts as a catalyst for a reordering of the overall patterns of relationship that guide practices in the organization. The findings from the paper address the two domains of sociality and work. Through the dispositif analysis, sociality is described on the macro-level as a certain pattern of relationships between organizational members, objects, and the institutional mechanisms of the organization. The findings further highlighted a changing dispositif for the organizational practice of knowledge management from a hierarchical dispositif towards a networked dispositif. In this context, the relation between sociality and work is highlighted through the influence of the changing dispositifs on the organizational practice. In contrast to the findings from paper 2, which focus on the micro-level description of the social interactions and the activities between organizational members, this paper demonstrated how macrostructural patterns of relationships provide insights into the sociality of organizational members in the context of work on ESM. 4. Dyrby, S., Jensen, T.B., and Avital, M. Weaving Enterprise Social Media into the Social Fabric of Organizations. A version of the paper published as Dyrby, S., Jensen, T.B., and Avital, M. (2014). Enterprise Social Media at Work: Weaving the Social Fabric of Collaboration. Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Information Systems. ICIS 2014. The paper included in this dissertation is an extended version of the ICIS paper. This paper addresses the domains of ESM, sociality and work by the development and use of a social fabric framework. The social fabric is defined as a metaphor that describes the threads of relationships between people in a collective which are shaped and reshaped by the prevailing beliefs and practices in a collective as well as its technological milieu. The paper pursues the two research questions 1) What characterizes a social fabric on enterprise social media? and 2) How can social fabric explain collaboration on enterprise social media? 30 Table 2: ESM as Organizational Technology Topics Perspectives Characteristics • ESM as a new way of connecting, interacting and communicating with other people (Dimicco et al. 2008; Riemer and Scifleet 2012; Zhang et al. 2010) • ESM as an integrated platform of micro-blogging, social tagging and social networking (Leonardi et al. 2013) • ESM as open infrastructure of a democratic nature (Gibbs et al. 2014) • ESM as based on user participation (Holtzblatt et al. 2010; Ip and Wagner 2008) and bottom-up media (Rober and Cooper 2011) • ESM as reliant on the formation of ties (weak and strong) between colleagues (DiMicco et al. 2008) • ESM as communities of practice (Fulk and Yuan 2013; Majchrzak et al. 2013) Functionalities • ESM allows users to exchange messages with others and groups (broadcasting) (Zhao and Rosson 2009), indicate particular co-workers as partners (Treem and Leonardi 2012), and post, edit, and sort text and files (Holtzblatt et al. 2010; Leonardi et al. 2013) • ESM provides increased visibility of conversational behaviors and information (boyd 2009; Erickson and Kellogg 2000; Grudin 2006; Leonardi et al. 2013; Majchrzak 2009; Thom-Santelli et al. 2008) • ESM preserves conversations (Binder et al. 2009; Leonardi et al. 2013) • ESM reveals activity, connections and experts through analytics (Richter and Koch 2008; Smith et al. 2009) 31 Design implications • ESM is designed for internal communications (McAfee 2006) and creating a flexible knowledge repository (White and Lutters 2007) • ESM is built on simple usability and functionality (Hauptmann and Gerlach 2010; Honey and Herring 2009) • ESM is designed using features of communication channeling (Preece and Shneiderman 2009) and event notifications (Millen and Patterson 2002) The perspectives on ESM as an organizational technology emphasize the opportunities that the technology creates through its characteristics, functionalities and design. From the existing literature, three key insights can be found with regard to describing ESM as an organizational technology. First, ESM is characterized as a new technology for organizational members to interact and connect through user participation and the formation of ties. Second, the functionalities of visible message exchange, indication of connections between coworkers, abilities of posting, editing and sorting of files, along with the use of the continuously created data for analytics, set ESM apart from existing organizational technologies. Finally, ESM in organizations is designed for simple usability and recognizable functionality and includes push features that channel communication and event notifications. The review of the literature emphasizes how ESM in the organization builds upon and accentuates communication and interaction practices already in place, as well as how ESM technology is bringing these practices into the open through the transparency and visibility provided on the platform. The increased visibility of organizational practices and interactions indicates that, as researchers and practitioners, there is much to learn about organizational dynamics through simply observing and evaluating the posts and comments exchanged between organizational members on the ESM platforms. This presents a unique opportunity for observing practices of organizational members both in retrospect and as they are taking place. 32 2.1.2 Enterprise Social Media in Organizational Work The literature addresses ESM in the organization in relation to the specific the work practices that are supported on the platform and the underlying work processes that arise as a consequence of adopting these platforms. In particular, a lot of emphasis is placed on the technology as part of the daily work within the organization. The work practices that are supported on ESM in organizations rely on the functionalities that the media provides for information sharing (Damianos et al. 2007) and communication between organizational members (Lyons et al. 2012). With the use of ESM, communicative practices become more abstract in the way that employees must address larger, and, to some extent, unfamiliar, audiences when communicating on an ESM platform (Marwick 2011). Communicating in this manner gives employees the opportunity to self-publish content (Efimova and Grudin 2007) about work or even of a more private nature (DiMicco et al. 2008). Sharing various types of information as well as the ease of communicating with a wide audience through the platform enables open and cross-boundary communication between the members of the organization (Gibbs et al. 2014). Through reliance on the information sharing opportunities on ESM platforms, the practices of knowledge sharing and creation are carried out via the publicly visible knowledge conversation that takes place between individuals (Majchrzak et al. 2013). The knowledge sharing and creation is dependent on features of the network including the macro-structural properties, the structure and relational quality of the ties within the network and the individual motivations (Wasko et al. 2004). In particular, the social capital generated through the platform and support for relationships and interactions influence the way knowledge sharing is shaped on ESM platforms (Ellison et al. 2015). The support of knowledge sharing and creation influence the practice of collaboration on the ESM platform. Collaboration is supported on the ESM platform by the availability of knowledge about the organizational members areas of expertise (Huh et al. 2007) as well as shared and accessible content (Brzozowski 2009), allowing individuals to identify collaboration partners and opportunities. Through information about who knows 33 what, the ESM platform facilitates access to experts and allows for connections to be established (John and Seligmann 2006). In the networked connections on the ESM platform, practices of learning are facilitated (Hauptmann and Gerlach 2010) through individuals coming together and engaging in shared sense-making (DiMicco et al. 2009). Although the ESM platform is highlighted in many studies as an enabler of organizational practices, some also raise concerns about ESM serving as an disruptive factor in work practices (Agarwal and Karahanna 2000), raising concerns that the attention individuals must now give to the social medium will draw focus from their actual work. The work processes that arise as a consequence of ESM use in an organizational context describe the underlying steps of activities that support the work practices. The flexibility of the ESM platform in terms of posting, editing and commenting provides support for processes of ad-hoc work (Wagner 2004). The iterative processes that take place on ESM engage employees in ad-hoc sharing of messages and encourage open conversation (Farrell et al. 2008). The continued processes of information contribution and disclosure can lead to social recognition within the ESM network (Sarita Yardi et al. 2009) but, at the same time, raises concerns among employees about sharing draft documents (Danis and Singer 2008; Holtzblatt and Tierney 2011). In this sense, the ESM platform presents a double-edged sword where employees are sharing publically their information in an effort to gain attention on the online platform (Wasko and Faraj 2005) while still remaining dubious about sharing too much information or information that makes them appear unknowledgeable (Millen et al. 2006). In accordance with this, employees on the ESM platforms seem to engage in processes of monitoring and comparing their own performance with that of others (Farzan et al. 2009). On the management side, the governance processes surrounding ESM use within the organization has raised issues with regard to audience management strategies and how to handle the balance between public and private content and the grouping of social ties (Marwick 2011). Studies of governance in ESM have revealed how, in some cases, regulating codes of behavior develop in an ad hoc manner in accordance with the participation of colleagues and managers (Wattal et al. 2009) while others are crafted based on the existing policies of the organization (Vaast and Kaganer 2013). An overview of the literature on ESM in organizational work is presented in Table 3. 34 Table 3: ESM in Organizational Work Topics Perspective Work practices • ESM facilitates more abstract and less formal communicative practices (Marwick 2011) • ESM encourages self-publishing of content (Efimova and Grudin 2007) on work or a more private nature (Joan DiMicco et al. 2008) • ESM creates open and cross-boundary communication (Gibbs et al. 2014). • ESM makes knowledge conversations publicly visible (Ann Majchrzak et al. 2013) • ESM supports collaboration through providing access to knowledge (Huh et al. 2007), experts (John and Seligmann 2006) and shared and accessible content (Brzozowski 2009) • ESM encourages learning through the networked connections (Hauptmann and Gerlach 2010) and shared sense making (DiMicco et al. 2009) • ESM creates a disruptive factor at work (Agarwal and Karahanna 2000) Work processes • ESM gives rise to ad hoc work processes through incremental information generation (Wagner 2004) • ESM provides opportunities for processes of disclosing information openly (Danis and Singer 2008; Holtzblatt and Tierney 2011; (Yardi et al. 2009) • ESM generates iterative processes (Farrell et al. 2008) • ESM leads to monitoring and comparing own performance with that of others (Farzan et al. 2009) • ESM encourages processes of seeking attention and standing out on the online platform (Wasko and Faraj 2005) 35 Two key insights are gained from the existing literature with regard to ESM in organizational work. First, work practices of communication, knowledge sharing, collaboration and learning are all related to the use of ESM technology within the organization. Second, iterative and ad hoc work processes emerge on ESM, however the platform also exposes work processes that involve attention seeking, lack of recognition and reluctance to share certain forms of information. In this sense, a wide range of work practices are carried out through the ESM platform and the processes by which these practices are carried out are heavily influenced by self-interest and iterative ad hoc procedures. 2.1.3 Enterprise Social Media as Social Organization The ‘social’ component of ESM in organizations has also received some attention in the literature and the social aspects appear to be quite central in understanding ESM in the context of organizations. The social perspectives on ESM in organizations have been described in terms of the social structure and the social mechanisms that are at work in the organization. ESM appears to encourage certain types of social structures in the organization. The networked structure promoted on the ESM platform has challenged the way in which organizational structure is displayed. Through ESM use, the personal social network has become an alternative to the well-known and established organizational chart (Nardi et al. 2000). Professionals use internal social networking sites to build stronger bonds with their peers (DiMicco et al. 2008) and enhance their social capital (Steinfield et al. 2009). While the organizational chart may still display the formal positions of the people within the company, the new social connections formed on ESM can challenge this through allowing employees to connect with each other across departments and organizational boundaries. The associations created in the ESM network are manifested in two forms of association: the association to another person in the form of a social tie, and the association to a piece of information (Treem and Leonardi 2012). While these associations have been present in organizations before, ESM now takes part in facilitating these associations in a way that has not previously been the case 36 (Treem and Leonardi 2012). This perspective places focus on how associations on ESM are made much more explicit through the open documentation of activity afforded by the media. In addition, the associations appear to be a way for individuals to connect with others that they did not previously know (Zhang et al. 2007). The ESM platform creates a community network, providing a structure for sharing resources and building relationships (Muller et al. 2012). The community feeling fosters a sense of belonging and can unite dispersed members of the organization (Ehrlich and Shami 2010; Jackson et al. 2007; Leidner 2010). In these connections, ESM not only strengthens the sense of community but can also reveal the network closeness between employees, both professionally and personally (Wu et al. 2010). Research on this network closeness demonstrates how both personal and professional sharing enables the formation of relationships (DiMicco et al. 2009) that merge ties of public and private groups (Marwick 2011). The social mechanisms of ESM in organizations entail perspectives on interactions and motivation for engagement that exist among users of ESM. The relationships and the relational quality of connections are an important foundation for the use of ESM in organizations (Ellison et al. 2015; Wasko et al. 2004). Social interactions are supported by ESM, creating an environment of higher psychological safety that aids people who are normally less inclined to interact (boyd and Ellison 2007). The open and democratic nature of the ESM platform further facilitates cross-boundary interactions between individuals by breaking down boundaries of time and place (Gibbs et al. 2014). The use of ESM in organizations has been associated with the social capital benefits of access to new people and expertise and belonging to a community (Leonardi et al. 2013; Steinfield et al. 2009). In an organizational context, the dynamics of social capital also benefits practices of knowledge contribution (Ellison et al. 2015; Wasko and Faraj 2005). Social engagement on ESM can be encouraged and maintained through design elements such as conversation channeling, event notification, selection criteria for community members and specific discussion topics (Millen and Patterson 2002). The ESM platform can also encourage people to engage in defensive self-representation (Gibbs et al. 2013) where the pressure of maintaining 37 the social connections can lead to a displaced focus and a disproportionate amount of time spent on promoting oneself on ESM. An overview of the central perspectives on ESM as social organization is provided in Table 4. Table 4: ESM as Social Organization Topics Perspectives Social structure • ESM highlights personal social networks as an alternative to the organizational chart (Joan DiMicco et al. 2008; Nardi et al. 2000; Steinfield et al. 2009) • ESM promotes associations formed between people and content (Treem and Leonardi 2012) • ESM enforces networks of community (Ehrlich and Shami 2010; Jackson et al. 2007; Leidner 2010; Michael Muller et al. 2012) • ESM promotes network closeness between employees both professionally and personally (DiMicco et al. 2009; Marwick 2011; Wu et al. 2010) Social mechanisms • ESM creates higher psychological safety (boyd and Ellison 2007) across organizational boundaries (Gibbs et al. 2014) • ESM fosters social capital (Ellison et al. 2011; Steinfield et al. 2009; Wasko and Faraj 2005) • ESM creates social engagement (Millen and Patterson 2002) • ESM builds on relationships and build relationships (Ellison et al. 2015; Wasko et al. 2004) The social perspectives on ESM in organizations place attention on the social structure and social mechanisms that evolve with its use. From the existing literature, two key insights are revealed. First, the social structure of the ESM platform is based on a communal social network of associations between people and content, forming relationships of both personal and professional closeness. 38 Second, relationships and social interaction on ESM platforms enforce the social mechanisms on the platform and create social capital benefits and encourage the design of ESM platforms to stimulate social engagement. The social organization surrounding ESM platforms focus on relationships and the communal nature in which both professional and social connections are at play and must be cultivated. 2.1.4 Summarizing the Literature on ESM in Organizations Reviewing the existing literature on ESM in organizations revealed a series of insights with regard to ESM as organizational technology, in relation to work practice and with certain implications for the social organization. Table 5 provides a summary of the insights and the implications of these for this study. Table 5: Insights from Literature on ESM in Organizations Streams of literature Insights Implications for this study ESM as organizational technology ESM is characterized as a new way of interacting and connecting through user participation and the formation of ties between individuals. ESM provides functionalities of visible message exchange, indication of connections between co-workers, the posting, editing and sorting of files as well as data for analytics. ESM is designed for simple usability and recognizable functionality including push features that channel communication and event notifications. The new way of interacting and connecting on ESM and the visibility of activities and information on ESM platforms suggests that both researchers and practitioners can learn more regarding organizational dynamics by observing and evaluating what takes place on the ESM platform. ESM in organizational work ESM encourages work practices of communication, knowledge sharing, collaboration and learning are all related to the use of ESM technology A range of work practices is a part of the use of ESM in organizations but the 39 within the organization. ESM promotes iterative and ad hoc work processes are supported on the ESM platform but processes of attention seeking, lack of recognition and reluctance to share certain information exist on the platform. processes by which these practices are carried out are highly influenced by selfinterest and iterative ad hoc procedures. ESM as social organization ESM enforces a social structure of a communal social network of associations between people and content, forming relationships of both personal and professional closeness. ESM emphasizes the social mechanisms of relationships and social interaction on ESM platforms creates social capital benefits and encourages design in order to stimulate social engagement. The social organization of ESM platforms focuses on relationships and a communal nature in which both professional and social connections are at play and must be cultivated. In my PhD research, I seek to combine these insights in my understanding of the social dynamics of ESM at work. In particular, the integration between the material features, the work carried out and the social dynamics is most pertinent. In the existing literature on ESM in organizations, the perspective of affordances has been utilized as a means of investigating the intersection between the material properties of the ESM technology and the social aspect of action-taking possibilities perceived by organizational members in the context of work. In order to evaluate and relate this perspective to my study, the literature on affordances of ESM in organizations is reviewed. The purpose of this review is not to provide an overview of all the literature on affordances but to gain insight into how affordances have been used to explain the dynamics of the ESM in organizations. 46 work practice on the platform, and the communal structure and social mechanisms that promote relationships in the organization. Enhancing the existing literature, this research integrates these material and social perspectives through the investigation of the actions and the social environment in which the ESM technology is situated within the organization. 47 3. Research Design In this chapter, I present my research design and the underlying assumptions of the constructivist approach that is guiding this research. In particular, I highlight the relational perspective within this approach to present the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions that inform the study of social dynamics of ESM at work. Second, an overview of the case organizations is provided. Third, the process of the data collection and analysis is outlined and the research design is evaluated. Finally, I provide an account of my research process and describe key knowledge and experience gained throughout my PhD work. 3.1 Constructivist Approach and the Relational Perspective A constructivist approach focuses on understanding the complex world of ‘livedin’ experiences from the point of view of those who live in it (Schwandt 1994:6). The world and its meaning is seen as constructed between individuals, and in order to understand the world, one must interpret it. The processes of inquiry require the consideration of “world-making” in terms of ongoing processes of making and remaking (Goodman 1978:6). In this sense, we create the world as we live in it and our understanding of the world around us is informed by the pluralistic character of reality through the various symbols and language systems used to describe it and the malleable character of reality as stretched and shaped to fit the actions of human agents (Schwandt 1994). Constructivists focus on the ongoing production and organization of the world and use these dynamics to investigate systems of representations, social material practices, laws of discourse and ideological effects (Lincoln and Guba 2013). Within the constructivist approach, different ways of understanding and working with the constructions of reality have dominated the discourse. Constructivist perspectives range from the focus on the internal cognitive behaviors of the individual (Goodman 1978), to the social constructivist perspective (Gergen 1985) and the constructivist paradigm (Lincoln and Guba 1989), stressing the interaction between the observer and the observed as a joint construction process. While these three perspectives all focus on the individual(s) as the point of departure, one stream of literature within the constructivist approach emphasizes the relational constructionist perspective 48 (Gergen 2009; Hosking 2011). Moving away from the individual subject as the center for the constructions of reality, the relational perspective focuses on the relational processes as the ongoing medium in which relational realities are always in construction (Hosking 2011). In this sense, the relationship becomes the focal point of investigation and individuals are considered in terms of their relationship, rather than as individual actors (Gergen 2009). In social studies of organizations, the relational approach emerged as a challenge to the highly individualistic methodologies that dominated previous perspectives (Özbilgin 2006). As part of a constructivist perspective, the relational perspective views social life and meaning as constructed and shaped by human thoughts, practices and relationships rather than having an absolute meaning of their own. The relational perspective then deals with the ‘how’ of constructing and says little about the ‘what’ or ‘content’ of the construction (Hosking 2011). The relational perspective is a way of orienting the focus towards the relational processes of a practice world and the ways in which particular relational realities are constructed and reconstructed (Hosking 2011:57). For the study of ESM at work, the relational perspective can help cross the boundaries between the subject-object differentiations by moving focus to the relationship as the point of investigation. The focus is then on the relational processes at play and how reality is constructed and reconstructed in these relational processes rather than on the specific entities of the individual or the technology and how these construct reality. In this study of ESM at work, the relational perspective adds insight into the social dynamics by allowing the understanding of these dynamics at a relational level rather than an individual one. Moreover, the relational perspective is relevant in this study as it allows the integration of the material properties of the ESM technology and the social relationships between organizational members. This is achieved through the focus on the dynamics of the relationship between the technology and the organizational member and not their individual characteristics. To provide further insight into the implications of the relational perspective for the study of ESM at work, the ontological, epistemological and methodological implications are considered next. 49 Ontology refers to the nature of reality and how we may understand it (Guba and Lincoln 1994). The relational perspective centers on relational processes and it is these processes that actively create and maintain stabilities (Hosking 2011). In accordance with its constructivist roots, the relational perspective is not oriented towards some objective truth or reality, but rather sees reality as evolving and composed of ongoing relational processes that change over time and space (Gergen 2009). In organization studies, the relational ontology presents a number of assumptions of reality (Bouwen 1998). First, the relational perspective emphasizes how a mutually dependent relationship exists between the individual and the organization through which they sustain their mutual existence. It is in the coordination of organizational activities that individuals and organizations constitute each other (Gergen 2009). Second, language is a key component of the generative process involved in the constitutive relationship between the individual and the organization, and communication makes it possible for language to generate meaning (Bouwen 1998). Third, interaction at the individual and group levels in organizational settings serves to generate and shape shared meanings and bring forward both innovation and continuity (Bouwen 1998; Gergen 2009). The self-determination of individuals is then based on a knowing from within that comes from experiences gained through previous relationships (Gergen 2009). The relational perspective in the study of ESM from an organizational context therefore reveals the social dynamics of the organization in terms of relationships and relational practices that are continuously forming and re-forming. The ontological assumptions of the relational perspective also place strong emphasis on the relation as the foundation for the ‘being’ of individuals and underline how the relations, which the individual is a part of, are both a prerequisite for, and a result of, individuals being in the world (Gergen 2009). In this sense, the study of the social dynamics of ESM at work must consider the individual and