© University of Reading 2010 www.reading.ac.uk/irc12 April 2023

Socio-technical factors influencing social media adoption in business: a semiotic perspective

Sanaa Askool, Aimee Jacobs, Keiichi NakataInformatics Research Centre

2

Outline

• Introduction

– Overview of Social Media

– Spread of Social Media

– Social Media adoption in business

• The Problem and Approach

– Social media adoption in business

– Organisational semiotics

• Scoping Study

• Conclusion and Future Work

Introduction

• Web 2.0 “a network as platform, spanning all connected devices”

(O'Reilly 2007, p. 17) and “a more mature, distinctive medium characterised by user

participation, openness and network effects.”(Musser, O’Reilly et al. 2006, p. 4)

Introduction

• Social Media

– SNS

– Blogs/Microblogging– Wikis

– Social bookmarking/tagging

– Media sharing

– Virtual worlds

– Podcasts

5

Introduction

• People are rapidly moving towards the use of “Social Media”

Percentage of rise in population for Social Networking sites of Total Online population (Nielsen_Online, 2009)

61

7865 63 67

59 64 6455

39 41

5.4

1.4

9.9 2.710.3 2.6 2.9

4.9

9.612.5

9.9

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Global

Brazil

Spain Ita

lyJap

an UK USA

France

Australia

Germany

Switzerland

Perc

enta

ge O

nlin

e G

loba

l Pop

ulati

on

Dec-08

Dec-07

6

Introduction • SM is expected to become a tool to support business

activities • Companies, e.g., Wells Fargo and General Motors, use

them to build strong relationships with customers, and also to increase employees’ productivity and collaboration (Young, Brown et al. 2008)

• Strong relationships were found between SM engagement and financial performance of organisations (Elowitz and Li, 2009)

SM Tools and Possible Uses

SM Tool Potential Uses

Forums Internal discussions; practical and process questions, and general staff issues (Cook 2008)

Blogs General information tool (Tredinnick 2006)Knowledge management, business intelligence, project

management (Cook 2008)

SNS Connectivity, knowledge sharing, strengthen relationships (Cook 2008)

Wikis Commercial content management systems (Tredinnick 2006)

Knowledge management and information sharing (Jansen 2009)

Social bookmarking

Classification of knowledge and information (Tredinnick 2006)

Virtual worlds Meetings, training, and socializing with colleagues (Cook 2008)

Podcasts Briefings and recordings of conference calls (Davidson 2006)

Provide information and presentations and sharing of information (Zhang 2009)

Media Sharing Informal virtual learning or training (Cook 2008)

The Problem

8

• New Technologies– Always have some effect (Individuals & Business)

• Social Media– Widely used– Concerns

• Introduction of SM in business– Some success cases– Often ad hoc and ‘bottom-up’ introduction of SM

• Research– Limited research in this area– What are the socio-technical factors that could influence

the successful adoption of SM in business?– Towards a more strategic introduction of SM in business

Approach

• Analytical – Organisational Semiotics

• Identify the social and technical factors that influence SM adoption

• Analyse these factors

• Empirical – Scoping Study

9

Organisational Semiotics

• Organisational Onion– Informal– Formal– Technical

• Semiotic Framework– Social World– Pragmatics– Semantics– Syntactic– Empirics – Physical World

10

11

Factors Influencing SM Adoption- Organisational Onion

Informal

Technical

Customers and employees

Younger generation

ManagersOrganisational culture

External relationship

Social Media tools

Broadband and mobile connectivity Web 2.0

platform

Internal work process, recruitment, product design and quality assurance

12

Factors influencing SM adoption- Semiotic Framework

HumanSocial World: Influences on

Organisational Culture, Meaningful Relationship, Customer Loyalty and Commitment, Acceptance Behaviour

InformationPragmatics: Intention of SM use in

business, e.g., Business Objectives, Sharing Information, Innovation, Familiarity, Caring Behaviour, Trust

Functions

Semantics: Meanings associated with the use of various SM Tools, interpretation of the use of SM in Business, Familiar Interfaces, Information Collection, Knowledge Management/Sharing and Transfer, Project Management

The IT Syntactic: Social Media functionality, Interfaces

Platform Empirics: ICT Infrastructure, Internet, Mobile Networks Physical World: Data, Web 2.0 Platform

(Hardware) and Software

Scoping Study

• A large multinational IT consulting firm• Subjects

– Senior Executive (VP)– Technical Architecture – Solutions Architecture– Enterprise Architect – Service Development Lead– Innovation Portfolio– Strategy Manager

13

14

Scoping Study –Organisational Onion

Informal

Technical

Communication Procedure

Internet AccessMobile Technology

Increased Productivity

Improved communication

Knowledge transferTeam-

building

SM Usage Policies

Accountability

Control

Security/Privacy

Respondents’ concerns related to SM usage

15

Scoping Study-Social, Pragmatic, and Semantic aspects of SM

Social world(obligations, responsibilities, commitments, norms...etc)

•Use of SM tools for communication

•Changes in the human behaviour – closer engagement among stakeholders, customer loyalty, commitment, etc.

•Creation of a new culture

•Challenges - policies, accountability and information control

Pragmatics(interactions, intentions, negotiations....etc)

•Use of SM to communicate and interact internally and externally•SM met their expectations•Help them in achieving business objectives

Semantics(meanings, validity of proposition, etc.)

•Communicate - IM, twitter and blogs• Connection - SNS

•content •other employees

•Collaboration -Wikis

Summary

Research context– Increase in social media usage among the Internet

population– Gradual and ad hoc introduction of SM into business

• What has been done:– Identified the socio-technical factors using OS – Scoping study was carried out to complement and

confirm the factors

• What is next : – Further analysis the use of SM tools integrated with

BPM & CRM– Semi-structured interviews with organisations and

customers will be conducted for further analysis16

Thank You

Q & A

17