IT, communication, and social networks

1. IT, communication, and social networks I. Social networks • How they work • How people use them II. Social networksand business • Digital business strategy • Organizational wikis III. Virtual management • Knowledge sharing and virtual teams

2. I. Social networks How they work There are clearly observable patterns and routines in social life They connect different individuals, groups, and organizations to each other What are the origins of these routines? Sociologists refer to them as “social structure” Relationships among different parts of society Patterns and routines that persist over time Norms, rules, guidelines that influence our actions

3. I. Social networks A social network has observable patterns of interaction and communication among people, groups and institutions Each is a “node” in the network Connections (ties) among nodes vary widely Technical: intensity, duration, distance Strong ties: tight connections (less useful!) Weak ties: loose connections Social: familial, friendship, legal, business, interests Social capital:the advantage created by location in a network

4. I. Social networks From Rheingold’s “smart mob” site, a simple network: Central node! www.smartmobs.com/archives/images/friendster.gif

5. I. Social networks A complex network: Asian Pacific Leadership program alumni education.eastwestcenter.org/aplp/a_images/sna_01.jpg

6. I. Social networks A really complex network of people linked through the Ryzeblog www.graphpaper.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/RYZEBlogTribe3.gif

7. I. Social networks Why are social networks valuable? Real-world networks are neither completely ordered nor completely random and exhibit properties of both If you are linked to multiple networks with weak ties, you have access to more information and resources This is better than having many ties in a single network This also works for groups and organizations Uses Exchanging information and resources Seeking and providing ideas, critiques, input

8. I. Social networks Computer networks become social networks when they connect people and organizations They support new forms of interaction Virtual teams and communities, CSCW, remote work, distance education, online gaming They sustain strong, intermediate, and weak ties They provide access to information and social support in specialized and broadly based relationships This can involve the use of social software Wellman, B. (2001). Computer networks as social networks. Science, 293(5537), 2031-2034.

9. I. Social networks Computer-based social networks differ from off-line social networks Boundaries are more permeable, vague and overlapping Interactions are with diverse others Linkages switch between multiple networks Hierarchies are flatter and more recursive Work and community networks are diffuse and sparsely knit People and organizations can more easily extend and sustain their networks

10. I. Social networks It has become the basis for a business model orangecopper.com/blog/list-of -all-top-social-networking- websites-as-on-2010

11. I. Social networks Faceted identity, faceted lives: Social and technical issues with being yourself online The authors challenge the assumption that social networks should be based on an assumption of a single stable asocial identity Survey data indicated that many people use a range of strategies to manage faceted identities ~ To what extent can your social identity be described as faceted? Does this make sense? ~ How does boundary maintenance shift when moving from offline to online

12. I. Social networks What are key issues we experience managing personal boundaries within and across social technologies? How do we facet our identities and lives, and how do we express them through use of email and Facebook? They offer a theoretical framework for understanding errors in assumptions about the singularity of identity Important because these assumptions are inscribed into the sharing models of social technology systems Based on survey data from a sample of 631 Farnham, S. and Churchill, E.F. (2011). Faceted identity, faceted lives: social and technical issues with being yourself online. Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work. 359-368

13. I. Social networks Assumption: SNS embody assumptions about the ways in which people relate to others It shapes how we represent ourselves to others online Privacy and access control settings shape our choices How and with whom to share content Whether others are allowed to see or contact us or be aware of our ongoing activities Based on an assumption that a single unified user identity is appropriate and sufficient This works for much of our professional and academic lives

14. I. Social networks Does one identity fit all situations? Especially as as we create connections to others from multiple areas of our lives Better assumption: our lives are ‘faceted’ We vary in the extent to which our lives and identities are faceted We maintain social boundaries and show different facets according to the current social situation We segment our lives into bounded areas because various facets of our identity are incompatible This is impression management

15. I. Social networks Social identity theory: we have many identities in our self-concepts Some are personal and idiosyncratic, and some shaped by social context We have multiple social roles that weseparate but can integrate if we so choose Findings Faceted lives are correlated with role incompatibility Single, working men had the highest level of incompatible facets Family is an important context for sharing online

16. I. Social networks Findings Email allows controlled sharing: bonding capital or strong ties) It was a preferred form of communication for private sharing across facets of life SNS are based on a broadcast model: bridging social capital and weak ties A higher level of facet incompatibility was correlated with increased email usage and worry about sharing in the context of social networks

17. I. Social networks But there’s a backlash! www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/ joyarchives/529.html www.thegestalt.org/simon/images/ antisocial.gif

18. I. Social networks Where do I sign up? http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/ 2011/06/01/social-networking-has- turned-us-into-an-anti-social-species/

19. IT, communication, and social networks I. Social networks • How they work • How people use them II. Social networks and business • Digital business strategy • Organizational wikis III. Virtual management • Knowledge sharing and virtual teams

20. II. Social networksand business • Digital business strategy: Toward a next generation of insights • The authors propose a new role for IT strategy where is is on equal footing with business strategy • They explore the scope, scale, speed and sources of value creation involved in what they call digital business strategy • ~ Does this approach make sense? How digital does a business have to be for this to work? • ~ What are some examples of companies that have done this well? Poorly?

