How to bridge the boundary? Determinants of inter-organizational social software usage
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How to bridge the boundary? Determinants of inter-organizational social software usage Melanie Steinhueser 1 & Alexander Richter 2 & Stefan Smolnik 3
Received: 30 September 2013 / Accepted: 13 April 2015 / Published online: 10 May 2015 # Institute of Information Management, University of St. Gallen 2015
Abstract Based on their positive experiences with intraorganizational enterprise social software (ESS), the first organizations are currently deploying ESS in an interorganizational context. Nevertheless, hardly any research has addressed aspects pertaining to the commonalities of and differences between ESS and existing forms of interorganizational information systems (IOS). Following an information-processing view, and based on a systematic literature review, as well as on the results of an exploratory interview study, we propose a conceptual model of interorganizational ESS usage and relevant usage determinants. Some of these are known from prior studies, but have not yet been applied to an inter-organizational context (e.g., trust, knowledge sharing, security), whereas others were newly identified in our interview study (e.g., confidentiality, productiveness, dynamics). The proposed model extends the current understanding of IOS and helps address the field of interorganizational ESS usage more appropriately in theory and practice. Responsible Editors: Holger Schrödl and Ali Sunyaev * Melanie Steinhueser [email protected] Alexander Richter [email protected] Stefan Smolnik [email protected] 1
Institute of Information Management and Information Systems Engineering, Osnabrück University, Katharinenstraße 1, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany
2
Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland
3
Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, University of Hagen, 58084 Hagen, Germany
Keywords Social software . IOS 2.0 . Enterprise 2.0 . IS usage . Conceptual model . Interview study JEL Classification 033
Introduction Although the corporate realm’s adoption of social software lags behind that of private households, many organizations have become interested in such applications over the years. For example, a recent report claims that 72 % of more than 4, 200 globally acting companies have adopted at least one social software (Bughin et al. 2011). Several other studies have shown that enterprise social software (ESS) can be used to support, for example, communication, knowledge management, and innovation management (Faraj et al. 2011; Kane et al. 2009; Trier and Richter 2014). Furthermore, companies have experienced considerable changes in the way they communicate, collaborate, and coordinate internally once they have implemented ESS (Aral et al. 2013; Riemer et al. 2009). Whereas the capacity to deal with such applications and technologies is maturing slowly (Kiron et al. 2013), companies are increasingly realizing benefits and competitive advantages from using ESS internally, such as improved productivity, better knowledge sharing (Ch
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