the ESM technology in terms of and in light of the relations in which they take part, and how these relations are central for their existence. Epistemology concerns the theory of knowledge and the relationship between the knower and what can be known (Hirschheim and Klein 1989). In line with the constructivist approach, the relational perspective relies on interpretations as a part 50 of knowledge creation. The relational perspective requires the researcher to pursue personal development through reflexive practice, engagement in the research context and an ability to engage with participants in the process of analysis and sense-making (Bradbury and Lichtenstein 2000). I, as the researcher, become involved in the knowledge creation process, just as I become involved in the relationships that make up the inquiry process. The objects of inquiry are the relational processes themselves, and knowledge is generated through co-ordination or organization of activities and the construction and reconstruction of a certain ‘form of life’ (Hosking 2011). This means that the relational processes are both the ‘unit of analysis’ and the point of stability and change (Hosking 2011:59). The epistemological stance therefore emphasizes how knowledge is created on an ongoing and evolving basis as relational processes are enacted, observed and interpreted by individuals and the researcher. The individual and the researcher are linked, and the creation of knowledge occurs as the investigation unfolds. For my study of the social dynamics of ESM at work, this creates the opportunity for me, as the researcher, to actively engage in the inquiry and take part in the relational processes themselves. It also implies that the knowledge created through the research process is evolving and constantly changing. The generation of knowledge as part of this research then aims to reflect this ongoing construction and reconstruction of knowledge by considering the generation of knowledge about social dynamics of ESM in organizations as evolving and continuing. Methodology refers to how the inquirer researches what he/she believes can be revealed (Guba and Lincoln 1994:108). From the relational perspective, the method involves a means of capturing the interrelatedness, intersubjectivity and interdependence of the individual and organizational phenomena (Özbilgin 2006). The constructions of the world can only be captured through interaction between and among investigators and respondents (Guba and Lincoln 1994). From a relational perspective, this applies to the relational processes as both the unit of analysis and the process of investigation (Gergen 2009). The relational perspective in a constructivist approach adopts open multi-logical approaches that are participatory, collaborative, appreciative, and dialogical (Hosking 2011:60). A relational method involves considerations of knowledge in terms of contextual 51 implications through placing the phenomenon in its social and historical context (Özbilgin 2006). The methods must then reflect an awareness of the interdependencies between individual, organizational and contextual phenomena. In the study of the social dynamics of ESM at work, this implies venturing into the field of study and engaging with the field. The focus on uncovering the dynamic social processes of ESM at work makes the adoption of a qualitative research methodology appropriate (Maitlis 2005). In particular, qualitative methods are sensitive to the organizational context and offer the potential for focusing on idiosyncratic activities (Pettigrew 1992). Consequently, adopting a qualitative approach falls within the frame of this thesis research and the study of ESM at work. The ontological, epistemological and methodological considerations have some central implications for the study of the social dynamics of ESM at work. First, the relational perspective allows for reality to be constructed at the level of the relationship. In this sense social dynamics arise through relation and relational processes between entities and not in the individual entities acting alone. Second, the focus on relation processes as the unit of analysis creates the opportunity for treating the social and the material as a collective entity. This is achieved through focus on the relationship they are a part of, rather than their activities as individual actors. Third, the relational perspective implies the adoption of a flexible set of methods that can facilitate the exploration of phenomena in practice as they develop, as well as allow the researcher to engage with the participants in, and for, the purpose of interpretations and constructions that take place. 3.1.1 Case Study Method The qualitative research in this study is carried out using a case study method. A case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context, particularly when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident and when they rely on multiple sources of evidence (Walsham 1995; Yin 1994:13). The case study method was deemed appropriate for this research as the theoretical knowledge of the phenomena of 52 social dynamics on ESM was limited and the context was of importance (Cavaye 1996). Additionally, applying the case study method to the relational study of ESM in organizational work gave me the opportunity to explore the phenomenon without relying on predefined boundaries. The case study method considers the phenomenon in its natural context, thus not only creating an opportunity for an indepth investigation of the particular phenomenon but also the relationships between the phenomenon and the context (Cavaye 1996). In the case of this research, the delineation of the different relationships between organizational actors, and how these dynamically develop and evolve, requires them to be studied in their specific context. In IS research, case studies have been approached from both positivist (Yin 1994) and interpretive (Walsham 1995) perspectives. Constructivism and interpretivism are related approaches to research as both are reliant on a world view that emphasizes a world of lived reality and situation-specific meanings constructed by the social actors (Schwandt 1994). In accordance with the underlying assumptions of the constructionist approach and relational perspective informing this research, I opted for an interpretive case study. The interpretive perspective ascribes meaning to organizational structure and social relations though the individuals’ interactions in the social world (Orlikowski and Baroudi 1991). Moreover, the interpretive case study places emphasis on producing and understanding the contexts in which the information system works and exists (Walsham 1995). Meanings, in this context, arise out of social interaction, and it is through iterative processes between individuals that meanings are developed and modified (Boland and Day 1989). In the study of ESM at work, the interpretive case study method can then inform the study of the social dynamics of ESM in an organizational setting and allow for the understanding of how social relationships are constructed (Orlikowski and Baroudi 1991). Utilizing the interpretive case study method in this study, relationality is constructed at the level of the relationship, with the emphasis on the interactions between individuals. In interpretive case studies, my own subjectivity as a researcher will inevitably influence the interpretations of those being researched (Walsham 1995). While this can create challenges of biased and individual interpretations, it also enabled me to observe the phenomenon in its natural context. Reporting on the research findings of the interpretive case research was important in order to present the logical consistency 53 of the interpretations, the explanation of subjective meaning, and the establishment of adequacy by showing evidence of the rationale behind actions taken in this research (Lincoln and Guba 1985). The practice of this documentation is elaborated on in section 3.6, which evaluates the study. Studying the social dynamics of ESM at work from a relational constructivist perspective provides a basis for shifting focus from the individual towards the relational processes between individuals, and between individuals and the ESM technology in an organizational context. In this sense, the relational processes are a part - and a result - of the construction and reconstruction of reality within the organization and surrounding organizational work. For example, the relationship between the ESM platform and an organizational member is both a prerequisite of the construction and reconstruction of reality on the ESM platform, as well as a result of the construction and reconstruction of reality on the ESM. 3.2 Initiating the Study The outline of how the study was initiated introduces the processes and procedures that guided the initial steps of the research. The following provides a description of how I gained access to the field and my role as a researcher. 3.2.1 Accessing the Field of Study Engaging with the study of ESM at work from the constructivist and relational assumptions required the research to take place in its original setting. Considerations about how to access and engage with the field are important. Not only gaining access but also maintaining it becomes an important part of the work in a field study (Benbasat et al. 1987; Walsham 1995). Accessing the field of study in this research took place in two phases. The first was part of my initial study based on my interest in investigating the phenomenon of social media. This study served as a catalyst for my interest in - and approach to - studying the social dynamics of social media in an organizational context. The second entailed the main research efforts, and dealt with the study of ESM in three organizational case settings. In the following, I outline the two phases placing emphasis on the second 54 phase as the studies in the three organizations informed the main part of my research. In the initial phase, my contact with the field was through the study of the social media platform Facebook in the context of political campaigning (for details see paper 1). In this study, the interview data was already collected as part of a previous research effort1 and gaining access to the field was centered on the online Facebook platform and the political parties’ Facebook pages. The public availability of their Facebook pages created very low barriers of entry to the field, as the information was made publicly available on the Facebook platform. In this sense, I was able to capture the content through screenshots of the Facebook pages of each of the political parties. The low access barriers created a unique opportunity for the initial investigation of the social media phenomenon; however, it left me with many unanswered questions in terms of the considerations, thoughts and actions taken by individuals on the platform. The initial study then provided me with questions that informed the next phase of engaging with the field as well as some insights into obtaining data from a social media platform. The second phase, which came to dominate my research, was based on the investigation of ESM in an organizational context. The investigation adopted a collective case study approach in which the instrumental study extended to several cases (Stake 1994). Selecting the case organizations was, to a high degree, based on identifying the organizations making use of an ESM technology. With this in mind, the initial work comprised of laying out the landscape of ESM technologies. Mapping this landscape revealed many different ESM technologies, and among these, the platform ‘Yammer’ seemed to dominate the ESM landscape. Acquired by the Microsoft cooperation in 2012, the Yammer platform had become incorporated in the new Office365 software package, which resulted in a wide implementation of the platform in many organizations (Wilhelm 2014) and earned it a place on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Social Software (Drakos et al. 2014) as one of the most popular ESM technologies. Offering an interface broadly similar to that of Facebook’s, the Yammer platform provided an appropriate link to my 1 The data comprised of seven interviews with the person responsible for social media in seven Danish political parties. The interviews were carried out as part of a master thesis project. 55 preliminary study, and consequently I decided to look for organizations utilizing this platform. The next step was to find and choose a setting where the phenomenon could actually be studied (Walsham 2006). For my study of ESM at work, this meant identifying an organizational setting where the adoption of Yammer had already taken place. In order to find potential organizations, I conducted various searches online for articles, reports or organizational website entries that indicated that an organization was utilizing Yammer. I then approached the identified organizations (seven organizations) through an email expressing my interest in their organizational use of Yammer, providing details about my PhD study as well as enquiring about a possible collaboration (Appendix 1). The emails were then followed up by a telephone call. Through these efforts, contact was established with one organization, a Danish IT consultancy hereafter referred to through the pseudonym TopConsulting (cf. section 3.3.2), who I had contacted on the basis of an article in which the CEO attributed a workplace award to the organization’s use of the Yammer platform. Following an initial meeting, collaboration was agreed upon, giving me access to conduct observations and interviews within the organization with the objective of studying the organizational use of the Yammer platform. The relatively open access to the organization enabled me to conduct my studies through a mix of observations, both onsite at the organization and online on the Yammer platform, as well as engage with employees through ad hoc conversations and interviews. As the research frame and the premise of the study had been left open, I began my investigation by engaging in observations onsite in the organization as well as online on the Yammer platform (the observation process and procedure is detailed in section 3.4.1). I obtained a workspace onsite and my own profile on the Yammer platform and was able to spend my days working and talking to people within the company. Through these observations, I started to identify individuals who would be interesting to interview and those interviews allowed me to identify additional interviewees (the interview process and procedure is detailed in section 3.4.2). The input and insights from the first case study convinced me that including additional case studies of Yammer in an organizational context would be 62 Table 6: Overview of Case Organizations TopConsulting HighPower BetterHealth Business Area IT Consultancy for Microsoft Solutions Power and automation technology Healthcare research and development Organization Type Consulting Manufacturing Applied research Number of Employees 43 employees 600 employees (local), 130,000 employees (global) 300 employees and about 40,000 volunteers Yammer Implementation July 2012 September 2013 November 2013 3.4 Data Collection The data collection is situated in a specific context and involves collection of data on processes and relationships between, and amongst, individuals and organizations (Özbilgin 2006; Walsham 1995). Adopting a relational perspective requires focus on the collection of data that makes us able to gain insight into the relationships between actors. In case study research, evidence can be collected through six sources (Yin 1994): documentation, archival records, interviews, direct observations, participant observations and physical objects. In interpretive case studies, the primary source of data is the interview as it gives insight into the interpretations and understanding of individuals (Walsham 1995). However, constructing qualitative data benefits from establishing a triangulation between data sources that can help in mitigating the biases related to interpretation of evidence (Darke et al. 1998). In my efforts to obtain data and method triangulations (Guba and Lincoln 1994), the data for this research was collected through two main methods: extensive observations within the organizations and on the ESM platform, and semi-structured interviews with organizational members. 63 3.4.1 Observations The observations in the organizations were approached both onsite and online. A blended ethnographic and netnographic approach was adopted, focusing on online and face-to-face interaction and data collection (Kozinets 2010). Based on the ethnographic method, netnography focuses on the observation and engagement in an online community setting. Ethnographic methods are characterized by observations in a certain environment, the generation of largely unstructured empirical materials, a limited number of cases, and a primarily interpretive analysis involving descriptions of phenomena (Atkinson and Hammersley 1994). As with ethnography, the point of netnography is to observe the individuals in their natural context to see how they behave and interact (Kozinets 2010). Figure 2 illustrates the premise of a blended ethnographic and netnographic approach. The increasing adoption of computer-mediated communication has made considerations of the online environment significant when exploring the interactions of individuals in organizations (Garcia and Standlee 2009). The blended ethnographic and netnographic approach emphasizes a combination of online and face-to-face interaction and data collection. Observations can be problematic as it is not always clear what to look for or where. Before undertaking netnographic and ethnographic studies, a set of guidelines must be formulated for the researcher (Kozinets 2010). These guidelines are not set procedures but rather aid the researcher in the data collection process and help maintain a level of coherence between the data collected. In order to guide my observations, I created a schema before entering the field, detailing the type of observation as well as the place, people and method which worked as a guide for the initial observations (Appendix 3). 64  Figure 2: Blended Ethnographic and Netnographic Approach (Adapted from Kozinets 2010:23) The blended ethnographic and netnographic approaches involved the collection of three different types of data. The first type of data collected was archival data observed directly from the pre-existing communication and interaction between employees on the Yammer platform. The data from the Yammer platform was logged in two ways, first through the creation of a pdf-format printout of all interaction on the platform and second in an Excel spreadsheet, listing each entry in a separate line. The reason for the two formats was to preserve the contextualization of the platform through the screenshots as well as the more static representation of the entries in the Excel spreadsheet. ‘Pure’ Ethnography ‘Pure’ Netnography Studies of communities or cultures (no important online elements Studies of online communities or cultures ( no important in-person elements) Studies of communities or cultures online (important online elements) Entirely face-toface cultural interaction and data collection Entirely online cultural interaction and data collection Both online and face-to-face cultural interaction and data collection DATA COLLECTION LECT ) 65 The second type of data collected as part of the observations was elicited data, where data was co-created through personal and communal interaction between the organizational members and myself, the researcher (Kozinets 2010). The generation of elicited data implied my engagement in the community through the collection of conversational data (Schultze 2000). During the observations, I would engage in informal chats both online and offline with any organizational member as part of the conversational interactions (Kvale 2008). For example, I joined the ‘share your code’ group on the Yammer platform at TopConsulting, leading the members of the group to engage in banter and post friendly jokes about how they ‘looked forward to seeing my coding’. I followed up on this remark by responding how I was planning to learn from the best, and some of the members then provided me with more detail and links to their work. In this sense the informal conversation on the Yammer platform gave me insight into the work of the members in the ‘share your code’ group as well as an understanding of the dynamics of the work group through the informal tone of their interactions. Furthermore, the interviews also served as a part of the elicited data (the interviews are elaborated on in 3.2.4). Lastly, extensive field notes were created in order to record my observations of the onsite and online observations (Kozinets and Wojnicki 2010). The generation of field notes was based in a structured manner and included templates for online and offline observations as well as my own experiences (Schultze 2000). In order to structure my field notes, I set up an Evernote2 account, creating separate documents for each observation session. I developed a coding scheme to mark the text according to questions, reflections, issues for further investigations, and issues I did not understand (Appendix 4). These codes served as a way of navigating the field notes and also provided me with subject matter for informal talks and the interviews with the organizational members. The data collected through the observations was carefully stored in separate folders, with each case organization divided into sub sections of the archival, elicited and field note data. 2 Evernote is note-taking software, which provides access to the notes through various devices such as computer, mobile, and tablet. 66 3.4.2 Interviews The interviews were conducted with organizational members within each of the three case organizations. As an exchange of views between two people talking about a topic of common interest (Kvale 2008), the interviews worked as a way of gaining insight into the opinions and reflections of the organizational members on their use of ESM at work. The purpose was to gain a greater understanding of people’s experiential life and to engage individuals directly in a conversation where I, as the researcher, would get a first-person account of the participants’ social realities. My role was then to facilitate the participants in reaching beyond the superficial layers of their experience in order to generate informative, novel accounts of the phenomena of interest. In preparation for the interviews, an interview guide (Appendix 5) was created with the aim of getting the participants to provide narrative accounts (Czarniawska 1997) of their experiences with and reflections on the use of the ESM platforms in their organization. This interview guide reflected some of the issues that had arisen from the initial observations within the organization as well as the overall research focus of gaining insight into the social dynamics surrounding the use of Yammer in the case organizations. The interview protocol was designed to get the organizational members to share their own stories about the use of the ESM platform. I asked organizational members to tell me about their experiences with the ESM platform within the organization, both positive and negative. For example, the interviewees were asked to describe an episode in which the ESM platform had enabled them to connect with their colleagues followed up with questions of how and why. This strategy was adopted to ensure that the data generated from interviews was as rich as possible in order to fulfill the objective of providing insight into people’s life worlds (Schultze and Avital 2011). As specific issues related to the use of the ESM platform emerged, the interview guide was subject to small modifications throughout the study (Huberman and Miles 1994). For example, the initial interviews revealed interesting insights into the considerations regarding audience on the Yammer platform, which led to the inclusion of questions asking organizational members to elaborate on their 67 considerations of audience when explaining their activities on the Yammer platform. A good informant is one who has the knowledge and experience the research requires, the ability to reflect, and the time and willingness to participate in the study (Morse 1994). The selection of interview participants was initiated through interviewing those individuals who showed the most activity on the Yammer platform within each of the case organizations. As the interviews progressed, so did the knowledge of which organizational members to talk with. In the interviews, it was also important to be aware of the implications related to the complex social situation of the interview (Alvesson 2003). This was considered as interviewees might have their own agenda for the interview and, similarly, the interpretation of the interview data might be influenced by certain factors. For example, for some interviewees in one of the case organizations, it was important to appear more engaged with the ESM platform than they actually were. To mitigate this, my observations offline and online in the organizations served as an approach to enrich and verify the data collection (cf. section 3.2.3). The interviews lasted between 20 and 60 minutes and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The recording of the interview was done in order to allow me, as interviewer, to focus on the interview process rather than being preoccupied by taking notes during the interview. Following each of the interview sessions, I noted down some of the key points of the interview. Each of the interviews was then manually transcribed within twenty-four to forty-eight hours following the interview session (Huberman and Miles 1994). Table 7 provides an overview of the data collected in the three case organizations. The varying amount of data collected across the three case organizations reflects the nature of the access given to each of the case organizations. While the access to TopConsulting and BetterHealth involved obtaining a login to the Yammer platform and gaining access to interviews with a range of organizational members, the access at HighPower involved data extracted from the Yammer platform and insight into the opinions of a few organizational members. However, the rich data set extracted from the Yammer platform at HighPower provided a great amount of insight into the interactions on the Yammer platform, which informed the analysis and results. 