Authors: Oliver Günther, Hanna Krasnova, Dirk Riehle, Valentin Schönberg
Abstract: Despite a broad range of collaboration tools already available, enterprises continue to look for ways to improve internal and external communication. Micro-blogging is such a new communication channel with some considerable potential to improve intra-firm transparency and knowledge sharing. However, the adoption of such social software presents certain challenges to enterprises. Based on the results of four focus group sessions, we identified several new constructs to play an important role in the micro-blogging adoption decision. Examples include privacy concerns, communication benefits, perceptions regarding signal-to-noise ratio, as well codification effort. Integrating these findings with common views on technology acceptance, we formulate a model to predict the adoption of a micro-blogging system in the workspace. Our findings serve as an important guideline for managers seeking to realize the potential of micro-blogging in their company.
Reference: In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2009). AIS Electronic Library, 2009. Paper 544.
Available as a PDF file.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Eugene Eric Kim // Apr 22, 2009 at 09:45
I was pretty surprised to see such a skewed male-female ratio. Twitter doesn’t strike me as being particularly male dominated. Why do you think the ratio was so skewed, and what effect do you think it had on the research?
2 Dirk Riehle // Apr 22, 2009 at 23:50
Eugene: The focus groups are not representative, so while I wondered about the dominance of males, it doesn’t invalidate the results. It only means that we may not have touched upon the full breadth of ideas and opinions and considerations we might have got from a more balanced set of people.
How this came about I don’t know for sure. Most likely, it was a result of our outreach channels as well as location in the Silicon Valley. We used mostly high-tech channels like mailiing lists frequented by Silicon Valley professionals.
Our follow-up work uses a survey, will be more widely spread, and is intended to be more broadly representative of the world of business software users in general (with or without Twitter experience).
3 Martin Böhringer // Jun 15, 2009 at 11:35
Great work! I wonder how your follow-up survey correlates with our work on microblogging continuance (http://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/20d4d78c1ce777ce461fe6204bd835c66/boehr) or http://www.ecis2009.it/papers/ecis2009-0164.pdf)
4 Dirk Riehle // Jun 15, 2009 at 22:29
Martin: Thanks for the pointer to your work. From the abstract, it seems to be exclusively about Twitter. We have been very wary to make any generalization from Twitter to the enterprise. Basically, while some effects might be similar, I’d also expect significant differences (and hence product features and processes). But as you say, that comparison in itself would be interesting!
5 Pre-test Survey on What Drives Enterprise Micro-blogging Adoption // Aug 19, 2009 at 10:04
[...] 19th, 2009 · No Comments My collaborators on the Enterprise Micro-blogging Adoption study at the Humboldt University of Berlin are at it again. In this second step, we are working to refine [...]
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