21. II. Social networks and business • Typically, business strategy has directed IT strategy • Recently, the business infrastructure has become digital with increased interconnections among products, processes, and services • Digital technologies are transforming business strategies, business processes, firm capabilities, products and services • Key interfirm relationships are changing in extended business networks • Organizational practices are changing • Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O.A., Pavlou, P. A., and Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: Toward a next generation of insights, MIS Quarterly, 37(2), 471-482.

22. II. Social networks and business • Changes: lower price/performance levels of computing (hardware and software) • Global connectivity through standard protocols (Internet and mobile web) • Transforming the structure of social relationships in both the consumer and the enterprise space with social media and social networking • Products and services increasingly have embedded digital technologies • It is becoming increasingly more difficult to disentangle digital products and services from their underlying IT infrastructures

23. II. Social networks and business • The response must be developing a digital business strategy • Organizational strategy formulated and executed by leveraging digital resources to create differential value • Scope of digital business strategy • It transcends traditional functional areas, such as marketing, procurement, logistics, operations… • Also various IT-enabled business processes, such as order management, customer service • Includes digitization of products and services and the information around them

24. II. Social networks and business • Relies on rich information exchanges through digital platforms inside and outside organizations • Allow multifunctional strategies and processes to be tightly interconnected with the aid of interfirm IT capabilities • Big data create conditions of information abundance due to the massive amount of detailed (and often ready to analyze) data made available • Digital business strategy extends the scope beyond firm boundaries and supply chains to dynamic ecosystems that cross traditional industry boundaries

25. II. Social networks and business • Scale of digital business strategy • Increased availability and reliance on cloud computing services allows firms to scale infrastructure up or down • Enables on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources • As products and services become digital and connected, network effects are a key differentiator/driver of value creation • Scaling will require understanding how to develop the organizational capabilities to harness the huge quantities of heterogeneous data, information, and knowledge that is generated on a continuous basis

26. II. Social networks and business • Speed of digital business strategy • Digital business strategy accelerates the speed of product launches • Also highlights the importance of planned obsolescence • Speeds up decision making, CRM • Creates efficiencies in the supply chain • Leads to more rapid network formation and adaptation

27. II. Social networks and business • The sources of business value creation and capture in digital business strategy • Increased value from capture and analysis of information • Increasing importance of multisided revenue models not just in software • Value through coordinated business models • Value through control of the digital industry architecture

28. II. Social networks and business • Bharadwaj, et al.

29. II. Social networks and business Social networks and leadership: understanding social structure has consequences for organizational survival Requires accurate perception and management of network relations Assumes cognitive structures shape leadership actions Importance of relations between organizational actors who are embedded in multiple social networks Social life is structurally patterned and network connections have social utility (capital) Balkundi, P. and Kilduff, M. (2006). The ties that lead: A social network approach to leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 17(4), 419-439S

30. II. Social networks and business The view of leadership changes from human capital (traits, styles) and situational attributes (task, decision process) of leaders Towards social capital built up around a person Occurs because of social perceptions and actual structure of their networks Ego-networks: immediate social ties shaped to meet leader’s expectations Organizational networks: varying degree of embedding and influence Inter-organizational networks: important for resource flows and environmental control

31. II. Social networks and business Balkundi and Killduff, p. 944

32. II. Social networks and business What are the major costs? Opportunity costs: especially time Translation costs: especially tacit knowledge Maintenance costs: arrangement, information sharing, preparation, monitoring These are influenced by the type of knowledge sought, time constraints, type of decision Lack of structural holes: knowledge workers in cohesive networks may lose the flexibility to build new ties Relational inertia hinders the development of new competencies, impedes learning

33. II. Social networks and business www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/

34. II. Social networks and business In our networks, we form “schema’ about other people Negative relationships: enduring sets of negative judgments, feelings, and intentions toward others Negative encounters do not have to lead to negative relationships Negative relationships may form without negative encounters When people maintain a working relationship and one (or both), for whatever reason, dislikes the other May cross organizational boundaries and power differentials and others may or may not be aware of it

35. II. Social networks and business Negative relationships create social liabilities Strength: intensity of dislike Reciprocity: is the dislike one way or two way? Cognitive awareness: do you know that they don’t like you? Social distance: is it a direct or indirect relationship? Social liability is the combination of these characteristics They develop much faster than do positive social relationships

36. II. Social networks and business Negative asymmetry: negative relationships can have more power over outcomes than positive relationships They typically involve more cognitive and emotional overhead Negative information is given higher value than positive information (especially social information Negative interactions have been found to have a disproportionately greater effect on life satisfaction, mood, illness, and stress Negative gossip amplified distrust more than positive gossip amplifies trust

37. II. Social networks and business • f00.inventorspot.com/images/cartoon_0.gif

38. II. Social networks and business • Factors affecting shapers of organizational wikis • Yates, Wagner and Majchrzak studied participants in organizational wikis • They hypothesized that motivations differed for the two main types of activities, knowledge shaping and contributions of personal knowledge • Intellectual capital theory could account the former and social exchange theory for the latter • ~ What are your motivations for contributing to wikis (or for not contributing)? • ~ In what ways could these wikis be valuable?