68 Table 7: Overview of Collected Data Case organization: TopConsulting Case organization: HighPower Case organization: BetterHealth Duration Feb. 2014 – Nov. 2014 Jun. 2014 – Sep. 2014 July 2014 – Nov. 2014 Field Observations (onsite/ on Yammer) 165 hours onsite 198 hours on Yammer 10 hours onsite 3 hours on Yammer 18 hours onsite 26 hours on Yammer Access to the field / contact person Yammer responsible Project coordinator of Yammer IT manager responsible for Yammer introduction Total no of semistructured interviews (20-60 minutes) 24 interviews: 1 CEO 1 Managing Partner 1 HR Manager 8 Solution Providers 7 Senior Consultants 3 Consultants 2 Sales Employees 1 Marketing 1 Assistant 4 interviews: 1 Project Manager (2) 1 Communications Manager 1 IT manager 10 interviews: 1 IT Manager 4 System Administrators 3 IT Support agents 1 Administrators 1 Developer Informal interactions Yes No Yes Follow-up visits Yes No Yes Documents and archives Yammer posts and comments: 1,997 posts 2,696 comments Yammer posts and comments: 559 posts 602 comments Yammer posts and comments: 153 posts 124 comments Other data Participation in company events Meeting on Yammer strategy Meeting with external Yammer providers 69 3.5 Data Analysis As part of the qualitative approach, data analysis was not separated from data collection (Huberman and Miles 1994; Kozinets 2010). In this sense, the data analysis for this project did not follow an ‘off-the-shelf’ process, but rather emerged as the data collection and the subsequent work with the data evolved (Preissle and Grant 2004). The data analysis process in this research was influenced by a number of factors. First, the generation of the field notes, which included reflections and interpretations of the observations that served as a way of processing and analyzing the data on an on-going basis (Garcia and Standlee 2009). Second, the development of research papers as part of the thesis process involved a consideration of the data from different theoretical perspectives. Third, the three different case settings, although approached with a similar data collection design, generated new findings that needed to be considered as part of the ongoing data analysis. Common to the data analysis process was the use of qualitative data coding techniques to process and interpret the collected data. The data coding approach involved making sense out of the data collected by dividing it into text pieces and ascribing meaning to these pieces through interpretations (Creswell 2012). The coding process was carried out using the software, MAXQDA. As the data collection involved both the archival, elicited and field note data collected as part of the observations, as well as the interview transcriptions, the use of the data coding process and software allowed for a triangulation of the collected data. In practice, this meant that all the collected data was uploaded to and processed through the MAXQDA software. This allowed for the codes assigned to the different text pieces to transcend the analysis of the different data files. Figure 3 demonstrates a simplified view of the data coding process, showing how the discovered codes from one document would inform coding of the next (the movement from left to right) and how emerging codes would re-inform coding (the movement from right to left). The example in Figure 3 shows how the codes ‘News’, ‘Professional Content’ and ‘Necessity’ emerge from the coding of the INTERVIEW 1 document and how two of these codes are also reflected in the YAMMER DATA coding. While the FIELD NOTE coding reveals ‘Professional content’ it also uncovers a new code of ‘Specific context’. The discovery of this new code then re-informs the coding of the YAMMER DATA when the text is 70 revisited according to this code. In this sense, the data coding process was ongoing and involved an iterative process of coding and re-coding as new codes emerged. Figure 3: Simplified Overview of the Data Coding Procedure Moreover, the data coding software MAXQDA allowed for the attachment of a small descriptive text to the codes in order to document and preserve the meaning of the code guiding the continuous coding process. The paper-based format of the thesis resulted in multiple rounds of analysis of the collected data, and through doing so, introduced a theoretical triangulation through the different perspectives that informed the data coding (Lincoln and Guba 1985). In line with the main objective of the research, the coding process revolved around the investigation of the social dynamics surrounding ESM use in the organizations. However, the data analysis for each of the papers led to the investigations of these dynamics in separate data analysis from an affordance perspective (in paper 1), a historical perspective (in paper 3) and a controversy perspective (in paper 4). These cycles of analysis influenced both the data collection and data analysis, emphasizing the iterative work with the data. The reduction and representation of the data also differed in each of the paper analyses. In this sense, the data collected was Øhm, jamen altså jeg burger det meget til at følge med altså følge med I hvad mine kollegaer laver og ellers så hvad de burger tiden med men også selv jeg burger det rigtig meget til at give informationer med. I stedet for at sende mails så er informationen der og vi gør meget ud af at fortælle til folk at det er vigtigt at de kigger der hver dag for det er der altså det er det gamle intranet kan man sige ligesom hvor man nu skal søge det for at få alle informationer så alt bliver lagt derud så så jeg burger det til at finde ud af hvad mine kolleger laver, jeg burger det til at finde ud af om…. INTERVIEW 1 FIELD NOTE YAMMER DATA I went in and dropped off my things and then walked into the seating area. Here, a lot of people ere already sitting and having their lunch. I went up to the counter and grabbed a plate and started to figure out what to have from the selection. As I was up there I overheard the people at the table talking about how to set up groups on Yammer. They were discussing functionalities of the platform and agreeing that it was a funny set-up how you in restricted or private groups were able to seethe posts surrounding a document but not the document itself. Everyone agreed that it would make more sense if… News Discovered codes inform coding Emerging codes (re) inform coding Specific Necessity Professional News Professional Specific Professional 71 approached from different angles and came to reveal different insights into the study of the social dynamics of ESM at work. However, the triangulation of data sources and collection methods remained constant in the different rounds of analysis. While the life cycle of qualitative research has certain advantages in terms of the flexibility of adjusting instrumentation and analysis in accordance with the increasing understanding of the setting, some challenges also exist in terms of establishing the validity of the research (Huberman and Miles 1994), which I will address next. 3.6 Evaluating the Research Approach The evaluation of the research considers two forms of validity criteria: formative and summative (Lee and Hubona 2009). Formative validity refers to the process by which the research progresses, while summative validity refers to the evaluation of the sum or result of the process (Lee and Hubona 2009). Achieving formative validity in the research undertaken by this study required following a set procedure to guide the research process (Lee and Hubona 2009). In this qualitative research, ongoing iterations and adjustments to the observational protocols and the interviews reflect an understanding of the setting (Huberman and Miles 1994). To evaluate the research approach, considerations of the trustworthiness of the method are included (Lincoln and Guba 1985). Determining trustworthiness helps establish the research through ensuring credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of the research (Lincoln and Guba 1985). Credibility was addressed in the research through allowing time in the field to become oriented with the situation within each of the case organizations (Lincoln and Guba 1985). The majority of time was spent in two of the case organizations, TopConsulting and BetterHealth, where I was able to spend time in the companies with the employees and establish trust between the employees and myself, the researcher. In the case of HighPower, however, access was limited, thus only allowing limited time to be spent within the company. Establishing the credibility of the research also involved the technique of triangulation (Lincoln and Guba 1985). The triangulation was sought on three levels, in terms of data, theory and 78 disagreements emerged between individuals as well as between individuals and the platform (see details in paper 4). Moreover, I came across the concept of social fabric as a way of describing what comprises social interactions and relationships between individuals. Working with the controversy analysis and the social fabric allowed the development of a social fabric metaphor. The social fabric metaphor as a way of understanding and describing ESM at work was presented in paper 4, entitled ‘Enterprise Social Media at Work: Weaving the Social Fabric of Collaboration.’ This was accepted and presented at the International Conference on Information Systems (co-authored with Tina Blegind Jensen and Michel Avital). The work for this paper allowed us to delineate different threads of the social fabric and to show how the weaving of these threads played a vital role in the organizational practices of collaboration. In order to further develop these findings, we included empirical material from the two additional case organizations also using the Yammer platform. Through these additional findings, I worked with my supervisors on elaborating the conceptualization of the social fabric and mapping the threads of the social fabric into a framework (found in paper 4 as an extended version of the ICIS paper, submitted to MISQ). Summing up my thesis work proved to be challenging. The work done on the final article dealing with the social fabric had inspired consideration of a relational perspective (Gergen 2009) to the study of ESM. Reviewing my work using principles from the relational perspective provided a frame for combining the different studies. The different papers seemed to reflect elements of this relational way of thinking from the relational character of the affordances in paper 1, the role of social interaction in the actualization of perceived affordances in paper 2, the dispositif as a system of relationships in paper 3, and, lastly, the social fabric as a way of understanding and working with patterns of relationships in paper 4. While the relational perspective was not part of my initial thoughts, it has provided me the opportunity to add relational thinking to my perspectives and results from the study of ESM at work. The different inputs and perspectives outlined in this story have all been steps along the path towards my understanding of the social dynamics of ESM at work. At the ICIS Doctoral Consortium in December 2014, my mentor advised me to write my cover chapter from the heart and to present my 79 own ideas and perspectives drawing on all that I had learned throughout the course of my thesis. In this sense, writing the cover chapter for my thesis has come to represent a summary of all of these efforts and how they have led to my contribution to knowledge on social dynamics of ESM at work. This account of my research process has thus served two purposes: the first to provide transparency of how the research developed and the second as a way for me to think and reflect upon my work as a whole. 80 4. Social Dynamics of Enterprise Social Media at Work In the following section, I synthesize the results of the research and relate the findings from each of the research papers to an overall framework for describing the social dynamics of ESM at work. The purpose of this section is not only to summarize insights gained from my research but also to reflect on how each of the papers have added to, and challenged my understanding of, the social dynamics of ESM at work. I start by outlining the perspectives gained on the three domains of ESM, sociality and work. Drawing on these perspectives, I propose an integrated view reliant on a social fabric metaphor for understanding the social dynamics of ESM at work. 4.1 Perspectives on Enterprise Social Media, Sociality and Work The research focuses on the three domains of ESM, sociality and work to explore how these interact in the context of ESM use. Figure 4 illustrates the three domains at play in the investigation. Figure 4: The Three Domains of ESM at Work SOCIALITY ESM WORK 81 The perspectives presented on ESM, sociality and work build on insights from the research efforts and papers, as well as the underlying relational and constructivist approach guiding the research. By providing my perspective, I wish to highlight certain issues and downplay others with the objective of providing insight into how the three domains are considered in this research and how they constitute the frame of the study. 4.1.2 Enterprise Social Media The perspective on ESM in this research takes its point of departure from my initial interest in investigating social media. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as “A group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content.” (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010:61) This definition highlights the importance of user-generated content and the technological possibilities of Web 2.0, including increased connectivity and access to people and content. In an organizational context, the functionalities and use of a technology are often reexamined (O’Mahony and Barley 1999; Wellman et al. 1996). While ESM rely on the same underlying principles found in the definition of social media, the particular context and the implications of the technology on work invoke a definition of ESM as presented in the introduction, “Web-based platforms that allow workers to (1) communicate messages with specific coworkers or broadcast messages to everyone in the organization; (2) explicitly indicate or implicitly reveal particular coworkers as communication partners; (3) post, edit, and sort text and files linked to themselves or others; and (4) view the messages, connections, text, and files communicated, posted, edited and sorted by anyone else in the organization at any time of their choosing.” (Leonardi et al. 2013:2) The definition of ESM highlights workers as the users as well as the way in which the technology allows them to achieve certain activities of communication and information sharing in the context of their interactions within the organization. In 82 my research, I have studied social media in the context of political campaigning (paper 1) as well as at the everyday use of ESM in organizational contexts (papers 2, 3 and 4). While the research efforts have addressed different user groups and areas of use, the results show how the ESM technology provides certain opportunities and implications for the social dynamics on the platform. Perceived and actualized affordances of ESM: The concept of affordances has played a central role in informing my perspective on social media and ESM (Gibson 1977; Hutchby 2001; Treem and Leonardi 2012). The underlying assumptions of this research position the concept of affordances in a relational ontology. An affordance is, therefore, not a single attribute of an object, an actor or the environment but instead emerges from a relational structure in which the relationships between the object, actor and environment are continuously enacted (Faraj and Azad 2012; Hutchby 2001; Stoffregen 2003). The research in paper 1 framed the perpective on affordances of ESM and investigated the perceived affordances of the social media platform Facebook, in the context of the Danish general election campaigns. While the findings provided insight into a number of perceived affordances of what the political parties wanted to facilitate, project and enhance, they also raised questions about how these were reflected in the actual actions that the political parties carried out on Facebook. The study revealed differences in the political parties’ actual use of Facebook in comparison to the perceived affordances, giving an indication that the intentions for use are not enough to ensure a certain action. This demonstrated how the many potential opportunities of social media also required an enactment of these through the actions of individuals. Based on these insights, the study of ESM affordances in organizations took form. In paper 2, the literature review on ESM affordances (boyd 2012; Ellison et al. 2007; Fulk and Yuan 2013; Gibbs et al. 2013; Leonardi et al. 2013; Majchrzak et al. 2013; Pike et al. 2013; Treem and Leonardi 2012) revealed five groups of perceived affordances that emerge in terms of distribution, association, amplification, contextualization and preservation of information and people. Describing how these perceived affordances manifest themselves in the context of ESM use for organizational work revealed how the perceived affordances of ESM 83 must be actively actualized (Strong et al. 2014) through social interactions on the ESM platform in order to influence organizational work. This research highlighted the relational character of the ESM affordances and underlined the way in which social interactions on the ESM platform are central in the enactment of the perceived affordances into actual actions. The two studies show that affordances of ESM can be understood on two levels: the passively actualized (perceived) affordances, and the actively actualized affordances manifested through actual actions (Strong et al. 2014). The passively actualized affordances refer to the perceived opportunities that the organizational members attribute to the ESM technology, and the actively actualized affordances refer to the actual actions taken based on the opportunities afforded (Strong et al. 2014; Turvey 1992). In particular, the study in paper 2 introduces social interactions on the ESM platform as a central part of the translation of perceived affordances into actual action. The findings in paper 2 highlight active actualization of the ESM affordances as being important in determining which activities of organizational work are carried out on the ESM platform. Understanding the affordances of ESM in organizational work thus involves a consideration of both perceived and actively actualized affordances. ESM as a part of organizational relationships: In the context of sociology, affordances imply that technology has some inherent properties; however, the technology does not completely determine individual action but provides different opportunities and interpretations (Hutchby 2001). Referring to the possibilities that an object offers for action, the concept of affordances provided an understanding of relationships that depend on the materiality of the object and its use by the individual (Leonardi and Barley 2008). In my initial investigation of social media, in paper 1, I came to understand the importance of the media’s role in the investigation of the affordances attached to the medium when users engaged with it for a specific purpose (paper 1). However, the research in paper 1 revealed that the actions of the users appeared to differ from the perceived affordances when actually acted out on the platform. These changes could be attributed to the actions of both the individual and the technology, offering integration possibilities that were not envisioned by the users before the actual engagement with the social 84 media (Treem and Leonardi 2012). As an example of this, the findings in paper 1 demonstrate how the integration and sharing of information in different formats such as video, links etc. emerged as an unintended activity encouraged by the social media through associating video and article links with the posts and comments made on the platform (paper 1, p. 35). The social media then became an actor in these relationships by prompting certain activities and playing a part in the interactions that comprise the relationships on the social media platform. This research relies on a relational view which implies that attention must be given to the relationships that ESM are a part of in order to understand how the media is involved in organizational work (Gergen 2009). In this sense, the introduction of ESM into the organization and the role that the technology actively plays in prompting and promoting activities implies a consideration of ESM as an actor and part of relationships in the organization. ESM as a way of investigating social life: ESM enables the investigation of social life through the opportunity of observing and capturing the online social interactions among individuals that digital media offers (Venturini and Latour 2010). The studies of ESM in this research prove how data extracted from the platform itself presents a way of looking at interactions that have taken place, or are taking place within the organizational settings (paper 4). The preservation of information on the ESM platform creates a way to trace interactions and to study the flow of information in the online network (Leonardi et al. 2013). The literature study revealed how ESM has been used to identify experts in organizations as a result of this increased visibility (Damianos et al. 2007). Within the scope of this research, this idea is extended to not only include the identification of specific individuals in the organization but also as a way of identifying interactions and relationships while they are ‘in the making’ (Latour 2005). In this sense, the observation of the practices on the ESM platform informs our knowledge about the relationships that are being both formed and reformed by use of the ESM platform. 85 The perspective on ESM in this research reveals how ESM is considered in terms of both perceived and actively actualized affordances, emphasizing the translation of perceived affordances into actual actions taken. ESM plays an important role, both in this translation and in the relationships that form on the platform through prompting certain activities and playing a part in the interactions that make up the relationships on the ESM platform. Finally, ESM provides a way of investigating the interactions and relationships on the platform through the preservation of conversations and the traceability of the interactions on the digital platform. 4.1.2 Sociality Including the aspect of sociality has been one of the most interesting endeavors but also one of the biggest challenges of my research. While the concept is often used loosely to describe an overall state of social existence, very few descriptions of what it actually entails are to be found in the literature. Recent literature on social media has introduced the concept of computed sociality describing how the underlying algorithms and social data configurations on social media introduce changes in community life and sociality online (Bowker 2013; Kallinikos and Tempini 2014). Considering sociality online then requires attention to the premise that the technology creates for the interactions and relationships that emerge on the social media platform. The investigation of ESM at work gave insight into the interactions and relationships on which sociality among organizational members develop on the platform. I have engaged with several approaches that have helped to inform the view of sociality. Additionally, working with the empirical cases has allowed me to challenge the conceptual understanding I gained, giving way to a dynamic understanding of what sociality can mean in the context of ESM at work. The perspective on sociality is informed by research efforts that include sociomateriality, microand macro-sociological perspectives, and the ideas of a relational being. Sociality through social and material interaction: Engaging with some of the literature on materiality and sociomateriality as part of the initial reading of my PhD research, I was inspired by the interrelationship between the material and the 86 social. In IS literature, the sociomaterial perspective has been part of the conceptualizing the relationship between the material and the social in terms of both the interaction between the two and in regard to how they are engaged in a mutually constitutive relationship (Kautz and Jensen 2013; Leonardi 2011; Leonardi 2013; Leonardi and Barley 2008; Orlikowski 2007; Orlikowski 2009). In paper 1, sociomateriality guided the investigation of the affordances of the social media platform Facebook in the context of the Danish general election campaign, allowing for the description of the social enactment of the material capabilities of the medium by the individual campaign managers (Treem and Leonardi 2012). The investigation primarily focused on the material properties but left unanswered questions regarding how these perceived affordances manifested themselves in the use of social media. Paper 2 gave insights into the role of social activities on ESM by investigating the role of social interaction in the translation of perceived ESM affordances into actions taken on the ESM platform. The social dynamics of the interactions then appeared as a way of understanding how the ESM platform became a part of organizational work. In paper 4, the entanglement between the social and the material was found in the ongoing process of reordering of the social interactions between organizational members on the ESM platform. The analysis of controversies in the organization regarding the use of ESM revealed that ESM usage encourages organizational members to debate their social activities. For example, the organizational members would debate if telling a joke on the ESM platform would be appropriate and they would question what was acceptable to share with their colleagues. This questioning of social activities and behaviors introduces an interesting dynamic with respect to how the entrance of ESM as an organizational actor leads the organizational members to reconsider their behavior. The entanglement between the social and the material in the use of ESM at work is emphasized in the relationships that form on the platform as well as in the continuous construction and reconstruction of these. Understanding sociality in the context of ESM at work therefore emphasizes how the way in which organizational members relate to each other on the ESM platform is composed of the constitutive and evolving relationship between the ESM technology and the social interactions and relationships that form on the platform. 87 Sociality encompassing a micro and macro perspective: In the research efforts, the investigation of sociality has included considerations of micro perspectives of individual actions and interactions (paper 2) and macro perspectives of patterns of relationships and overall structures (paper 3). Ultimately, the perspective on sociality in this research is considered in terms of how sociality takes form in the interactions between individuals as well as in overall patterns of relationships on the ESM platform. The micro-sociological emphasis on interactions as the basis of the social world allows focus on certain activities between individuals and the dynamic relationships through which the social is formed (Smesler 1995). From a micro perspective, sociality can be understood as something, which continuously occurs and develops through the exchange of actions between people. The focus on social interactions as a key impetus for the active actualization of ESM affordances in paper 2 revealed insights into the importance of these interactions in bringing ESM to life and integrating it into organizational work. In the relational sociology, it is important to focus on interactions, because little of what we do can be properly understood or explained without reference to the interaction in which our actions are embedded, and that gives them context and meaning (Crossley 2010). The interactions thus create a frame of reference and will influence what will be enabled and constrained later in the relationship. When we interact, we mutually modify each other’s conduct, forming an irreducible and dynamic whole (Crossley 2010). In this sense, the interactions provide opportunities for the sociality of individuals through activities that are acted out and responded to by another individual (Gergen 2009). Networks of relations and interaction involve actors who interact and form relations (Latour 2005). Consequently, it is the actors on the ESM platform who collectively drive interactions and the network formations. Action is always oriented towards other individuals and events within the networks in which the actor is embedded (Crossley 2010). Based on these actions social relations are live trajectories of iterated interaction (Crossley 2010:28). A social relation is therefore not an object but rather a shifting state of play within a process of social interaction. In this sense, to say that two people are related is to say that they have a history of past and an expectation of future interactions and that this shapes their current interactions. 