Digitally enabling social networks: resolving IT–culture conflict

Abstract

Digitally enabled social networks, encompassing social media applications such as wikis, blogs and social networking sites, have the potential to dramatically change organizational culture by building communities, promoting information sharing and fostering collaboration. Although organizational social media site (hereinafter SMS) implementations are proliferating, these technologies often do not harmoniously combine with traditional organizational cultures. To shed light on social media's impact on organizational life, this paper draws on an interpretive case study to investigate a global security company's efforts to implement a digitally enabled social network as part of a cultural change effort. Conceptually, based on the theory of IT–culture conflict, this paper underscores the interplay between organizational culture and technology. Our study finds that conflicts can arise between employees' workplace values and the values they ascribe to social media. This can result in an IT–culture system conflict, which organizations can address using policy‐based, socialization‐based and leadership‐based mechanisms aimed at bringing cultural values and social media site values into alignment.

Advances in Social Media Research: Past, Present and Future

“…Up until 2015, about eight studies analysed the negative stigma attached to using social media at the workplace (for instance, Koch et al 2013). While a couple of studies also revealed the positive side of social media (for instance, Lu et al 2015), most were seen discussing its ill-effects on work outputs, routine performance, and clash of notions in the personal and professional space (for instance, Ali-Hassan et al 2015).…”

“…In a contrasting case, Cao et al (2015) suggest that social media has the potential to build employees' social capital to positively influence their knowledge integration. In discussing the impact of social media on organizational life, Koch et al (2013) find that conflicts can stem between workplace values and the values these employees ascribe to social media.…”

“…Van Osch and Steinfield (2016) suggest that future researchers should explore the potential of Enterprise Social Media to gain insights into the tools that support disentanglement of team boundary spanning. Finally, researchers have Mettler and Winter (2016) Design science approach (1) Qualitative methods Miranda et al (2016); Huang et al (2015); Karoui et al (2015); Trier and Richter (2015); Kallinikos and Tempini (2014); Koch et al (2013); Koch et al (2012); Griffiths and Light (2008) Case study (8) Barrett et al (2016); Schlagwein and Hu (2016); Subramaniam and Nandhakumar (2013) Interviews (3) Dong and Wu (2015) Event study (1) Chiu and Huang (2015) Survey (1) Kreps (2010) Theoretical ( Hildebrand et al (2013) Field study (1) established that the lifecycle of information and communication technologies tend to be emancipatory in their infancy but eventually evolve into hegemonic tools. They warn social media policymakers to be wary of reproducing this pattern with digital media; the recommendation is to involve more citizens in the development of Internet governance framework, rather than resting decisions with the members of political or economic power (Miranda et al 2016).…”

Enterprise Social Networks: Status Quo of Current Research and Future Research Directions

“…Another area of interest relates to how ESN impact the interplay between single organisational sub-cultures [55]. Kuegler et al call for the evaluation of organisational climate and further determinants of the ESN implementation process [56].…”

IT control over social media technology: A systems view of social media management

“…Koch and Gonzalez [14] describe this internal tension within a single organization which they call an IT-culture conflict. Brady [15] found that adopting IT-driven applications change processes, roles, and requisite IT knowledge both among marketers and marketing managers.…”