39. II. Social networks and business There are two main types of activities involved in organizational wikis Knowledge shaping: a purposeful activity to transform existing knowledge into more useful knowledge Editing, integrating, organizing, rewriting content Contributing personal knowledge Are the motivations different for people engaging in each type of contribution? The authors survey and interview participants (n=94) Yates, D., Wagner, C. and Majchrzak, A. (2010). Factors affecting shapers of organizational wikis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(3), 543-554

40. II. Social networks and business Two theories can account for these activities Intellectual capital theory explains knowledge shaping Factors facilitating intellectual capital development: opportunity, anticipation, capability, and motivation to deploy Integration requires coordinated application of various individual expertise to accomplish tasks at the project or community level Involves recombination, reorganization, and new forms of synthesis Shaping enhances organizational intellectual capital

41. II. Social networks and business Social exchange theory explains for personal knowledge contributions We make more contributions when they maximize our benefits and minimize our costs at individual, group and organizational levels Reasons: time to contribute, individual work performance benefits, fulfilling group responsibilities to community, membership in a core group They found that the two theories accounted for the majority of their results

42. IT, communication, and social networks I. Social networks • How they work • How people use them II. Social networks and business • Digital business strategy • Organizational wikis III. Virtual management • Knowledge sharing and virtual teams

43. III. Virtual management Exploring the effects of online social ties on knowledge sharing: A comparative analysis of collocated vs dispersed teams With social capital and social cognitive theory, Suh and Shin develop a model predicting individual knowledge sharing With social network analysis, they found that people on collocated and dispersed teams should manage online and offline social ties to enhance knowledge sharing ~ Why don’t online social interactions increase knowledge sharing in collocated groups? ~How central are you in your social networks?

44. III. Virtual management • Goal: how online social ties in a group influence individual organizational knowledge sharing • Assumes social media enable individuals to establish social ties and get socio-emotional support online • Much online contact occurs between people who see each other in person and work at the same place • Knowledge sharing: provision or receipt of know how, task information and feedback about a product/service • Are dynamics of dispersed teams are different from collocated teams? • Suh, A. and Shin, K.S. (2010). Exploring the effects of online social ties on knowledge sharing: A comparative analysis of collocated vs dispersed teams. Journal of Information Science 36(4), 443-463.

45. III. Virtual management • Social capital: individual knowledge sharing depends on relationships in social networks and resources inherent in interpersonal interactions • Network structure is the foundation of social capital andan attribute of a social or individual unit • Private capital: prestige, educational credentials and promotions benefiting individuals through personal social relationships • Public capital: the character of social relations in an organization based on collective goal orientation, shared trust and members’ activities

46. III. Virtual management Focus: socio-emotional ties (friendship and social support) Frequency of interaction: strength of social ties Centrality: the extent of one’s connection to others A structural property associated with instrumental outcomes: power, decision making and innovation In-degree: ties directed to the node (popularity) Out-degree: ties the node directs to others (extroversion) Motivational sources: to generate public capital, members must be motivated to donate private capital

47. III. Virtual management Online social ties contribute to knowledge sharing but effects differ between collocated and dispersed teams Frequency of online social interaction significantly stimulates motivational sources of public capital in dispersed but not in collocated teams Centrality of online interaction has little influence on reciprocity in dispersed teams and trust in collocated teams High levels of norm of reciprocity do not predict knowledge sharing in dispersed teams Individuals contribute knowledge in online networks without expectation of reciprocation

48. III. Virtual management The modern era can be characterized by networks, relationships, and globalization This affects the ways in which business is done Place is redefined as geographic location becomes more flexible Time and its significance for work changes Virtual teams become more common Managers must now manage in “electronic space” Gillam, C. and Oppenheim, C. (2006). Review Article: Reviewing the impact of virtual teams in the information age Journal of Information Science, 32(2), 160-175

49. III. Virtual management Virtual team: groups of people who work across time, space and often organizational boundaries They use interactive technology to facilitate communication and collaboration Organizational function and processes are more important than location Gillam and Oppenheim, p. 162

50. III. Virtual management Communication processes are essential for virtual teams The challenge of sharing important information Problem: uneven information distribution can lead to redundancy, bad decisions, perception of slacking Solution is better dissemination, but should avoid Information overload: increase in the information received and requests for information Communication intrusion: increase in interruptions of work by communications New literacy: documents (forms,charts, graphs, maps) and tools (images, graphics, video, audio)