94 social fabric metaphor is used to portray the shared basis upon which individuals interact and engage with each other and entails the study of practices taking place on and around the ESM platform in organizations. The social fabric metaphor has been applied in economics, sociology, human ecology as well as organization and management studies, as described in Table 9. Table 9: Application of the Social Fabric Metaphor Across Disciplines Description Discipline Reference Social fabric is used to define and articulate social structure and social change by measuring and evaluating the flow between central components of a social system such as cultural values, social beliefs, institutions, attitudes and technology in society. Economics Bodin and Prell 2011; Hayden 1986; Hayden 2006; Gill 1996 Natarajan et al. 2009 Social fabric is used to describe a variety of relationships in social life ranging from interpersonal processes and networks to social institutions and structures, from primary groups and symbolic interaction to social movements and large-scale organizations and systems. Sociology Alario and Freudenburg 2003; Broadbent 1986; Short 1984 Social fabric is used to investigate social life in an urban environment by zooming in on the material-immaterial milieu, delineating connections between infrastructure, technology, power relations, everyday experience and family relationships. Human ecology and urban studies Corcoran et al. 2007; Henderson 1995; Pflieger et al. 2008 Social fabric is used to depict the prevailing beliefs and practices of relationships between organizational members and technology in a networked group or organization. Organization and management Baldwin et al. 1997; Moolenaar and Sleegers 2012; Van Maanen and Schein 1979; Wenger 1996; Zammuto et al. 2007 95 Across all these disciplines, the term ‘social fabric’ was used to describe the social system of interrelationships that exists between individuals, groups, technology and institutions forming a coherent whole. The relationships that make up these social systems vary from large-scale networks and organizations to small-scale interactions between people and objects. The articulation of the social fabric metaphor in this research is investigated in detail in paper 4, drawing on the insights from existing literature. The social fabric metaphor is used to delineate and explain the relationship between various elements of a dynamic social system (Gill 1996; Hayden 1986, 2006; Natarajan et al. 2009) with a focus on the relationships (Alario and Freudenburg 2003; Broadbent 1986; Short 1984) that reflect and are reflected in the prevailing beliefs and practices between people (Van Maanen and Schein 1979; Moolenaar and Sleegers 2012; Pflieger et al. 2008; Wenger 1996; Zammuto et al. 2007). In paper 4, the social fabric as a metaphor makes available the use of attributes of a fabric (Lakoff and Johnson 2003) to accentuate how the threads of interactions between people and the technology express the prevailing beliefs and practices that make up the social fabric of their dynamic relationships. In a metaphorical sense, the social fabric is then comprised of threads of interactions that weave together to form social relationships on ESM. Subsequently and within the bounds of this study, social fabric is defined as a metaphor that describes the threads of relationships between people in a collective. The social fabric is shaped and reshaped by the prevailing beliefs and practices in a collective as well as its technological milieu. The social fabric can be observed in the flow of behaviors and narratives expressed and experienced by individuals in a collective. Adopting a social fabric metaphor creates the possibility for the intangible component of the ‘social’ to be explained through the attributes of a fabric (Lakoff and Johnson 2003). Describing the social thus becomes a matter of identifying threads of a fabric and understanding how these weave together. In this way, the social fabric portrays the shared basis upon which individuals form social relationships. The relational perspective emphasizes how social relationships are constructed and reproduced through the collective work of participants (Gergen 2009; Hosking 2011). Describing the social dynamics of ESM at work by use of 96 the social fabric metaphor is then a matter of observing practices and interactions between people in the technological milieu of ESM and delineating how these create relationships on the platform. The ESM technology enables us to show these practices and interactions as they evolve and look at how relationships are constructed and reconstructed on the ESM platform. 4.2.2 Revealing the Social Fabric through Controversies In paper 4, the ESM platform is characterized by fluidity and the flow of resources and people interacting and forming relationships on a moment-to-moment basis (Faraj et al. 2011; Mol and Law 1994). Consequently, relationships on ESM are not something which can be predefined or solidified, but rather should be considered in terms of their fluid character and momentary existences. In order to observe and describe such fluid dynamics, we need to investigate the instances in which interactions become explicit (Venturini 2010). One approach to observe beliefs and practices, as they surface in an organizational context is to look for controversies among organizational members. Controversies are a normal and inevitable part of the social world and it is through disagreements and debate that opinions and meanings are made explicit (Latour 1988, 2005). Subsequently, looking for controversies are a way of exploring situations in which interactions and opinions are made explicit in the use of ESM. In particular, controversies entail situations in which organizational members disagree. The disagreements do not have to reach a state of open fights, but they are often examples of clashing worlds that must come together in the creation of a shared universe (Venturini 2010). The life cycle of a controversy starts when actors realize that they cannot ignore each other, and they end when some form of agreement is reached among the involved parties (Venturini 2010). Documenting a controversy entails an outline of the circular process in which a local disagreement evoke a public debate, which reaches a settlement that then become manifested in the performed practice (see Figure 5). The circular motion, outlining the controversy, highlights how the performed practices will exist on a momentary basis until they are questioned in a new disagreement (Latour 2005). Outlining the controversy according to this cyclical process exposes the 97 underlying dimensions of the controversy interactions (Latour 2005). Paper 4 demonstrates how to single out controversies concerning the use of Yammer in the case organization TopConsulting by analyzing the data from the interviews, the posts and comments from the Yammer platform, as well as the observations. The three data sources all serve as a way of exposing the controversies, as the triangulation allows multiple perspectives on what is going on in the organizations. The interviews provide insights into the perspectives of the organizational members and the offline observations give context to these reflections. In addition, the ESM platform allows for a unique way of looking at the actions and activities of the organizational members, as the interactions are displayed on the ESM platform and provide a representation of them ‘in the making’. Figure 5: Controversy Analysis In the next section, I present the development of the social fabric framework, which draws upon the basis of the social fabric metaphor and the use of the controversy analysis to describe and explain the social dynamics of ESM at work. Disagreement Public Debate Settlement Performed Practice 98 4.2.3 The Social Fabric on Enterprise Social Media The social fabric on ESM was identified through the development of a social fabric framework (paper 4). The process of uncovering the social fabric was based on first eliciting the threads of the fabric and then mapping these according to how they weave together to form the social fabric (Appendix 6 provides a detailed outline of the approach). To identify and describe the social dynamics of ESM at work, utilizing the ideas of the social fabric metaphor and the controversy analysis reveal a number of threads that describe the interactions involving Yammer at TopConsulting. The reflection of the controversies includes considerations of both organizational members and the ESM technology as equal actors within the controversy formation. Detailed descriptions of the controversies are highlighted in paper 4. However, in order to give insight into the social fabric analysis and findings, I will provide a brief summary of the results with regards to eliciting the threads that make up the social fabric and mapping the threads into a social fabric framework. Eliciting the threads of the social fabric was based on the utilization of the controversy analysis to study the collected data material across the three case organizations. The coding process followed the controversy analysis approach (c.f. section 4.2.2) and revealed controversies that emerged surrounding the use of Yammer in the TopConsulting case organization. From the analysis of the controversies, threads of the social fabric emerged, documenting the interactions of the controversies. An overview of the controversies and the discovered threads are found in Table 10. 99 Table 10: Summary of the Controversy Analysis and the Emerging Social Fabric Threads Threads of Social Fabric Professional – Social Content Necessity – Frill Evaluation General – Specific Context News – Chatter Perception Praise – Reprimands Giving Disagreement Disagreeing on the appropriatene ss of social content on Yammer. Disagreeing on the required need to use Yammer. Disagreeing on the inclination to share with everyone on Yammer. Disagreeing on the relevance of certain content on Yammer. Disagreeing on the nature of feedback on Yammer. Public Debate Debating the mixing of professional and social content on Yammer. Debating the positioning of Yammer as the central communicati on channel. Debating who to address on Yammer with what information. Debating effective communicati on and information overload on Yammer. Debating the legitimacy of reprimanding on Yammer. Settlement Accepting social content on the Yammer platform. Engaging with Yammer remains ‘formally’ optional. Moving conversations of limited interest from the general context into specific groups. Recognizing news and chatter perceptions as subjective and contextual. Favoring positive deviance in feedback giving on Yammer. Performed Practice The content posted on Yammer is of both a professional and social nature. Management communicate s solely on Yammer turning it into a necessity for staying informed. Special interest groups are established on Yammer. Individuals filter and consume information on Yammer according to what is relevant to them. Praise is used more frequently than reprimands on the Yammer platform. The first controversy dealt with disagreements concerning the appropriateness of social content on the Yammer platform. The controversy revealed a thread of the 100 social fabric that concerns the balance between professional and social content on the Yammer platform. This thread was reflected in the interactions between individuals in which they would debate if social content such as jokes, private pictures etc. belonged on the Yammer platform or if only professional content should be shared. For example, as one organizational member at TopConsulting expressed “All that social stuff, the jokes and the like, I could do without. I focus on the coding and the topics that are interesting to me…” (SC1_TC). This opinion was opposed by other organizational members who valued when jokes and more informal information was shared. The Yammer platform encourages the sharing of work-based content by asking organizational members to contribute ‘What are you working on?’ in the status bar (Appendix 2). However, the open format of the status post allows for organizational members to post what they like and not necessarily what they are working on. The Social-Professional content thread represents how interactions are emerging based on the establishment of a balance between the two types of content on the Yammer platform. The second controversy dealt with disagreements about required need to use the Yammer platform. This controversy revealed a thread in the social fabric, which dealt with the evaluation of Yammer platform engagement as a frill or a necessity. In this disagreement, opinions about how important it was to engage on the Yammer platforms fueled the interactions. At TopConsulting, the controversy emerged through the disagreement between a consultant and the HR manager on whether engaging with the Yammer platform was either necessary or optional. As the Yammer platform encourages the wide distribution of messages throughout the organizational network, the HR manager assumed that the message would reach everybody in the organization. However, as the HR manager’s message failed to reach the consultant, a disagreement is revealed concerning the frequency of checking the platform, which leads to a miscommunication between the two. In this case the interaction around the Yammer platform uncovers how the organizational members show a different evaluation of the necessity of engaging on the Yammer platform. The balance between the evaluation of the Yammer platform as a frill or as a necessity influenced the interactions on the platform through the constant evaluation of who will see and respond to the shared 101 information. Further, the Necessity-Frill evaluation thread highlights the importance of identifying and recognizing the balance of organizational members’ evaluation of the ESM platform. The third controversy dealt with disagreements on the inclination to share with everyone on the Yammer platform. This controversy revealed a thread of the social fabric, dealing with the balance between general and specific context that the Yammer platform provides. The disagreement raised issues in relation to what context the Yammer platform should provide and included interactions about who to address on the Yammer platform and how. At TopConsulting, the event of buying and selling products on the Yammer platform demonstrates a difference of opinion concerning if the information distributed on the Yammer platform should address a general context or a specific context. The disagreement emerged as organizational members started to question the appropriateness of the very specific selling and buying conversation on the general Yammer platform. Interactions on the Yammer platform are based on the relational exchange of posts and comments in a quick manner and reach a wide audience, distributing the specific conversations throughout the Yammer network. The amplification and dissemination of the posts by the Yammer platform allowed the conversations to spread out through the organization, generating a visibility of all the interactions around the specific topic. This wide distribution of information ignited the public debate between the organizational members who enjoyed the selling and buying conversation and other organizational members who deemed it inappropriate and interrupting on the platform. The Yammer platform enabled the dissemination of information across the entire organization through the general newsfeed that the platform infrastructure makes available (Appendix 2) while also providing the opportunity to tag certain organizational members. This enabled the users to obtain constant updates on what is going on, but also precipitated concerns over whether or not content should be accessible to all. The balance of the GeneralSpecific Context on the Yammer platform is visible in the interactions on the platform in the shift between the general context of the platform and the special context of interest groups or addressing particular individuals. 102 The fourth controversy dealt with disagreements about the relevance of certain content on the Yammer platform. This controversy revealed a News-Chatter Perception Thread of the social fabric reflecting the balance between information and conversations perceived as news and chatter on the Yammer platform. In this disagreement, the organizational members’ perceptions of what is relevant come into play and form the basis for the evaluation of the amount of news and chatter on the Yammer platform. For example, one organizational member at TopConsulting noted, “I value the posts on coding and do not care for the rest – sometimes I miss important information because it gets lost in all the other information on there” (SC3_TC), indicating that there was too much chatter on the platform and that he had a very specific view on what was news. Another organizational member from TopConsulting voiced a different opinion, “I think of it as my company newspaper and read it when I am on the train or have time to check-in” (SP1_TC). The Yammer platform displays all messages equally in the newsfeed and assessing what constitutes news is then up to the individual on the platform. This is, to some extent, enabled by the platform through promoting messages that relate to the groups, which the individual organizational member is a part of, but the newsfeed will also include, more general information distributed to the ‘AllCompany’ news feed. The News-Chatter Perception Thread highlights how the organizational members’ interactions with the Yammer platform are influenced by the balance of news and chatter perceptions of the information shared on the platform. The fifth controversy dealt with disagreements on the nature of feedback the Yammer platform. This controversy revealed a Praise - Reprimand Giving thread of the social fabric, which dealt with the balance between the amount of recognition and reprimands given on the Yammer platform. As part of the technological features of the Yammer platform, a ‘praise’ label exists which can be attached when recognizing a comment, a person, or an achievement. The Yammer platform encourages praise, yet the data collection and analysis revealed that a level of reprimand also appeared to find its way onto the platform, fuelling debate about the use of Yammer for both praise and reprimands. At TopConsulting, one organizational member reprimanded on Yammer, “A 103 reminder to all – especially now with the Christmas lunch coming up. REMEMBER: Big bladder little hose – please step one step closer to the toilet. Not that nice having to wipe up a big lake in the bathroom :-(” (HR1_TC). While others in the organization also noted, “I have praised someone and this was really nice – it is a good way to show what a colleague has done and then to have people recognize her achievement” (SC4_TC). The Yammer platform was serving as a public forum for addressing when something was not okay but also as a place to recognize the achievements of others. The Praise-Reprimand Giving thread presents an interesting dynamic of the interactions on the Yammer platform in that the balance of both can contribute to the creation of a welcoming and encouraging but also serious online environment. Eliciting the threads of the social fabric served as the first step. The next part of the analysis involved mapping the social fabric threads according to how they related to each other and using this to describe the relationships between organizational members. Mapping the threads of the social fabric was done in relation to the empirical material extracted from the Yammer platforms in the TopConsulting organization. Eliciting the five threads of the social fabric provides insights into the dimensions on which the beliefs and practices on the platform form; however, in accordance with the definition of social fabric, these threads must also be mapped according to how they come together to delineate the relationships between people in a collective. Towards this aim, the relationships between the threads were investigated by using the data extracted from the Yammer platform in TopConsulting. Mapping the threads into a social fabric build on the first step of eliciting the social fabric threads and followed three additional steps. The second step explored the relationships between the social fabric threads through investigating instances in which they are highly related to one another. Accordingly, occurrences of social fabric threads were coded in posts and comments on Yammer and used to develop a coexistence matrix that presents the number of times in which two threads were manifested in the same data point (Appendix 6, Table 2). In the third step, the social fabric threads were arranged according to their level of coexistence, and delineated highly related social threads 110 organizations. Figure 7 shows the development of the social fabric on ESM in the three case organizations over time (see Appendix 7 for data representation). The figure displays the configurations according to the social fabric framework and highlights the specific social fabric at each of the organizations in the grey markup. Looking at the social fabric of the organizations over time, the dynamic properties of the social fabric become apparent. Modeling the interactions taking place on the ESM platform provides an overview of changing relationships. Additionally, the picture of the social fabric across the three case organizations reveals some very different patterns of relationship emerging in each of the organizations. This conveys how understanding the social fabric becomes important, as the representation of it differs depending on the organization. The visual representations of the social fabric provide two overall insights into the social dynamics of ESM at work in terms of their dynamic change over time and the different patterns across the three organizations. First, the evolving configuration of social fabric patterns demonstrate how the social dynamics are constructed and reconstructed on the ESM platforms as well as how the social fabric across all three organizations change over time. Looking closer at the social fabric configuration for TopConsulting, the social fabric shows how informative and communitive relationships dominate the initial interactions on the platform. Over time, it is visible how the informative relationships become a little less dominant and how focus is placed on the creation of distinctive relationships and interactions taking place in a specific context and encouraged from certain organizational members. The use of the Yammer platform in TopConsulting therefore appears to be moving away from the more general informative relationships and towards more distinctive relationships involving only certain organizational members. In the context of TopConsulting, the change in social fabric configuration can be attributed to the growing size of the organization. The data displays the use of Yammer over a period of two years in which the organization has grown from ten to approximately fifty employees. In light of this, the social fabric appears to become more oriented towards supporting specific relationships between organizational members while still serving general informative relationships. 111 Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 TopConsulting HighPower BetterHealth Figure 7: Social Fabric Configurations on Yammer in Three Case Organizations Over Time Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Communitive Directive Informative Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective 112 In HighPower, the formation of relationships demonstrates how focus is placed in the creation of directive and informative relationships, in which professional content and news are shared and recognized in the general context of the platform. As the interactions on the platform develop, the social dynamics shift slightly towards more corrective relationships as well as more emphasis being placed on the directive relationship on the Yammer platform. The context at HighPower promotes the use of Yammer on a project basis (cf. section 3.3.3). The primary nature of the directive and informative relationships at HighPower demonstrates how the project focus is mostly centered on the delivery of messages and news using Yammer as a main channel. Lastly, the development in the social fabric configuration at BetterHealth shows a strong emphasis on the creation of distinctive relationships, with focus on a specific context and the engagement of only some of the organizational members. The development of the social fabric configuration at BetterHealth demonstrates how a directive pattern of relationships emerges through the interactions over time, with a focus on interactions around professional content that can only be obtained through the Yammer platform. Utilizing the social fabric to understand the dynamics of the interactions and relationships on the Yammer platforms at the three case organizations over time provides insight into how the relationships on ESM are continuously constructed and reconstructed. It also gives insight into the direction in which the relationships on the ESM platform are moving. For example, in the case of TopConsulting, the relationship is moving from informative towards more distinctive relationships. Second, the social fabric configurations that are observed across the three case organizations make evident how the social dynamics of the three case organizations form differently on the Yammer platform. While the Yammer platform provides the same functionalities for all three organizations, the interactions and the relationships that form on the platform are far from similar. This highlights the importance of considering the individual social fabrics of each organization when ESM is used at work. At TopConsulting, the social fabric displays a mix of informative, communitive and distinctive relationships between the organizational members on the Yammer platform. This social fabric then 113 presents an illustration of the organization whereby the social dynamics on Yammer are oriented towards a general information sharing that is recognized by a community, one in which social content is welcomed and where distinctive relationships emerge. The case study of HighPower also emphasizes the informative relationships, but the social fabric shows how directive relationships are also formed on the Yammer platform. The social dynamics are then characterized by the directing of professional content in general context interactions where the informative relationships are central and recognized. The controversy analysis of the debate professional-social content reflected how the culture of the organization to a high extent relies on these formal distributions of information. Finally, the fragmented social fabric emerging at BetterHealth highlights specific relationships and directive relationships, focusing on professional content and a necessity evaluation through posting of important information to the platform. The social fabric at BetterHealth seems to illustrate an issue that arises through the fact that, while organizational members are mostly interacting in distinctive relationships, there is also a tendency towards directive relationships and sharing of important information. In this sense, important information might not be seen or taken account of when, to a large extent, people interact on the platform based on distinctive relations. The social fabric can help distinguish the overall types of relationships that dominate the interactions and relationships on the ESM platform within an organization, as well as to indicate contradictions within the individual patterns. 4.3.2 Investigating the Social Fabric of Collaboration The use of the social fabric framework to analyze and present the overall patterns of relationships of ESM at work can help us understand and explain the social dynamics of ESM in the organization. In scrutinizing individual work practices, the social fabric can be used as a way of understanding the specific social dynamics underlying particular practices on the ESM platform. Switching focus from the general context of the ESM platform as a whole and into specific work practices, the social fabric is used to analyze work groups centered on the practice of collaboration in the three case organizations. The analysis of the 114 social fabric underlying collaborative initiatives is presented in detail in paper 4. Figure 8 shows the social fabric configurations formed across three collaborative initiatives carried out on the Yammer platform in the three case organizations (see Appendix 8 for data representation). The collaborative initiatives selected all represent a Yammer group set up for enabling collaborative problem solving around a certain task. Again, it is evident how the social fabric forms differently across the three case organizations. In addition, the social fabric configurations reveal insights into how the relationships appear to highlight the different social dynamics on the ESM platform in the collaborative practices. The collaborative initiative at TopConsulting is the Yammer group ‘Share Your Code’, which is set up for members to share knowledge and solve problems about coding. The purpose of the group is for organizational members to help each other solve concrete problems within coding issues. The social fabric configuration associated with collaboration in the ‘Share Your Code’ group are oriented toward relationships of an informative nature through the general context, news perception and praise giving. In addition, relationships of a more distinctive nature appear by the chatter about particular topics that are shared and discussed among a few group members. Besides this, the sharing of social content is supported by the members evaluating with the platform as a frill through voluntarily engaging in the group, thereby strengthening the communitive relationships. Finally, some corrective relationships emerge from the reprimands that follow chatter on professional content. 