Accept or Reject? Predicting Ideation Outcomes through Enterprise Social Media

Abstract

Abstract. Implementing social media in the workplace may make it easier for employees to participate in knowledge sharing activities such as Q&A and ideation. However, vetting the quality of answers and ideas becomes more complex when anyone in the company can contribute. Research on the use of social media for Q&A has shown that certain characteristics and reputation algorithms can help determine the best answers. Less is known about the ideation process and the way it plays out in social media. This paper explores the use of enterprise social media (ESM) for ideation by employees in a large Russian organization distributed across nine time zones. In particular, we explore which characteristics of both ideas and their contributors predict whether ideas get accepted or rejected. Our analysis is based on logistic regression analysis of a sample of 488 ideas contributed in an ESM tool used in the organization as well as a content analysis of the types of ideas generated. Our results suggest that rather than being truly democratic and decentralized, ideation in ESM is driven by those in (or proximate to) positions of organizational power.

Employee engagement in generating ideas on internal social media

“…It can be argued that the persistence affordance provided the opportunity for employees to reflect more and to better prepare their idea suggestions or comments, as all the written, online multi-vocal dialogues were stored and accessible at any time. In that sense, employees were not constrained by synchronous or spontaneous interactions on ISM (Rozaidi et al, 2017). In contrast, not feeling available because of prioritizing other tasks or no match between competences and ideation topic may hinder employee engagement in ideation on ISM.…”

Knowledge Sharing Through Enterprise Social Media in a Telecommunications Context

“…It is an important asset for individuals in leveraging their social recognition and status among their peers (Davenport & Prusak, 1998;Kankanhalli et al, 2005;Welschen, 2014). Using the setting of a large Russian telecommunications company, Rozaidi et al (2017) stressed how contributor status level motivates employees to use ESM for sharing ideas and Q&A sessions.…”

“…As such, social media embraces tools such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tencent, and WeChat. Enterprise social media (ESM) has been introduced to democratize participation among employees to share experience and knowledge across organizational boundaries without being constrained by hierarchical and geographical boundaries (Lacosta & Thomas, 2020;Rozaidi et al, 2017). ESM consists of web-based platforms that allow active participation between co-workers through posting, editing, viewing, and sorting text and files with a specific co-worker or broadcasting a message to anyone in the organization at any time (Rahman, 2020;Wei et al, 2020;Leonardi et al, 2013).…”

“…In another study, McKinsey observed an increase in knowledge worker productivity of around 20-25% because of using social technologies (Bughin et al, 2012). Thus, enterprise social media (ESM) has been introduced to democratize participation among employees to share experience and knowledge across organizational boundaries without being constrained by hierarchical and geographical boundaries (Rozaidi et al, 2017). The need for such research has also been highlighted by and Rozaidi et al (2017).…”

Enterprise Social Network Applications: Enhancing and Driving Innovation Culture and Productivity Through Digital Technologies

“…Ideation can be organically led by employees or systematically governed by the management team. Regardless, the goal of the ideation process is to produce as many good ideas as possible for subsequent selection and decision-making [50]. By producing more ideas, organizations increase the likelihood of producing new products or services [9].…”