115 TopConsulting: ‘Share Your Code’ group HighPower: ‘Office 365’ group BetterHealth: ‘IT’ group Figure 8: Social Fabric Configurations of Collaborative Initiatives on Yammer in Three Case Organizations Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective Necessity General News Praise Social Frill Specific Chatter Reprimand Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive Corrective 116 The collaborative initiative at HighPower is the group ‘Office 365’ that deals with the implementation of a new operating system. The purpose of the group is to enable organizational members to share knowledge and solve problems that they may have with the new system. The group consists of 120 members, all of which are users of the new system. The social fabric of the collaboration in the ‘Office 365’ group focuses on directive relationships by proving professionally-oriented content in a general context. In addition, informative relationships are observed in the large quantity of news acknowledged by the members of the group. Some distinct conversations emerged among members in specific contexts and dealing with off-topic issues. Lastly, corrective relationships emerge when the chatter perception of certain professional-content was reprimanded with regard to questions being asked that had already been answered. The social fabric forming in the collaboration on the ‘IT’ group at BetterHealth shows the directive pattern and the distinctive pattern as dominant. The collaboration at BetterHealth is the ‘IT’ Yammer group, which was established to enable employees in the IT department to work together for the rapid sharing of knowledge and problem solving. The group has 16 members and its purpose is to share knowledge so that everyone in the IT department has a general idea of what is going on and can help each other solve problems with the IT systems. The formation of the social fabric in the ‘IT’ group at BetterHealth shows how the interactions are reliant upon a large quantity of professionally-oriented content which is presented in the general context of the group and which is aimed at providing important specific information that must be taken into consideration, reflecting a directive nature of the relationships. The directive pattern emerges when the IT manager encourages the members to read the articles and take note of his information. The distinctive pattern emerged, as interactions are voluntarily initiated by members on the platform aimed at a specific context and taking on the form of chatter. Finally, a limited news perception and a smaller amount of social content seem to introduce some hints of informative and communitive relationships, but these are inhibited by the lack of praise and recognition on the platform. 117 The different configurations of the social fabric provide insight into how the interactions guiding collaboration between the organizational members on the ESM platform are based on diverse social fabric configurations. Describing the different social dynamics that underline the collaborative initiatives allows for an understanding of how the interactions between the organizational members create different foundations for collaboration within the organization. Thus, the social fabric configuration highlights how collaboration on an ESM platform should not be treated as a set activity, but rather is subject to huge differentiation depending on the social fabric that forms as its base. Through the social fabric framework, the different components of ESM, sociality and work come together, explaining the foundations for how social relationships form on ESM as well as providing an understanding of how these mediated relationships relate to work. In terms of the three domains, the integrated perspective involves the consideration of how the social fabric forms, but more importantly, transforms through the use of ESM. The different social fabric configurations display the way in which relationships form depending on the balance of the interactions along the social fabric threads. The social fabric can then also serve as a way of orienting the interactions of the ESM platform within the organization. Accordingly, working with the social dynamics of the organization on ESM can be based on knowledge about the existing social fabric configuration and perspectives on desired configurations. As part of the empirical work, the follow up sessions carried out at two of the case organizations revealed how the organizational members, when confronted with the social fabric configuration, started to discuss what actions and interactions they could take to enforce certain relationships. The IT manager at BetterHealth noted, ‘so if I want to strengthen the informative relationship here then I should put more effort into praising people when they post information or news that I value...’ (ITM_FollowUpMeeting_BH). On a more general level, the social fabric configurations worked as a way for the organizational members to reflect on their actions on the Yammer platform in a way they had not previously considered. The discussions in the follow-up sessions made it clear how the language of the social fabric in terms of threads and patterns of relationships aided in the deciphering of 118 differences in perceptions of how and for what purpose the Yammer platform should be used within the organizations. Reflecting on this in relation to the initial interviews, the descriptions from the organizational members of how they would post and comments on the Yammer platform suddenly became more elaborate, using the terminology of the social fabric in terms of which relationships they valued and how this reflected in the actions and interactions. The social fabric configurations serve as a way of understanding existing social dynamics of the organization but can also provide a way of informing future activities on the platform. In this section, I have introduced the social fabric framework as an integrated perspective for understanding the social dynamics of ESM at work. The findings presented have highlighted my perspectives on the three domains of ESM, sociality and work, and how these have informed the development of the social fabric framework. They also highlight how my main insights for understanding the social dynamics of ESM at work arose from the interaction between the three domains and the way that these were enacted in the practice on the ESM platform. The creation of an integrated view on ESM at work through the social fabric enables an understanding of ESM use in relation to the social dynamics of the organization. Configuring the different social fabrics of the case organizations gave valuable insight into the dynamic and diverse nature of the relationships that form on the ESM platform. In particular, the social fabric configurations showed how the relationships changed over time and were different across the three organizations and in the organizational practice of collaboration. Finally, the follow up meetings with the case organizations revealed how the social fabric framework enabled both insights into existing and current relationships but also supported the direction of future activities and interactions on the ESM platform. 119 5. Conclusion This section summarizes the research by highlighting the insights gained into the social dynamics of ESM at work. As illustrated in the outline of my research process in section 3.7, the exploratory work of this thesis is characterized by different approaches and theoretical investigations. Writing up this thesis can then be considered a retrospective account and it is not until you have completed it that you see how it all fits together (Henfridsson 1999). The objective of the research was to investigate ESM at work by addressing the overall research question: What are the social dynamics of enterprise social media in organizational work? Overall, my investigation has demonstrated how the social dynamics of ESM in organizations comprises the three domains of ESM, sociality and work, and I have introduced the social fabric framework as a way of explaining, interpreting and understanding the social dynamics of ESM at work. In order to elaborate on these contributions, I present rich insights gained through the research efforts. As outlined in section 3.6, such insights represent a way of concluding upon interpretive case study research, in which the broader implications of the research are presented (Walsham 1995). Summarizing the research in this manner enables me to both discuss and reflect upon the insights in terms of how they contribute to the existing knowledge base and practical understanding of the social dynamics of ESM at work. This concluding section is divided into three subsections. The first and second subsections describe the insights gained in relation to the implications for research and practice. The third subsection outlines limitations and prospects for further research. 5.1 Implications for Research In the literature review, I investigated and evaluated existing perspectives on ESM in organizations. The existing perspectives of ESM as technology, work and social organization fueled the investigation of the social dynamics of ESM at work. In particular, this study of social dynamics of ESM at work builds upon the 126 more tangible for the organizational members, as they could use the terminology of the social fabric to pinpoint the characteristics of the activities on the ESM platform. The social fabric framework then works as a way of eliciting the interactions and patterns of relationships forming on the ESM platform but also evokes feedback and discussion among those who interpret what is going on, thus creating a common ground for the use of the technology in practice (Carlile 2004). Insight 5: Organizations can utilize the social fabric framework to create visual representations of the social dynamics of the organization’s use of ESM Mapping the different social fabric configurations across the three case organizations revealed how the three case organizations have very different ways of interacting on the ESM platform. The visual configurations of the social fabric allows for a display of the patterns of relationships, as well as their development. This presents interesting implications for practice as the complex dynamics of the social environment on the ESM platform become manifested in a shape, providing insight into the evolving patterns of relationships on the ESM platform. Utilizing visual representations to explain organizational data can provide powerful and meaningful insights into complex phenomena (Meyer 1991). The social fabric makes it possible to create representations of the interactions and relationships that form on ESM, which are otherwise difficult to describe and capture. Further, the social fabric framework allow the visualization of the fluidity (Faraj et al. 2011) of the online ESM medium by creating a flexible structure for observing and visualizing interactions and patterns of relationships on the ESM platform as they evolve over time. In addition to highlighting the dominant patterns of the social fabric, the visual representations also revealed how the ESM platform should not be considered as being equivalent across different organizations. While the ESM platform Yammer is normally promoted as a technology which ‘fits-all’ (Yammer 2015), investigating the social dynamics on ESM demonstrates how the technology can encourage many different interactions and patterns of relationships. Pinpointing these different social dynamics of the same ESM platform across diverse organizations makes the social fabric configurations useful for discussing the exact application and future use of the technology within the organization (Leonhardt Kjærgaard and Jensen 2014). The navigation of the ESM 127 platform and its use in the organization is a matter of looking at how the technology is appropriated within the social fabric of the organization and working with specific initiatives based on this understanding. Insight 6: Organizations can utilize the social fabric as a means of reflecting upon and creating a collective dialogue about the present and future desired state. As highlighted in the introduction, a major challenge for organizations and for managers is to plan and work strategically with the use of ESM in the organization. To initiate this strategic thinking, managers can utilize the social fabric configurations as a springboard for a collective discussion about the prevailing work practices on the ESM platform. As part of my concluding work with the case organizations, the social fabric framework proved invaluable for allowing the organizations to gain insights into the social fabric of their ESM platform. The social fabric configurations in each of the case organizations gave insight into the behavior on the ESM platform and how this formed and reformed over time. Moreover, it highlighted how the social fabric underlying the practice of collaboration took different forms. The different social fabric configurations then revealed how the same ESM platform sparked different forms of interaction and patterns of relationships across each organization and specific work practices. The application of the social fabric framework highlights the importance of considering the interaction between organizations and technology in light of the specific contexts and technologies, rather than suggesting abstract and overall strategic initiatives that transcend all organizations (Orlikowski 1992). The reflection and dialogue encouraged by the social fabric framework can enable the creation of specialized strategies for ESM in the specific organizational context. Reporting back to the case organizations, the practical implications of this work have been revealed by the ability of the social fabric configurations to give the organizations a language for, and a way of, considering ESM at work. This has both offered insights into the current state of the organizations, as well as provided directions for future initiatives when it comes to ESM at work. Based on this, the social fabric framework becomes a way for organizations to capture the current 128 state of the social dynamics on the ESM platform as well as to utilize this to plan for future initiatives and ways of interacting on the platform. 5.3 Limitations and Future Research While the efforts of this research have encompassed multiple views, it has also helped to uncover aspects related to this research that could be studied further. I have realized that the work accomplished here is only the beginning and, while my work has provided me with answers, it has also inspired new questions. In the following, I reflect on opportunities for future research and address some limitations with regards to the thesis work itself. 5.3.1 Exploring the Social Fabric Further The development of the social fabric framework provided great insights into how the social dynamics on ESM formed in each of the case organizations. However, it also raised interesting questions with regards to how the social fabric framework could be used beyond the study of ESM. Presenting the ideas to colleagues and at conferences, a recurring question seemed to appear relating to how the social fabric of the organization looked before the introduction of ESM. While the ESM platform in this research served as a valuable way of gaining insights into the actual interactions and activities of the organizational members on the platform, and illustrating these through the social fabric, this question prompts the investigation of how to explore the social fabric in the organization as a whole. In this thesis, the social fabric framework was developed based on the interactions on and with the ESM platform, which provided insights into the dynamic threads of interaction that are a part of organizations. The findings gained by utilizing the social fabric framework to study the social dynamics of ESM revealed how these dynamics are evolving. Therefore, capturing the social fabric in organizations requires attention to these dynamics and how this social fabric develops over time. Describing the social fabric over time could provide very interesting insights into the development of the organizational social dynamics. Transferring the measurements used to map the social fabric on the ESM platform into questions for organizational members could represent a first step in developing an 129 instrument for mapping the social fabric of organizations. In addition, the identification of the social fabric of the organization as a whole could provide an interesting comparison for the social fabrics found on the digital media such as ESM to see how these do, or do not, resemble each other. 5.3.2 Investigating Strategic Initiatives of the Social Fabric In this concluding section, I presented the possibilities of the social fabric for making strategic decisions about the ESM platform based on enforcing certain threads of the social fabric. While this suggestion builds on the follow-up sessions with the case organizations, further research is needed on how these strategic initiatives could actually work. This would include working with the social fabric configurations to identify where initiatives could be implemented to strengthen the types of relationship that organizations want the ESM platform to support. For example, strengthening the informative relationships would imply a focus on encouraging organizational members to share news in the general context and then encourage others to praise or acknowledge when this information was of value to them. Trying this as part of the organizational use of the ESM platform and observing the effects this might have on the platform interactions may well be valid. Again, the dynamics of the social fabric formation would have to be taken into consideration, and the observations would entail a long-term perspective to see how the social dynamics evolve over time. Studying the strategic possibilities for working with the social dynamics on the ESM platform could move us away from regulatory practices for these platforms, which appear to be unfit for ESM, and towards working with interactions between individuals to strengthen the use of the ESM platform. 5.3.3 Social Dynamics of other Enterprise Social Media Platforms The ESM platform Yammer was the focus in my study of social dynamics of ESM at work. While this selection was based on a number of criteria (cf. section 3.2.1) there are many other ESM platforms, which are adopted in organizations. Consequently, further investigation of the social fabric framework in relation to 130 these platforms could be interesting. Investigating these additional platforms could provide insight into other mechanisms that are at play when considering the social dynamics of ESM in an organization. Applying the social fabric framework across additional ESM platforms can enable reflection on the abilities of the social fabric to describe the social dynamics on ESM in general. Further, the insights from applying the social fabric framework to the study of other ESM platforms can enable a depiction of what social dynamics these different ESM platforms encourage. On the Yammer platform, we saw traces of the directive and informative pattern across all of the organizations; it would be interesting, in relation to this, to see if other ESM platforms would place emphasis on a different type of relationships. This cover chapter has provided a synthesis of my research efforts in the investigation of the social dynamics of ESM at work. Drawing the overall lines and contributions of this research has been based on the work of the four papers that follow this cover chapter. 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However, testing our theoretical model will involve an investigation of this mediating effect to determine whether there is an independent effect or a mediation effect as well as whether we can talk about partial or full mediation (Ho et al., 2001). Distinguishing these relationships will require empirically testing the model according to three effects. The empirical test is outlined in figure 3. First, this will include the investigation of the independent effect of the five groups of perceived ESM affordances directly on organizational work. The next step will be to investigate the role of interaction on the ESM platform as a mediator in the model. Establishing the mediation effect requires the examination of whether the interaction has a partial or a full mediation effect. In our model, we assume a full mediation based on the centrality of interaction in the actualization of the perceived ESM affordances and as the basis for organizational work. In order to test this, the five groups of affordances and the interaction will be linked to each other as well as to organizational work to measure their relationship. Removing the link between the five groups of ESM affordances and organizational work will then allow us to compare the difference. Through this investigation, we will be able to outline the effect of interaction and ESM affordances on organizational work as well as determine how interaction on the ESM platform is a part of the relationship between ESM and organizational work. Independent Effect Partial Mediation Full Mediation Figure 3: Empirical Test for the Mediation Effect of Interaction on the ESM Platform Interaction on ESM platform Perceived ESM Affordances Organizational work Interaction on ESM platform Perceived ESM Affordances Organizational work Interaction on ESM platform Perceived ESM Affordances Organizational work 255 4. Discussion and Concluding Remarks We conducted a theoretical investigation of how ESM affect organizational work. The findings from this theoretical investigation makes three overall contributions. First, the paper summarizes the literature on ESM affordances and highlight how ESM afford distribution, association, amplification, contextualization, and preservation of information and people in organizations. Considering how these affordances are presented in the literature as perceived opportunities of using ESM, the various examples of ESM use highlight how these perceived affordances also become actualized through interactions on the ESM platform. Second, our theoretical investigation places emphasis on interaction as a driver of organizational work and reveal how the technical features of the ESM platform come to life and can affect organizational work through interactions on the platform. By emphasizing the role of the interactions in the transformation of perceived opportunities of ESM into actions that support organizational work, the theory development paper adds to existing literature on affordances of ESM. Existing literature demonstrates how affordances of ESM have largely focused on the perceived affordances, which the ESM platform introduces for organizational members in the context of their work. Building on these insights, we propose that the effect of ESM on organizational work include consideration of these perceived affordances as well as consideration of how these affordances become actualized on the ESM platform. The process of affordance actualization can provide interesting insights into the translation of opportunities of information technology into action (Bernhard et al., 2013; Strong et al., 2014). We propose how the processes of actualization of perceived ESM affordances are tied to interaction on the ESM platform and that these interactions mediate the ESM affordances effect on organizational work. Third, the creation of theoretical propositions and a model lays the groundwork for empirically testing the relationship between ESM affordances and organizational work at a larger scale. The research on ESM has to a high degree been carried out through qualitative investigations of this emerging phenomenon. To extend our knowledge about ESM, pointing toward more large-scale empirical investigations of this phenomena can enable further understanding of their wider implications for 256 organizations and organizational work (Leonardi et al., 2013). The theoretical propositions and the model presented in this paper builds on the existing literature on ESM affordances and offers a way of operationalizing an empirical test of how the known perceived affordances of ESM affect organizational work. 4.1 Implications for Theory The affordance perspective provides insight into the ways in which ESM technology is perceived to enable and constrain a variety of activities. For example, the openness afforded by ESM has proved to both enable individuals to share and make information visible (Yardi et al., 2009; Treem & Leonardi, 2012) while also inhibiting individuals sharing of information due to concerns of disclosing unfinished material or ideas (Danis & Singer, 2008; Holtzblatt & Tierney, 2011;Majchrzak et al., 2013). In our study, we add to these perspectives by highlighting how the affordances of ESM should be considered in accordance to their nature as both perceived affordances and actualized affordances. We described how the perceived affordances will always precede the active actualization of the affordances (Kyttä, 2004) and how, in any situation, many possibilities for action exist, but the majority of them will not come to be actualized (Stoffregen, 2003). For the active actualization of an affordance to take place, the affordance must become real and manifested in the actions of the individual or the group of individuals involved with it (Turvey, 1992). The literature review on ESM affordances (boyd, 2012; Ellison et al., 2007; Fulk & Yuan, 2013; Gibbs et al., 2013; Leonardi et al., 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2013; Pike et al., 2013; Treem & Leonardi 2012) revealed five groups of perceived affordances that emerge in terms of distribution, association, amplification, contextualization, and preservation of information and people. Describing how these perceived affordances manifest themselves in the context of ESM use for organizational work revealed how the perceived affordances of ESM must be actively actualized (Strong et al., 2014) through interactions on the ESM platform in order to influence organizational work. This highlights the relational character of the ESM affordances and underlines the way in which social interactions on the ESM platform are central in the enactment of the perceived affordances into actual 257 actions. Affordances of ESM can then be understood on two levels; the perceived affordances and actualized affordances manifested through actual actions (Strong et al., 2014). In particular, this theory development paper opens up the process of actualization on ESM by focusing on interactions on the platform as a central part of the translation of perceived affordances into actual action. The findings highlight active actualization of the ESM affordances as important in determining which activities of work are carried out on the ESM platform. Understanding the affordances of ESM in organizational work thus involves a consideration of both perceived and actively actualized affordances. The literature on social media has highlighted how the underlying algorithms and social data configurations that these platforms build on create new forms of community and sociality among its members (Bowker, 2005; Kallinikos & Tempini, 2014). The theoretical investigation in this paper adds to this perspective by accentuating how the use of ESM in organizations also requires attention to the interactions that the platform encourages. In the organizational context, the introduction of ESM accentuates the relationships between people, content and technology. These new dynamics require attention to the implications of the ESM for interactions between organizational members on the platforms as well as the meaning of this. In the development of our propositions, we introduce three different types of interaction—conversational, contextual, and content interaction—to highlight the different interactional mechanisms that are at work on an ESM platform. Evaluating and using ESM in an organizational context then requires attention to how these interactional mechanisms form and how they participate in translating the perceived affordances of the technology into actual actions. 4.2 Implications for Practice In the current organizational environment, the adoption of ESM platforms is increasing, yet more organizations are also expressing difficulties with obtaining the desired benefits from the technology (Gartner, 2013). While the infrastructure of ESM provides a range of opportunities for organizations through the connected 258 and transparent platform, obtaining the benefits from these platforms appear challenging. In this theory development paper, we investigated the effect of ESM on organizational work with an emphasis on the process of affordance actualization through interaction on the ESM platform. Our propositions highlight the importance of not only considering the opportunities that ESM can introduce for organizational work, but also how these opportunities become manifested in activities supporting organizational work. This implies that initiatives that support the actualization of the perceived ESM affordances are crucial if the ESM platform is to play a role in organizational work. When adopting ESM, the organizational efforts must then include consideration of how to encourage interaction on the ESM platform in order to obtain the desired benefits of using the platform. While the model proposed still remains untested, the examples from other studies of ESM platforms in organizations highlight how the different affordances of ESM are to a large extent linked with the level of interaction on the platform. Thus, in order for organizational members to acknowledge the benefits of ESM and to use ESM to strengthen organizational work practices, they need to be engaged on the ESM platform. Through our theoretical developments, we propose that organizations should devote more attention to nurturing the interactions on the ESM platform if they wish to obtain an effect of the platform on organizational work. While previous research has mainly focused on the outcomes of using ESM, the theoretical developments in this paper argue for consideration of interactions on ESM as a way of achieving the desired effects of ESM in organizations. The focus in the practical application of the ESM platform should then be moved from the desired effects and toward the current practices of interaction on the platform. 4.3 Future Research This paper has developed an initial model and a set of propositions outlining the effect of ESM on organizational work and, further, highlighted the role of interactions on the ESM platform as a mediator that translates the perceived ESM affordances into actions of organizational work. We expect the proposed model to 259 be tested using a sample of organizations that have adopted ESM platforms. We suggest that empirical evidence for the model can be gathered through employing survey instruments within these organizations to measure the relationship between the outlined variables. Further, the mediating role of interactions on the platform needs to be validated as to whether it represents a partial or full mediation (as presented in section 3.2). The literature on ESM in organizations has focused on the perceived affordances of the technology in the organization in terms of the opportunities and constraints that these ESM technologies are presumed to have. However, adding to these studies with explanations of how these perceived affordances can be translated into action within the organization appear to represent a valid point of consideration when it comes to assessing the effect of ESM on organizational work. We therefore encourage future studies to look at where these opportunities of ESM become manifested in actions and activities in the organization, in order to obtain a fuller picture of the premise and consequences of ESM in the organization. In future studies of ESM in organizations, researchers must also be sensitive to other affordances that may arise and evaluate whether these fit into any of the five representative affordances in this study or should be considered in their own respect. 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Introduction The reshaping capabilities of technology on organizational practices are not a new phenomenon. Attributed influence in organizational areas such as culture (Leidner and Kayworth 2006), performance (Melville et al. 2004), learning (Alavi 1994; Attewell 1992), and change (Markus and Robey, 1988) technology has proven to be an important part of shaping organizations. Thus, understanding technology’s influence on organizations has been a prominent topic within many fields such as organizational studies, information systems, and management. Studies dealing with technology in organizations have faced many challenges including approaches to describing technology (Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001) as well as how to approach the analysis of the influence of technology on organizations (Orlikowski and Baroudi, 1991). With the recent advances in technology and especially the move towards use of more social technologies such as social media within organizations understanding these technologies are becoming key for organization (Leonardi et al. 2013). Today, social media has become a phenomenon transcending private, public and commercial spheres. The changes brought on by social media has been described in many aspects demonstrating how the media are giving people a voice in the world and allowing interactions to emerge (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). In organizations, social media, referred to as Enterprise Social Media (ESM), have been afforded a great deal. ESM are providing new opportunities form social connection and interaction between organizational members and changing organizational dynamics accordingly (Leonardi et al. 2012; Treem and Leonardi 2012). Especially, ESM are providing an infrastructure that support knowledge sharing between organizational members (Majchrzak et al. 2013). An interesting perspective for research resides in how we can work with describing the changes that enterprise social technologies brings to these particular practices in organizations. While existing studies have looked at the technological functionalities that ESM add to these practices investigating the changes the technology brings to the underlying social aspects of work remains unexplored. 271 Foucault (1977) approaches the description of changes in society by looking into the past in order to say something about the future. Through concepts of discourse and power Foucault puts forward the historical perspective as a way for us to investigate emerging social orders and the way they change (Falzon 1998). An overlooked concept in the use of Foucault’s analysis is that of dispositif (Peltonen 2004). In the use of dispositif, Foucault (1976) introduces a frame for us to make use of history and describe discursive and non-discursive elements of the changes occurring. This paper seeks to add to ways of exploring social technology in organizations by making use of Foucault’s dispositif analysis to study the influence of ESM in organizations. The following research question is pursued, What describes the social order that guides practices of knowledge management on enterprise social media? The investigation is based on a case study of a company implementing an ESM platform for knowledge sharing and management. The study describes the adoption of ESM in light of the history of previous knowledge management initiatives in the case organization. Using Foucault’s dispositif analysis the descriptions of past and present practices involving knowledge creation and sharing demonstrate how a new social order emerge with the adoption of ESM. Next the theoretical foundation of the study is outlined and the research setting and premise is explained. The analysis is presented through providing a historical account of the organizational use of technology for knowledge sharing practices followed by the presentation of two dominating dispositifs of hierarchy and network. The findings are discussed and concluded upon with reflections for further applications of the dispositif analysis. 272 2. Theoretical Foundation The theoretical foundation outlines existing perspectives on information technology and organizational practices and describes ESM and its implications for practices of knowledge management in organizations. Further, Foucault’s concept of dispositif and the dispositif analysis is presented as a way of studying the implications of ESM in organizations. 2.1 Enterprise Social Media Technology and Knowledge Management In organizations the influences of technology are found in both large-scale operations and every day practices. The duality that exist between technology and practices present a constant and ongoing development of the organization (Orlikowski and Robey, 1991). Consequently, the interplay between the two becomes important when considering the shaping and reshaping of the organization. Linked to organizational practices of collaboration (Smith and McKeen, 2011), learning (Robey et al., 2000), productivity (Black and Lynch, 2001), performance (Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 2000) and innovation (Nambisan et al., 1999) information technology has been established as a key component in organizations. One of the central elements highlighted in these studies is the enhanced knowledge sharing and creation that information technology provides organizational members. Information technology support practices of knowledge sharing between different communities of practice and breaks down barriers for information and knowledge allowing access to what was not otherwise accessible to the members of the organization (Pan and Leidner 2003). The impact of information technologies in organizations has led to much research into knowledge management systems treating knowledge as a valuable resource within the organization (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). Establishing successful technologies for the handling of organizational practices of knowledge creation and knowledge management requires the balance between the organizational culture, techniques and 273 technologies (Bhatt, 2001). In the development of new virtual technologies for knowledge management the understanding of what binds these practices together and how it is shaping the organization becomes even more important. The combination of virtual work practices involving knowledge creation and sharing with information technologies is then not to be taken lightly as it can have consequences for the success of work within the organization (Griffith et al., 2003). Recently, ESM technologies have entered the organizational scene and presented new opportunities virtual work in the organization. ESM denotes the adoption of the popular social media technologies into organizational practices (Leonardi et al., 2013). Placing social media at the top of executives lists Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) present describe social media as a collection of internet-based applications that build on Web 2.0 and allow users to exchange user generated content. Boyd and Ellison (2007) define social media as a web-based service that allow users to perform actions of creating profiles, articulating a list of users who they want to connect with and give users the ability to view and investigate this list through an online system. The open nature of the social media is highlighted through the increased connectedness and transparency between the parties communicating on the media. ESM, relate to the capabilities attached to social media and are referred to as second-generation knowledge management systems designed to encourage the development of communities of practice and to stimulate the ‘knowing experience’ rather than merely transferring knowledge (Brivot 2011). Through the added opportunities for communication and ongoing dialogue between all members of the platform, ESM put emphasis on social relationships, communication, conversation and ad-hoc social sharing (Reimer and Scifleet 2012). ESM are unique in their ability to communicate messages both to specific individuals and broadly to everyone in the organization. ESM outline four main affordances that can be linked to social media in an organizational communication context of visibility, editability, persistence and association (Treem and Leonardi, 2012:9). The open display of particular co-workers as communication partners, 274 and the posting, editing, and sorting of text and files, while preserving all the interactions in the digital medium, enable broad communication (Leonardi et al., 2013). This increased visibility appears to be exactly where ESM are making a big impact on organizations. While media such as email, chat, and telephone conversations are preserved between the invited members, the interactions on the enterprise social media are at most times shared across the entire organization, allowing everyone to see and follow what is going on (Cross et al. 2003). Previously, many organizational interactions have been invisible, but they are now performed in the open, adding a new layer of visibility and transparency. The characteristics, both social and technical, of ESM indicate how the introduction of them into organizations can introduce changes in the organizational practices. In order to look into these the concept of dispositif from Foucault (1977) is investigated as an approach for describing the changes that the social technologies bring to the social order of the organization. 2.2 Foucault’s Dispositif In scholarly interpretations of Foucault’s writing his concept of discourse has often dominated the description of the contribution made. Some scholars (Peltonen, 2004; Pløger, 2008; Raffnsøe et al., 2008) describe how discourse appears only to make up part of the way Foucault describes and presents the social world to us. Foucault’s literature also introduces the wider concept of the dispositif (Pløger, 2008; Raffnsøe et al., 2008). The dispositif includes discourses, institutions, architecture etc. and center on understanding practice and the relation between practices more than solely focusing on single discursive elements. It is in the relation between the different elements of the dispositifs and the uncovering of the patterns between them that we can be able to understand the world. The dispositif is thought to present an overall pattern in social action that demonstrates how a certain thing has worked or continues to work predisposing to social interactions (Raffnsøe et al., 2008). It is in the look into social relations and 275 interactions between individuals as well as a description of these relationships that we can start to make out these patterns of social actions. Foucault (1980) refers to the dispositif itself as a system of relationships that can be established between elements of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measure, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions. Foucault (1977) presents how the deciphering of these relationships is centered on a presentation of the before and after to present the dispositifs that are a part of this transition. In Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault shows how the move in punishment form the body to the soul causes new dispositifs to emerge both in terms of discourse describing punishment, institutions of prison and actions of justice. The change from one order to another can thus enable the development of new dispositifs that have their major function in a given historical context (Foucault, 1980). In A history of Sexuality (1976) Foucault provides an analysis of the change between two dispositifs. The dispositif of alliance determined by a system of marriage and development of kinship ties and the dispositif of sexuality determined by more mobile systems and contingent power relations (Peltonen, 2004). In this, Foucault (1976) demonstrates how dispositifs include both discursive and non-discursive elements and that the focus is on the relation between the two. The dispositif can be something we act through in the form of a certain logic that assigns what can be done and provide certain guidelines. It is in these guidelines that the dispositif is tied to the creation of a normative logic that can take part in reorganizing social interactions in a given context. The concept of social context is not tied to any specific form but can for example be in the form of an organization or collective that the dispositif is influenced by and can influence norm creation and formulation (Peltonen 2004). 2.2.1 Dispositif Analysis The goal of the dispositif analysis is to grasp the overall social relations that link together elements making up the dispositif (Foucault, 1980). In a sense it can be described as the investigation of a social order while it is being created (Reffsnøe et al., 2008). The dispositif analysis often investigates certain phenomena that are undergoing a change in history for example punishment, discipline or sexuality. Based in the investigation of this phenomenon the analysis highlights and displays the social connection and normative behavior that surrounds it. The aim of the 276 dispositif analysis is to describe and form a body of knowledge, techniques and scientific discourses that make up a certain practice in a given context. For example, in Foucault’s (1977) text on the birth of the prison the objective is to outline the dispositifs that give the power to punish then and now. Investigating the past and historical occurrences can foster a presentation and unveiling of the present (Foucault, 1977). In this framing of the analysis it is possible to decipher how the historical look into the past in terms of certain elements can reveal a presentation of what makes up the former and present dispositifs surrounding a given phenomena. One central thing that dominates the analysis from Foucault (1977) is the creation of a binary relationship between concepts within the dispositifs. It is in the presentation of these opposing values tied to the objects through the dispositif that underline the distinctions in the social orders created. The dispositif analysis emphasize six central elements that help describe the state of the dispositif. First, objects are at the center of Foucault’s (1977) analysis. In the investigation of these objects Foucault (1977) looks for and compares the meaning that they are ascribed within the frame of the different historical contexts and perspectives. Objects can be observed through the meaning creations of them by people. In the presentation of the body Foucault (1977) underlines how the binary relationship observed in the changing dispositifs describes either the body as one or the body as parts. It is thus possible to observe a distinction between the different representations of the object. Second, the framing discourses are a part of the elements that make up the dispositif. The discourses are often described through the creation of certain way of acting that characterize the dispositif (Foucault, 1977). In particular the framing discourses become an important element in the relationships through their role in coding and decoding of norms and objects within the dispositif. Third, norms make up key elements of the dispositifs composition in the way in which the behavior and mentality of society is connected to normative formations (Foucault, 1977). The norms are often found in the identification of opposing values identifiable within each dispositif. Fourth, signal and symbols used by individuals to express the norms and beliefs manifestation in the practices of the collective group, Fifth, rules become exemplified in the change in policies and components that make up the systems 277 within each dispositif. In particular Foucault (1977) shows how they are often found in the creation of set models and rules that are designed to provide solutions. However, they can often also represent certain problems through their assignment of particular rules and set ways for things to occur. The creation of these policies is tied strongly to the relationships forming the dispositif as they often prescribe certain boundaries or approaches that must be kept. Finally, networks of power present an important element in the composition of the dispositif and they often underline the relationship structure between the different elements. The theoretical background demonstrates an interest in uncovering approaches for how we can describe the influence of ESM as a technology in organizations. Dispositif analysis can serve as an approach for the description of what influence the ESM may have on the social order of the organization. 3. Research Setting and Premise The data for this study is gathered in a Danish IT consultancy company, utilizing the ESM platform Yammer. The company currently has 41 employees and specializes in consultancy services within Microsoft SharePoint solutions, assisting large international companies. Most employees are based in client offices and work from there on a daily basis. Following a period of extensive growth in number of employees Yammer was adopted as a tool for internal communication and knowledge sharing in the summer of 2012 at the initiative of the new CEO. Until then the company had relied on communication sources such as email and the company intranet. The data collection is based in the gathering of information about the previous knowledge management initiatives at the company as well as the process of implementation and adoption of ESM into the practices of the employees. The case material includes, interviews with employees that have undergone the transition from one system to the other, field observations made on site at the 278 company and online as well as logged data from the Yammer platform. Further, the outline of the initiative and process as described by the person in charge of the implementation of the ESM platform is also made use of. The history serving as the basis for the investigation in this paper is thus based on the compilation of the different sources into making up the story. It is recognized that this might be a limitation as the history might entail certain elements not disclosed in the chosen methods. Table 1 provides an overview of the data collected. Table 1: Overview of Data Collection Source Data collected Yammer log data 1,997 Yammer posts and their comments Field observations 163 hours on site (over 3 months), ongoing engagement and observation online on Yammer platform Interviews 10 interviews with employees lasting between 40-50 minutes (CEO, HR manager, sales people, project managers, consultants, and student worker) The organization has previously explored many initiatives for knowledge management in order to enable their employees to work together and share and create knowledge. In the company knowledge management is described as the creation and sharing of information among employees. In this process special focus is put on enabling communication between employees to facilitate knowledge creation and to allow for the created knowledge to be stored and shared internally in the organization. The knowledge that the organization is aiming to create, involves development of client solutions and ideas as well as optimization of work processes and systems. Within the case several impacts following the adoption of ESM for knowledge management has already been noted in terms of change in reach, influence and connection frequency between the employees at the company. The company objective with the addition of social media as a tool is to enhance the connection between the employees especially the ones that are spatially dispersed. 279 3.1 Data Analysis On the basis of this selected works from Foucault will be focused on throughout this paper. It is recognized that his work extends beyond these selected works however the objective of this paper is not to investigate Foucault’s writings in full detail but to explore the use of his dispositif analysis to provide insight in regard to the empirical case implications in particular. The purpose of Foucault’s (1977) dispositif analysis is to look into the process of a historical change. The historical account is described on the basis of central activities or events that take place in regards to the use of knowledge management technologies and approaches. In accordance with Foucault (1977) the story is presented in stages that all describe a certain part of the story. The historical account in this study is based on the technologies used and adopted for knowledge sharing and creation within the company. The account describes the different technologies and the surrounding effects of these within the organization ending with the adoption of the ESM platform Yammer into the organizational knowledge sharing practices. The story is treated as a narrative (Czarniawska, 1997) outlining the company initiative to adopt a new ESM technology including their experiences with past technologies. The organization has previously relied on an intranet in the form of a bulletin board as well as email, phone and scheduled in-house meeting. All employees have access to the platform including top management. The use of the social media technology have quickly come to replace certain meetings, which were instead facilitated on the social media platform in either open public groups or private invite-only groups. Foucault’s (1977) dispositif analysis is used to describe the social history pertaining to knowledge management practices in the organization. 4. The Historical Account The purpose, in line with Foucault’s (1977) dispositif analysis is to look into the history and describe what makes the power to create and share knowledge 286 The dispositif of hierarchy works predisposing on the initiatives of knowledge management through providing knowledge creation in a closed one-to-one connection. It does not limit or determine it but creates the basis for the development of new knowledge through private conversation. The owners of the knowledge created become clear and without question as the individuals involved in the development and creation of the knowledge is limited. The predisposition that the dispositif of hierarchy creates for knowledge management is found in the assigning of set power structures creating a set structure for the knowledge creation and sharing to take place in. 5.2 Dispositif of Network In the dispositif of network, the discourses form on a many-to-many communication basis. The organizational members can communicate through posting and commenting directly to each other on the platform. The open and visible display of the interactions on the Yammer platform provides connectivity and transparency in support of the communications between organizational members on the platform. In comparison to the dispositif of hierarchy the dissemination of information on the Yammer platform is influenced by a behavior of sharing information and then if there is a shared interest arranging a meeting or establishing a group where all that are interested can join in. The many informal contributions generate a lot of information sharing on the platform, which is at times picked up and developed into a knowledge sharing and creating conversation on the platform. Rather than the scheduling of meetings with known organizational members the dispositif of hierarchy on the Yammer platform encourages how knowing people serves as a symbol for engagement in knowledge management within the organization. It is characterized by networks of individuals all relating to and communicating with each other. The role of the individual in the network dispositif is found in the diverse amount of roles, which they can adopt according to the network that they engage in. The equal contributions from many different organizational members emphasize the open structure and signal the informal contributions that are encouraged under the dispositif of network. In addition, a digital awareness emerges as the organizational members do not have to signal their inclusion by being physically there but can appear visible in the 287 organization through the digital Yammer platform. Policies within the network dispositif play a prominent role in order to create boundaries for the framing discourse governing the interactions. The discourse and the policies display a relationship where the facilitation of discourse should not be hindered by the policies but they should in turn be formed to follow set policies. In the network dispositif the policies can in fact be generated from the network of relations as the individuals can voice their set of norms onto the whole network. The power structure of the network is thus more based on knowledge and interest rather than focused on who has been attributed more formal power. The dispositif of network works predisposing on knowledge sharing through the generation of a broad interaction between individuals. The networked structures underlying the interactions of the many-to-many communication allow for knowledge to be generated between diverse groups of people. Framing the discourses according to set policies that are generated through the many-to-many interactions works predisposing on the norms of knowledge creation and sharing. The co-creation among the many-to-many interacting individuals facilitates a dynamic setting and re-setting of the rules for knowledge creation and sharing. The two dispositifs outline some core opposing values in terms of their relation and description of both the discourses, the norms of behavior and mentality, the signal and symbols applied, the establishment of rules, and the networks of power. Through the outline and understanding of the two dispositifs as well as how they work predisposing on the phenomena of knowledge sharing in the organization has enabled a description of the new order governing the organization. 6 Discussion and Concluding Remarks This paper investigated dispositif analysis as an approach to describing the social order of organization brought forward by the introduction of enterprise social media into organizations. From the investigation three main insights were gained 288 about the social order that emerge when ESM is introduced in organizations. The three contributions are outlined and discussed in the following. First, the application of the dispositif analysis for describing the influence of ESM on the organization in light of the historical account generated interesting insight into both functionalities of the technology and the surrounding organizational practices. Taking into account the historical transformation enables the understanding of the reshaping that the organization is undergoing through the emergence of the new dispositif of network. The historical sociology from Foucault both in terms of his discourse and dispositif analysis creates a lens that allows for the telling of the full story (Howarth, 2000). Through the dispositif analysis it became clear that providing the historical perspectives leads with it some implications for what is included in this history. As the story is told, the sources that inform it are selected and thus can frame the history towards a certain direction. In the analysis outlined in this paper some questions arise in accordance to: what are the implications for taking this approach? And how can we approach the story telling? Foucault’s (1977) Discipline and Punish selects certain historical examples described from other scholars in order to describe his historical reflection. In the approach to the dispositif analysis the deciphering of where the historical reflection should come from is an element, which is not clear. Reflecting on this in the analysis carried out it can have certain implications whether the history is drawn from the employees, the organizational administration, other studies etc. Therefore this can represent an issue when applying the analysis. Second, the untangling of the Foucault’s dispositif analysis enable an understanding of how this analysis can aid in description of changes in what works predisposing on the social action and interaction of individuals. Using the historical reflection on how the social order forms and reforms surrounding in light of certain dispositifs gave insight into how this approach can help outline the different constellations and dominating perceptions that guide the understanding of the social order. In the uncovering of what dispositif analysis entails and how it should be approached issues arose as to what exactly describes the dispositif. 289 Peltonen (2004) note how a clear description of the dispositif is hard to decipher even from Foucault himself. The difficulties in deciphering the form and composition of the dispositif create a set of questions through the use of it for analysis. While the vagueness can aid in seeking the boundaries of the phenomena under investigation it can also lead to confusion. The focus is on social relations and relationships and describing the boundaries of these can be difficult and can outline why it can be difficult to distinguish these in the dispositif analysis (McHoul and Grace, 1993). Third, the investigation gave insight into the two dominating dispositifs of hierarchy and network. The two dispositifs show how a new approach to social action and interaction emerges from the introduction of the ESM. In accordance with the dispositif analysis this does not mean that one dispositif ‘wins’ over another (Pløger, 2008) but rather that a transition is happing where the other dispositif will also come to play a part. In this sense the dispositif analysis help describe how the dynamics of the organization changes according to the introduction of the enterprise social media technology but does not force a complete disregard of previous workings. Although this appears as a strength of the approach it is also cause for some concern about how we treat instances when the two dispositifs overlap and come into conflict with each other for example in the application of both the older types of media such as email and phone and the new enterprise social media. This could present the basis of interesting studies looking at what exactly happens when these conflicts between dispositifs arise as well as how they are reconciled. In the investigation of dispositif analysis as an approach to describing the changes in the social order of the organization some interesting insights were gained. It appears that the dispositif analysis can allow for a broad spectrum of concepts to look at the change of the social order of the organization. Comparing the existing social order with the new can provide us with the ability to place our analysis in the overall context of the organizational history and there through become able to compare and contrast past and current social orders. 290 The brief case example highlighted how it can be possible to distinguish between different influences of technology through the description of the opposing dispositifs. However, it is recognized that many other factors also play a role in these changing dispositifs, it is argued that technology will play an increasing part of the organizational formation and development in the future (Knorr Cetina, 1996). Thus, it is important that we investigate approaches to describe the influences of technology on organizations. In the historical perspective taken affords the establishment of a great overview of the situation and the implications of the developments. The historical sociology from Foucault both in terms of his discourse and dispositif analysis creates a lens that allows for the telling of the full story (Howarth, 2000). Through the dispositif analysis carried out it became clear that providing the historical perspectives leads with it some implications for what is included in this history. As the story is told, the sources that inform it are selected and thus can frame the history towards a certain direction. Although the illustration of an organizational story used for this study is limited is did provide some general insight into the patterns of the changing dispositifs. 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Social Media Use in Organizationa: Exploring Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Presistence and Association. Communication Yearbook , 36, 143-189. 295 PAPER 4 Dyrby, S., Jensen, T.B., & Avital, M. Weaving Enterprise Social Media into the Social Fabric of the Organization. A version of the paper published as Dyrby, S., Jensen, T.B., & Avital, M. (2014). Enterprise Social Media at Work: Weaving the Social Fabric of Collaboration. Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Information Systems. ICIS 2014.) The paper included in this dissertation is an extended version of the ICIS paper,. 302 2.2 A Social Fabric Metaphor to Describe the Dynamics of Enterprise Social Media The social fabric is a metaphor for the social making of a collective. In this section, we explore the application and operationalization of the social fabric metaphor in various disciplines in search of the building blocks that we can apply to construct a characterization of the social making of organizations in the context of ESM platforms. 2.2.1 Social Fabric Metaphor The social fabric metaphor has been applied in various disciplines, including economics, sociology, human ecology and urban studies, as well as organization and management studies, to describe the social system of relationships between individuals, groups, and institutions forming a coherent whole (Table 1). Table 1: Application of the Social Fabric Metaphor Across Disciplines Description Discipline Reference Social fabric is used to articulate the change in an array of social attributes that shape the behavior of people in a given economic system, in an attempt to evaluate the economic impact of nonmaterial social resources and social policies. Economics Bodin and Prell 2011; Hayden 1986; Hayden 2006; Gill 1996; Natarajan et al. 2009 Social fabric is used to represent a variety of relationships in social life ranging from interpersonal to institutional ties that together form networks of relationships. Sociology Alario and Freudenburg 2003; Broadbent 1986; Short 1984 Social fabric is used to portray social life as an integral part of the entangled material-immaterial elements that form and shape urban environments. Human ecology and urban studies Corcoran et al. 2007; Henderson 1995; Pflieger et al. 2008 303 Social fabric is used to depict group cohesion and connectivity as the degree of conformity of individuals to the prevailing organizational practices. Organization and management Baldwin et al. 1997; Moolenaar and Sleegers 2012; John Van Maanen 1979; Wenger 1996; Zammuto et al. 2007 In economics, a social fabric matrix has been used to delineate social structure and to articulate social change by outlining the relationship between cultural values, social beliefs, institutions, attitudes, technology, and ecological systems (Hayden 1986, 2006; Natarajan et al. 2009). Building on the presumption that the flow of goods, service, information, and people relies on the governing norms and social principles (Natarajan et al. 2009), economists construct a social fabric matrix that works as a systematic approach for comparing and contrasting how different social elements in society influence each other, and thereby the overall structure of the social system (Hayden 1986, 2006). A social fabric matrix portrays the influences that shape the behavior of people in a given economic system, and is used subsequently to evaluate the economic impact of social resources and policies (Bodin and Prell 2011; Gill 1996). Considering our underlying interest in the social making of organizations, we build on this conceptualization to highlight the fluid nature and impact of social interactions and relationships that form on ESM platforms. In sociology, the social fabric is a broad and central concept that can be applied to institutional systems and networks, as well as to interpersonal processes and relationships (Short 1984). The social fabric is used to portray the network of relational ties that underlies any social group, thus providing the foundation of society and social movements (Broadbent 1986; Short 1984). Accordingly, the social fabric encompasses the macro and micro relationships in a social system. Sociologists trace the relational ties to draw relationship networks of social groups in order to delineate social structures and to study social transformation (Alario and Freudenburg 2003). Given our interest in the social making of organizations, we build on this conceptualization to articulate the nature of interactions between social groups and to reflect upon interpersonal processes and relationships. 304 In human ecology and urban studies, the social fabric sustains people’s ability to live and work together effectively (Henderson 1995). The urban infrastructure comprises not only buildings, roads, and various services, but also social institutions, communities, and everyday social life; all are bounded together inseparably to form a city (Corcoran et al. 2007). Human ecology and urban studies highlight the entangled interrelations between the material and immaterial in a social milieu (Pflieger et al. 2008). We build on this conceptualization to highlight that the study of social interactions and relationships on ESM should encompass both humans and the respective technological environment, that is, the ESM platform itself. In the organization and management literature, social fabric has been used to convey the extent of organizational social cohesion, which portrays the degree of conformity of individuals to the norms of the collective (Van Maanen and Schein 1979). A strong social fabric conveys high social cohesion that results in the development of wider social relationships and consequently more sharing and cross-fertilization (Moolenaar and Sleegers 2012; Wenger 1996). The increasing adoption of technology into organizational work practices has made IT a part of the fabric of organization (Zammuto et al. 2007). We take this a step further, highlighting that the social interactions and relationships on ESM platforms are forged and bolstered by the beliefs and practices of the organizational member. Drawing on the existing literature, we use social fabric to delineate and explain the relationship between the various elements of a dynamic social system (Gill 1996; Hayden 1986, 2006; Natarajan et al. 2009), with a focus on the social interactions (Alario and Freudenburg 2003; Broadbent 1986; Short 1984) that are enabled by ESM platforms (Corcoran et al. 2007; Henderson 1995; Pflieger et al. 2008) and that reflect and are reflected in the prevailing beliefs and practices in a collective (Van Maanen and Schein 1979; Moolenaar and Sleegers 2012; Wenger 1996; Zammuto et al. 2007). We treat the social fabric as a metaphor of sociality and use the attributes of a fabric (Lakoff and Johnson 2003) to accentuate how threads of interactions between people make up the social fabric of an organization. In a metaphorical sense, the social fabric of a collective comprises threads of relationships that weave together to form a cohesive social whole. Within the boundaries of this 305 study, we define the social fabric as a metaphor that describes the threads of relationships between people in a collective. The social fabric is shaped and reshaped by the prevailing beliefs and practices in a collective as well as its technological milieu. The social fabric can be observed in the flow of behaviors and narratives expressed and experienced by individuals in a collective. 2.2.2 Revealing the Social Fabric Revealing the social fabric entails the investigation of the prevailing beliefs and practices that shape and reshape relationships between people in the collective on the ESM platform. As an online community, ESM is characterized by fluidity and the flow of resources and people interacting and forming relationships on a moment-to-moment basis (Faraj et al. 2011; Mol and Law 1994). Consequently, relationships on ESM are not something which can be predefined or solidified, but rather should be considered in terms of their fluid character and momentary existence. In order to observe and describe such fluid dynamics, we need to investigate the instances in which interactions become explicit (Venturini 2010). One approach to observing beliefs and practices as they surface in an organizational context is to look for controversies among organizational members. Controversies are a normal and inevitable part of the social world. It is through disagreements and debate that opinions are made explicit and meaning is constructed (Latour 1988, 2005). We can therefore investigate controversies by exploring situations in which the nature of interactions and opinions are made explicit. In particular, we look for controversies by identifying situations in which organizational members disagree. The disagreements can be subtle and do not have to reach a state of open fights, but they are often examples of mundane disagreements among colleagues who come together in the creation of a shared universe (Venturini 2010). The life cycle of a controversy starts when individuals realize that they cannot ignore the emerging disagreement, and they end when some form of agreement is reached among the involved parties (Venturini 2010). Based on this theoretical insight, we designed a circular process of controversy analysis in which a ‘local disagreement’ evokes a ‘public debate’ that at one point reaches a ‘settlement’ and eventually becomes manifested in the ‘performed practice’ of the organization (see Figure 1). The circular pattern portrays the life-cycle of a controversy and 306 highlights that a given performed practice prevails only until it is questioned and evokes a new disagreement (Latour 2005). Analyzing controversies provides an opportunity to reveal aspects of the situated prevailing beliefs and practices that shed light on the social making of the organization. In other words, the instances of controversy reflect the threads of the social fabric of the organization, as we describe later. Figure 1: Controversy Analysis Cycle 3. Research Design In view of the challenge to investigate the social making of organizations as it is reflected in ESM platforms, the study builds on a qualitative approach, which is appropriate for understanding dynamic social processes (Maitlis 2005) and idiosyncratic activities (Pettigrew 1992). The research process was divided into two phases that address the research questions. In the first phase, we investigated what characterizes the social fabric on an ESM platform in one case organization, and in the second phase, we investigated how social fabric can explain collaboration on ESM in two additional case organizations. 307 3.1 Research Context The study was carried out in three case organizations that use the same ESM technology, Yammer. We investigated the use of Yammer in an IT consultancy company (TopConsulting), an industrial power and automation company (HighPower), and a non-profit research organization (BetterHealth)5. While we opted to control variation due to technology by keeping the ESM platforms identical, we sought diversity in other dimensions to ensure a richer data set. Consequently, we selected the three organizations based on the following five criteria: 1) identical ESM platform (each of the case organizations has adopted Yammer into its daily work practices), 2) sector diversity (the case organizations represent three different sectors), 3) duration of ESM use (the case organizations are at different stages of ESM use), 4) size of organization (the case organizations represent a small, a medium-sized, and a large. organization), and 5) full access (all case organizations granted full access to the system logs and allowed close scrutiny of their work practices). The first phase of the research was conducted in the Danish IT consultancy company, TopConsulting. The objective of this phase was to develop a framework to characterize the social fabric of the company as reflected on their ESM platform. TopConsulting specializes in consultancy services within Microsoft Solutions Framework and works with large international companies. Most of the 43 employees work from their clients’ offices on a daily basis. Yammer was adopted as a tool for internal communication and collaboration in the summer of 2012 at the initiative of the newly appointed CEO. Until then, the company had relied on communication sources such as email, instant messaging, and the company intranet. Through its affiliation with Microsoft, the company not only uses Yammer for its own internal communication but also sells the tool to its clients. The company has placed Yammer as a mandatory and central communication channel in the organization and has encouraged employees to join and engage on the media as part of their daily work. In 2013, the company received the ‘Great Place To Work’ 5 The three company names used in this paper are fictitious. 308 award (GreatPlaceToWork 2013) for best workplace, and the CEO attributed the success in part to the Yammer platform and the social interactions that it facilitated. In the second phase of the research, we applied the social fabric framework that was developed in the first phase to explain how social fabric can explain collaboration on ESM in the two additional case organizations, HighPower and BetterHealth. HighPower is a multinational corporation that manufactures industrial electric power and automation equipment, with approximately 130,000 employees worldwide. We gained access to the Danish branch of the company that has about 600 employees. Most of the employees in the Danish branch are located in three main offices across the country. Yammer was adopted as part of a company-wide upgrade to the Office 365 software in September 2013. The company had previously used Lotus Notes as a communication tool and Yammer was introduced as a supporting technology for the implementation of the new Office 365 system. Since its introduction, the application of Yammer has been extended across a few departments in HighPower and is now used to support a number of projects and workgroups. BetterHealth is a non-profit, research-based organization that operates within the domains of healthcare research, preventive medicine, and patient support. The organization consists of a large number of scientific researchers, including doctors, chemists, and biologists, as well as administrative and business divisions. It also includes a large number of volunteer workers. The IT department launched Yammer in November 2013 with the long-term vision to nurture knowledge sharing among research staff and volunteers as well as to improve the organizational-wide coordination of work. In the short-term, the IT department uses Yammer to manage projects and to become familiar with the technology prior to introducing it to the entire organization. An overview of the three case organizations is shown in Table 2: 309 Table 2: Overview of Case Organizations TopConsulting HighPower BetterHealth Business Area IT Consultancy for Microsoft Solutions Power and automation technology Healthcare research and development Organization Type Consulting Manufacturing Applied research Number of Employees 43 employees 600 employees (local), 130,000 employees (global) 300 employees and about 40,000 volunteers Yammer Implementation July 2012 September 2013 November 2013 Yammer is an ESM technology that provides employees the opportunity to connect with each other, share information across teams, coordinate work, and organize projects (Yammer 2015). The Yammer platform bolsters the web of relationships among the employees of an organization by adding social networking functionalities to the routine communication flows in the organization. For example, it provides an AllCompany news feed, where organizational members post and comment on a variety of topics. In addition, the platform promotes the creation of discussion groups that are designed for addressing specific topics and interests. Users can set up and join groups, and they can follow other users or groups based on specific interests. They can also create a personal profile on Yammer and subsequently receive a personalized news feed. 3.2 Data Collection We initiated a meeting with the persons responsible for the Yammer adoption in each of the case organizations. At the meeting, we asked questions about the motivation for implementing Yammer, the company strategy with regard to promoting Yammer use, and their overall experiences with the technology. We explained that our research is geared to gaining insights into how organizations can generate value by incorporating Yammer into their work practices. Once 310 access was gained, we signed a confidentiality contract and presented a detailed plan for data collection and dissemination of the findings. In both research phases, we used three main data collection methods, as follows: interviews, mining of posts and comments, and observations. The triangulation of the three data collection methods provided a richer picture of the revealed controversies and added another layer of validity to the findings. We conducted interviews with organizational members in each case organization to gain insights into the way they make sense of and reflect upon their activities and interactions with colleagues on Yammer. Inspired by the controversy analysis approach (Latour 1988, 2005; Venturini 2010), the interviews were designed to explore points of contention and disagreement situations in which the interactions and opinions were made explicit in the ESM communication threads. We started by interviewing the participants who were most active on the Yammer platform within each of the case organizations. In-depth interviews were conducted for a duration of twenty minutes to one hour. The interviews were carried out on-site at the three case organizations by one of the researchers. As the interviews progressed, so did our knowledge about which organizational members to approach with regard to the information we sought. The interview protocol was designed to elicit relevant personal stories and insights about Yammer and its consequences for the social making and work practices in the organization. We asked organizational members to share their positive and negative experiences with Yammer. For example, we asked the interviewees to describe an episode in which Yammer had enabled them to connect with their colleagues and we followed up with ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. We also asked interviewees to talk about the core functionalities of Yammer, and to reflect on how and why they were important or inconsequential to them. The interview protocol was subject to modifications over the course of the study as we learned more about the Yammer-related practices. We also used the interview sessions to inquire about overall dispositions to online behaviors. For example, we asked about their motivation for posting information on Yammer, reasons for praising or reprimanding a colleague online, situations in which they would comment on a post, etc. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim to enable detailed coding and analysis. 311 In addition to conducting interviews, we logged all posts/comments on Yammer in each case organization that dated back to the time of its implementation; totals of posts and comments are provided in Table 3. We exported the data into an Excel spreadsheet and organized it by content, author, and date/time of the post. The Excel spreadsheet gave an overview of the aggregated raw data; however, in order to preserve the context of each post, we also extracted entire threads of posts including comments in PDF file format, representing the conversations and interactions exactly as they were displayed on the Yammer platform. The PDF files served to elicit and map the threads of the social fabric in TopConsulting that were used to answer the first research question. The Excel spreadsheet served to code and unveil the patterns of the social fabric associated with collaboration in HighPower and BetterHealth, which were used to answer our second research question. Online and on-site observations within the three case organizations provided another source of data. The observations were inspired by netnographic and ethnographic approaches (Kozinets 2010) and were conducted in acknowledgement of the unique features of computer-mediated technology when observing everyday activities in organizations. At TopConsulting and BetterHealth, we obtained a personal login to the Yammer platform that enabled us to track and participate in live online conversations. We used the Yammer profile to announce our presence on the platform to the organizational members. At HighPower, we did not obtain a personal login to Yammer; instead, we received extractions of Yammer data in PDF files on a recurring basis. The online observations gave us an opportunity to experience firsthand how organizational communication and social interactions unfolded in the three case organizations. On-site observations consisted of engaging with organizational members over lunch, at company events, and as a part of the everyday work activities. At these occasions, organizational members would discuss and reflect upon their daily use of Yammer. Immediately following each observation session, we made extensive field notes to document what had been observed and to detail any interpretations or questions that had arisen from the observation (Schultze 2000). Table 3 summarizes the data sources. 318 4.1.2 Necessity – Frill Evaluation Thread The Necessity-Frill Evaluation thread arises from a disagreement about the need to use Yammer. In TopConsulting, the management team positions Yammer as the main communication channel and expects employees to engage with it on a daily basis. Yet, some employees disregard this expectation and rarely use Yammer because they consider it as a non-essential add-on technology among many other technologies in the company. We elicited the Necessity-Frill Evaluation thread through a controversy analysis, as illustrated in Table 6. The local disagreement emerged from divergent perceptions about the necessity of using Yammer. Whereas the HR manager expected that the messages shared on Yammer would be read by everyone, the consultant’s behavior revealed that not everybody in the company checked Yammer on a regular basis. The different dispositions toward the use of Yammer evoked a public debate that was fueled by the management’s decision to constitute Yammer as the main communication channel even though some organizational members preferred receiving information via email. The debate was not settled with new formal rules and it was left to the individual to decide how and if he or she wants to engage on the platform. However, the performed practice reflected a status quo in which Yammer remained the de facto channel for communication from the management team, and individuals had to engage with Yammer in order to stay informed. The analysis of this controversy uncovered the Necessity-Frill Evaluation thread that highlights how the extent of the social interactions on the platform is dependent on the evaluation of the Yammer platform as a necessity or as a frill. 319 Table 6: Debating Necessity and Frill Evaluation on the Yammer Platform Disagreement Disagreeing on the required need to use Yammer Public Debate Settlement Engaging with Yammer remains optional, but important information is distributed solely on Yammer. Performed Practice Engaging with Yammer is de facto a necessity for staying informed. 320 4.1.3 General – Specific Context Thread The General-Specific Context thread stems from a disagreement about the inclination to share with everyone on the Yammer platform. While some organizational members share much information indiscriminately with the entire organization on the Yammer platform, others question if the information shared should be addressed to everyone or be targeted to specific recipients. We elicited the General-Specific Context thread through a controversy analysis, as illustrated in Table 7. The local disagreement arose from the posts and comments concerning buying and selling products on the Yammer platform, which made some less-interested individuals question the appropriateness of these specific conversations on the general platform. The amplification and ongoing dissemination of posts on the Yammer platform ignited a public debate between those who deemed it appropriate to address the selling and buying exchange to everyone in the organization and those who thought it should be placed in a designated group. A settlement was reached by moving specific conversations of limited interest from the general context into specific groups on Yammer. Subsequently, the performed practice prescribed using Yammer as a public space as well as a place to form special interest groups. The analysis of this controversy revealed the GeneralSpecific Context thread that highlights how the social interactions depend on whether the exchange addresses the general audience or a specific interest group on the platform. 321 Table 7: Debating General and Specific Context on the Yammer Platform Disagreement Disagreeing on the inclination to share with everyone. Public Debate Settlement Specific conversations of limited interest are moved from the general context into specific groups on Yammer. Performed Practice Specific interest groups are set up for topics of limited interest. 322 4.1.4 News – Chatter Perception Thread The News-Chatter Perception thread stems from a disagreement about the relevance of certain content on the Yammer platform. In TopConsulting, some organizational members perceive the ongoing sharing of updates and activities on Yammer as relevant news, while for others the continuous stream of information is largely considered as irrelevant chatter. We elicited the News-Chatter Perception thread through a controversy analysis, as illustrated in Table 8. By design, the Yammer platform facilitates the distribution and sharing of grassroots, generated information, which naturally is more relevant to some and less to others. The local disagreement emerged from this inherent property of the information shared on Yammer. The HR manager would update Yammer with the latest news to keep people informed. However, whereas the sales manager referred to the Yammer newsfeed as the “company newspaper” and valued all the shared information on the platform, the two senior consultants were aggravated by the continuous stream of irrelevant information. The different perceptions evoked a public debate about effective communication and information overload. A settlement was reached by acknowledging that the perception of what is news and what is chatter is subjective and contextual. Subsequently, the performed practice prescribed that individuals were expected to filter and consume information on Yammer according to what was relevant to them. The analysis of this controversy revealed the News – Chatter Perception thread that highlights how relevance is in the eye of the beholder and consequently, how social interactions on Yammer are driven by personal dispositions toward the news feeds. 323 Table 8: Debating News and Chatter Perception on the Yammer Platform Disagreement Disagreeing on the relevance of certain content on Yammer Public Debate Public Debat e Settlement The perception of what is news and what is chatter on Yammer is subjective. Performed Practice Individuals filter and consume information on Yammer according to what is relevant to them. 324 4.1.5 Praise – Reprimand Giving Thread The Praise-Reprimand Giving thread stems from a disagreement about the nature of feedback on the Yammer platform. Whereas the praising functionality available on Yammer is generally appreciated, some organizational members also use the platform to reprimand colleagues. We elicited the Praise-Reprimand Giving thread through a controversy analysis, as illustrated in Table 9. The local disagreement was spurred by the difference in how organizational members used the Yammer platform to provide feedback and voice their dispositions toward others. The Yammer platform encouraged praising behavior through its embedded praise function (Yammer 2015); however, some organizational members also took the initiative to reprimand colleagues through posts on the platform. This evoked a public debate between some individuals who enjoyed being able to ‘vent’ on Yammer, and others who deemed it inappropriate to tell people off in public. The settlement at TopConsulting was a compromise where praise was opted for and reprimand was tolerated. The performed practice on the Yammer platform endorsed positive deviance when relating publicly to others’ behavior, while also tolerating the reprimands that occurred on the platform. The analysis of this controversy revealed the Praise – Reprimands Giving thread that highlights how the social interactions on Yammer depend on striking an appropriate balance between praise and reprimand behavior. 325 Table 9: Debating Praise and Reprimand Giving on the Yammer Platform Disagreement Disagreeing on the appropriateness of negative feedback on Yammer Public Debate Publ ic Deb at e Settlement A balance between praise and reprimand is established, favoring praise but tolerating reprimand. Performed Practice Praise is used more frequently than reprimand on the Yammer platform. 326 Overall, the controversy analysis uncovers five threads of the social fabric that characterize the prevailing beliefs and practices of interactions between organizational members on the ESM platform. Table 10 summarizes the threads. Table 10: Summary of the Analysis and the Emerging Social Fabric Threads Threads of Social Fabric Professional – Social Content Necessity – Frill Evaluation General – Specific Context News – Chatter Perception Praise – Reprimands Giving Disagreement Disagreeing on the appropriatene ss of social content on Yammer. Disagreeing on the required need to use Yammer. Disagreeing on the inclination to share with everyone on Yammer. Disagreeing on the relevance of certain content on Yammer. Disagreeing on the nature of feedback on Yammer. Public Debate Debating the mixing of professional and social content on Yammer. Debating the positioning of Yammer as the central communicati on channel. Debating who to address on Yammer with what information. Debating effective communicati on and information overload on Yammer. Debating the legitimacy of reprimanding on Yammer. Settlement Accepting social content on the Yammer platform. Engaging with Yammer remains ‘formally’ optional. Moving conversations of limited interest from the general context into specific groups. Recognizing news and chatter perceptions as subjective and contextual. Favoring positive deviance in feedback giving on Yammer. Performed Practice The content posted on Yammer is of both a professional and social nature. Management communicate s solely on Yammer, turning it into a necessity for staying informed. Special interest groups are established on Yammer. Individuals filter and consume information on Yammer according to what is relevant to them. Praise is used more frequently than reprimands on the Yammer platform. 327 4.2 Identifying Coexistence of Social Fabric Threads Eliciting the five threads of the social fabric (Phase 1/Step 1 provides insights into the beliefs and practices that shape and reshape the interactions on the Yammer platform. Next, we explored the relationships between the social fabric threads and looked for instances in which they were highly related to one another (Phase 1/Step 2). Accordingly, we coded the social fabric threads in posts and comments on Yammer and developed a matrix that presents the number of times in which the threads coexist in the same data point. To start off this process, we developed a coding scheme that is based on the two inherent manifestations of each social fabric thread, as outlined in Table 11. Table 11: Coding Scheme for Tracing the Threads of the Social Fabric Thread Thread Manifestation Description* Professional – Social Content Professional content Posts on work-related tasks and knowledge Social content Posts on social events, humor, private pictures, and other social content Necessity – Frill Evaluation Necessity evaluation Posts from management team sharing critical information and updates Frill evaluation Posts and conversations initiated by individuals General - Specific Context General context Posts addressing all members Specific context Posts addressing one individual or interest group News – Chatter Perception News perception Posts that are recognized by others through likes and/or comments Chatter perception Posts that are not recognized by others Praise – Reprimand s Giving Praise giving Posts praising colleagues with or without the praise icon Reprimand giving Post telling people off or criticizing *The descriptions are based on the performed practice revealed in the controversy analysis. The systematic coding of the posts and comments on the Yammer platform displayed how more than one social fabric thread would often be associated with the same data point. For example, the post from Senior Consultant RS to the 334 perceived as chatter for those organizational members not directly involved. The use of Yammer to initiate conversations with specific organizational members creates a distinctive relationship. 4.4.5 The Corrective Pattern Finally, the pattern consisting of chatter perception, reprimand giving and professional content creates relationships of a corrective nature that are characterized by organizational members telling others off on the Yammer platform; yet, the reprimanding behavior is generally not commented on and is largely ignored as chatter. An example of corrective behavior is this post in the Yammer platform: Solution Provider PJ to ‘AllCompany’ When you come to work at the office, could you please NOT pull out the cables from the docking station and if you do then remember to put them back when you are done. Then the rest of us won’t have to spend all of our time navigating the wire jungle before we can get to work. (Yammer post and comment, December 6 2013) The example shows that the solution provider tries to correct the behavior of other organizational members when communicating his dissatisfaction with the way in which his colleagues are re-arranging the wires at the office. The reprimanding behavior concerning a professional issue which is not commented on creates a corrective relationship on the Yammer platform. In summary, the analysis of the five triangular patterns of the social fabric characterized the distinct nature of each pattern and provided further insight into the relationships among them. Subsequently, the social fabric framework in Figure 3 portrays the five patterns of relationships that characterize the social fabric on ESM, thereby answering our first research question. 335 Figure 3: The Social Fabric Framework 5. Social Fabric of Collaboration We developed the social fabric framework as an instrument that can reflect the social making of organizational work in the context of ESM platforms. Next, we use the social fabric framework to explore systematically the social making of collaboration as a particular instance of organizational work and to address the second research question: How can social fabric explain collaboration on enterprise social media? Hence, we juxtaposed collaborative initiatives on the Yammer platform in the two cases of HighPower and BetterHealth by creating 336 visual representations of their respective social fabric configurations and by reflecting on their implications for collaboration. To visualize the social fabric in the collaborative initiatives, we followed the three-step approach of phase 2. We identified one longstanding collaborative initiative in each of the case organizations, and collected posts and comments going back in time to when the collaboration was initiated on the Yammer platform (Phase 2/Step 1). We then used the developed social fabric framework to identify and code the social thread orientation of each post or comment in the respective collaborative initiative (Phase 2/Step 2). We used the coding scheme in Table 11 to associate social fabric thread manifestations with the posts and/or comments. Based on this we calculated the relative prevalence of each thread manifestation and used this ratio to generate a visual representation of the social fabric associated with each collaborative initiative (see also Cover Chapter appendix 8, Table 2). The visual representations were used to compare the social fabric configurations and to theorize about the underlying dynamics of collaboration on Yammer (Phase 2/Step 3). Table 13 shows a comparison of the two collaborative initiatives. 337 Table 13: Juxtaposing the Social Fabric Associated with Two Collaborative Initiatives on Yammer HighPower BetterHealth Collaborative Initiative Characteristics Formulated purpose: forum where organizational members can collaborate on solving specific problems related to the deployment of Office 365. Large scale: 120 users of the new system. Project-based: until implementation is complete. Dispersed group: located in offices across Denmark. Unformulated purpose: forum where organizational members can collaborate on solving ongoing technical problems. Small scale: 16 members of the IT group. On-going: indefinite. Close proximity: located in the same office. Social Fabric Configuration Associated with the Collaborative Initiative* Directive – Informative Configuration Directive – Distinctive Configuration * See data in Appendix 2. Comparing the social fabric configuration in the two collaborative initiatives on the Yammer platforms at HighPower and BetterHealth provides insight into the nature of the underlying relationships that influence collaboration on the platform. 338 Next, we introduce the two collaborative initiatives, the social fabric configuration associated with them, and their implications for collaboration. 5.1 Introducing the Two Collaborative Initiatives in HighPower and BetterHealth The purpose of the collaboration at HighPower was to create a forum where organizational members can collaborate on solving specific problems related to the deployment of Office 365. The collaboration involved 120 users that were dispersed over different locations. The collaboration at HighPower proved to be highly successful in engaging and connecting the dispersed employees and, even when the implementation was completed, the Yammer group remained in use as a repository of information. In comparison, the collaboration at BetterHealth proved to be less successful in engaging organizational members on the platform. The purpose of the initiative was to enable organizational members in the IT department to collaborate on solving ongoing technical problems. The forum had 16 members that were co-located in the same building. The initiative in BetterHealth failed to attract the expected attention and resulted in limited engagement. 5.2 The Social Fabric of Collaboration in HighPower and BetterHealth In HighPower, the visual representation showed that the social fabric was forged by two main patterns of relationships; the directive and informative. The directive pattern emerged from the distribution of highly relevant professionally-oriented content in a general context. In particular, the high number of posts from the administrator about progress on the system implementation reinforced the directive pattern. The social fabric also revealed an informative pattern that emerged from the information that was acknowledged as news. Specifically, the members praised the posts that shared Office 365 tips and tricks. The social fabric also showed traces of a distinctive pattern in the collaboration. These occurred when one member posted a very specific question aimed at one or two specific members. Lastly, a mild manifestation of the corrective pattern emerged when 339 reprimands surfaced with regard to questions being asked that had already been answered. The social fabric at BetterHealth was also forged by the directive pattern; however, in this initiative, it was coupled with a distinctive pattern of relationships, creating some challenges for the collaboration. The directive pattern emerged when the IT manager encouraged the members to read and take note of the updates and articles he posted. The distinctive pattern surfaced when two members would engage in brief conversations referring to activities that had taken place outside the platform specific to their own experience and work. This pattern was reinforced by the close physical proximity of the organizational members involved in the collaboration. They would engage in offline discussions and then post related comments and updates in the Yammer group. The social fabric configuration of both a directive and a distinctive pattern at BetterHealth revealed a discrepancy between the IT manager’s perception of the platform as a formal communication channel to the entire group and the organizational members who treated the platform as a space for one-on-one engagement and collaboration. The configuration of the directive and the distinctive patterns in BetterHealth underscored different perceptions of Yammer and hindered the collaboration. 5.3 Implications of the Social Fabric for Collaboration in HighPower and BetterHealth Comparing the two different collaborative initiatives and their corresponding social fabric revealed insights into the dynamics of relationships on the Yammer platform. The analysis showed that different configurations of the social fabric either support or present challenges for the collaboration on Yammer. At HighPower, the dynamics between the directive pattern involving the distribution of messages to the general context, and the informative pattern that emerged when group members openly appreciated this information strengthened the collaborative initiative on the Yammer platform. In contrast, the social fabric at BetterHealth demonstrated that the directive pattern involving the wide dissemination of highly relevant professional content was in conflict with the distinctive pattern in which a 340 limited number of group members initiated specific conversations. Comparing the social fabric associated with the two collaborative initiatives, we observe how both are forged by a directive pattern; however, the outcome of the collaboration appears to be dependent on the configuration of the dominant patterns. Hence, the social fabric framework provides a structured approach to explore the social making of the organization and to explain the nature of organizational work on ESM and its idiosyncrasies. 6. Discussion In this paper, we develop and present the social fabric framework as a structured approach to describe the social making of organizational work in the context of ESM platforms. Subsequently, this study contributes to the body of knowledge on ESM and collaboration by highlighting how social relationships can serve as a surrogate for the extent and nature of collaboration on ESM platforms. In particular, the study makes three key contributions as follows. First, the study offers the social fabric framework as a way of characterizing the dynamic relationships among organizational members on ESM platforms and providing a rendition thereof. We argue that in order to understand the prospects of ESM and the role that they play in organizations, we must move beyond studying the functionalities of these technologies towards understanding the social interactions and relationships that bring life to these platforms and serve as their raison d'etre. This is supported by earlier studies that emphasize the dynamics and fluidity of online communities (Faraj et al. 2011; Ma and Agarwal 2007), suggesting that relationships between members online enable the development of communities of practice that underlie organizational work (Faraj et al. 2011; Johnson 2001; Wenger 1996, 2000). To make these relationships explicit in the context of ESM, we introduced and defined social fabric as a metaphor that describes the threads of relationships between people in a collective. The social fabric is shaped and reshaped by the prevailing beliefs and practices in a collective as well as its technological milieu. Subsequently, the suggested social fabric framework provides a way to 341 systematically identify and characterize the underlying configurations of social fabric patterns within and across organizations. Second, the configurations of the social fabric outline the unique nature of collaboration on ESM platforms and provide a language to make sense of their respective underpinnings. We argue that the social fabric framework can be used to systematically explore the social making of collaboration as well as other particular instances of organizational work. This premise is in line with previous studies that accentuate how the implementation of ESM platforms provides an opportunity to re-examine the nature of organizational work and call for further investigation of its particular mechanics (Leonardi et al. 2013; Majchrzak et al. 2013; Treem and Leonardi 2012). We provided insights into the foundation of collaborative practices on ESM platforms and demonstrated that the social fabric is contextual and unique in every collective. Hence, the explicit representation of the social fabric provides a language for articulating the dynamics of work and collaboration, which can serve as the basis for a continuous dialogue about how to maintain and develop joint initiatives on ESM platforms. In essence, the social fabric framework illustrates how organizational work is, to a large degree, a symphony of relationships that are enacted and performed by the organizational members. Third, the study demonstrates the analytical potential of the controversy analysis approach as a method that can be used to elicit and investigate the beliefs and practices that are embedded in the social fabric of an organization. We argue that given the fluidity and implicit nature of the beliefs and practices, we need a procedure that can elicit moments or instances in which they become explicit. Previous studies have suggested that examining controversies is a way of making explicit the opinions and meanings that underlie interactions in a social world (Latour 1988, 2005). A controversy starts with a disagreement and ends when some form of agreement is reached among the involved parties (Venturini 2010). To investigate controversies, we built on the controversy perspective and designed a circular process of controversy analysis in which a ‘local disagreement’ evokes a ‘public debate’, which at one point reaches a ‘settlement’ that eventually becomes manifested in the ‘performed practice’ of the organization. Thus, the controversy analysis serves as a structured inquiry process for revealing the social fabric 342 threads that underscore the social making of collectives and the foundation of organizational work. 6.1 Implications for Practice Capitalizing on online collaborative tools to create a supportive work environment that stimulates the development of skills and organizational arrangements in which collaborative activities can flourish remains a key challenge in many organizations (Thomas and Bostrom 2008). While managers appreciate the technical capabilities of ESM platforms, they are less aware of the effect of the technology on the dynamics of work and meeting the objectives of the organization. Investing in online collaborative tools to nurture the work environment is insufficient; however, more than merely technical infrastructure is needed to cultivate a fruitful joint coordinated effort of individuals or groups. This study provides managers with a framework for diagnosing the social milieu of their organization and making sense thereof. The findings demonstrate that if managers want to use ESM platforms to support work and generate organizational value, they would benefit from making the social fabric in their organization explicit. Moreover, managers can use the social fabric framework and the five exemplary patterns as a springboard for a collective dialogue about the prevailing work practices and the organizational culture, as well as a basis for organizational development and change. The study surfaced a recurring motif with regard to the governance of the ESM platform in the organization. A prevalent debate in all the case organizations dealt with the question of whether or not to establish a formal code of conduct on the Yammer platform. The study exhibits that the ESM platform enabled the creation of top-down, regulated, and directive relationships, on the one hand, as well as bottom-up, self-regulated, and distinctive relationships, on the other hand. This indicates that strict regulation is likely to be counterproductive, and striking a proper balance between general and specific context or between professional and social content is best left to the tacit hand of the social processes among the organizational members. The power of ESM platforms is based on how well they become embedded within the organization’s social fabric. 343 6.2 Limitations and Future Research We have studied the social making of organizations on ESM platforms through the development and application of a social fabric framework. The study has a number of limitations that pave the way for further research. First, the study is centered on the use of the particular ESM technology Yammer in the three case organizations. While we intentionally opted to control variation by keeping the ESM platforms identical in the selected case organizations, we believe that it would be beneficial to investigate the use of the social fabric framework in the context of other ESM platforms, such as Jive and Tibbr. Studying these platforms could provide additional insight into the social fabric framework’s applicability and validity. Second, we use the social fabric to explain the underlying dynamics of collaboration as an instance of organizational work on the ESM platform. However, other facets of organizational life could be explored, such as the role of the social fabric in knowledge generation and sharing, coordination, and performance of groups and individuals on ESM. Future studies could also include other types of organizations in terms of size, industry, and structure, as well as other cultural settings. Broadening the scope may reveal new configurations of social fabric that influence organizational practices. Further, the second phase of the analysis revealed how different configurations of the social fabric emerged in the two collaborative initiatives. Reflecting on the characteristics of the different collaborative initiatives, it appears that controlling for other factors, such as the size of the group, location, and the stage of adoption of the ESM platform, could provide further insights into the social fabric formation. For example, HighPower that had used the Yammer tool the longest appeared to have a different social fabric compared to BetterHealth that had only limited experience with the use of the platform. Future studies could include investigations of the social fabric at different stages and scales of the ESM platform use. Third, our study was conducted after the implementation of the ESM platform in the three case organizations. 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