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Social Networking in the Workplace: Exploring the Structural Characteristics and Conversational Nature of Enterprise Social Networks

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Social Networking in the Workplace: Exploring the Structural Characteristics and Conversational Nature of Enterprise Social Networks Master of Science Thesis Utrecht University Faculty of Science Department of Information and Computing Sciences Business Informatics Social Networking in the Workplace: Exploring the Structural Characteristics and Conversational Nature of Enterprise Social Networks 25.01.2016 Author: Steffen Bjerkenås [email protected] Supervisors: Prof. dr. ir. Remko W. Helms Prof. Kai Riemer [This page is intentionally left blank] Additional Information Author: Steffen Bjerkenås E-mail: [email protected] Student ID: 3896161 Project supervisor: Prof. dr. ir. Remko W. Helms [email protected] Department of Information and Computing Sciences Utrecht University Daily supervisor: Prof. Kai Riemer [email protected] Discipline of Business Information Systems The University of Sydney Second examiner: Dr. Marco Spruit [email protected] Department of Information and Computing Sciences Utrecht University i ii Acknowledgments In the course of any labor-intensive endeavor, it is not uncommon to find yourself relying on the knowledge, expertise, and support of others in order to succeed. This project has been no exception. From the start to the very end, there have been several involved parties from whom I have received much appreciated (and needed) back-up, and for this I am truly grateful. First off, I wish to express my gratitude towards my supervisors; Prof. dr. ir. Remko W. Helms and Prof. Kai Riemer. Through our collaboration on this project I have gotten the opportunity to get involved with the research community at the University of Sydney, which has been a much welcomed experience both personally and professionally. Their expertise and academic vigor have helped me overcome my own knowledge gaps many times during this project, and thanks to this I am left with a valuable learning experience. A special thanks to Prof. dr. ir. Helms, who has not only been heavily involved in this project, but who has provided me with challenges and opportunities throughout the entirety of my studies at Utrecht University. Second, I wish to thank my parents and my brother. The unconditional support I have received, and continue to receive, has been the cornerstone of any achievement I dare to claim. Thank you for always being there. Last -but definitely- not least, I am forever indebted to my wonderful girlfriend and life partner. Given the sheer amount of effort that goes into a thesis project, the day-to-day progress would not have been possible without her taking on the role as life-coach in times of need. Admittedly, these pages would certainly have suffered a different fate if it was not for her support. iii Abstract Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) are recent and emergent sets of online platforms that allows for employees to collaborate and share information in the same manner as in more commonly known Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook. The proven value-add of these platform to organizations have caused its popularity to soar during recent years, and as a result, causing academia’s interest to rise accordingly. However, given the short time-span since ESNs started gaining interest among organizations, the study of how these platforms are being used by employees is still largely unexplored by the scientific community. By combining methods from the fields of social network analysis (SNA) and content analysis, this research aims to answer the questions of how the conversational nature of an ESN network is related to its structural characteristics, and how the users’ conversational nature is related to their structural characteristics. The exploration of these relations has been called for by earlier studies in the field, and is important in the sense that it illuminates how these new and exciting ways of collaborating actually manifests within an organization, and how employees’ influence within these networks relates to their conversational topics. The results obtained during this research show that the degree of clustering in an ESN is related to how much employees engages in discussions and conversations related to generating new ideas and brainstorming. These results provide grounds for postulating that these topics tend to generate more collective interest in participating in these communities as opposed to other topics such as plain information sharing and social talk. Furthermore, results show that employees with a high eigenvector centrality are the most influential in these networks, as they tend to occupy several other central positions simultaneously. Three distinct characteristics can be identified for these actors; they often engage in the exchange of personal opinions, they often provide links to resources of professional value for other employees to make use of, and they often provide updates about the current status of ongoing projects and alike. As far as this research has been able to discover, this is the first attempt to draw a connection between conversational topics and structural characteristics within the context of ESNs. These results will hopefully assist in advancing the understanding of how ESNs are being adopted and used by employees, and how these informal networks can be analyzed in a meaningful manner. iv Table of Contents Additional Information ...................................................................................................................................... i Declaration of Authorship ................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................................. iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background .......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Problem statement ............................................................................................................................ 2 1.3 Research questions ........................................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Research aim and objectives ........................................................................................................... 3 1.5 Relevance ............................................................................................................................................ 4 1.6 Outline ................................................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2 Theoretical Background............................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Social network analysis ................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.1 Definition and application ...................................................................................................... 7 2.1.2 Describing the structural characteristics of social networks ......................................... 9 2.1.3 Describing the centrality of networked actors .................................................................. 12 2.1.4 Longitudinal social network data ........................................................................................ 15 2.1.5 Statistical analysis of social networks and networked actors ....................................... 17 2.2 Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) ............................................................................................ 18 2.2.1 History and definition............................................................................................................. 18 2.2.2 Genre analysis of ESNs .......................................................................................................... 20 2.2.3 Social network analysis of ESNs ......................................................................................... 27 Chapter 3 Research method ......................................................................................................................... 32 3.1 Data collection ................................................................................................................................. 32 3.1.1 Method ...................................................................................................................................... 32 3.1.2 About the dataset .................................................................................................................... 33 3.1.3 Data filtering ............................................................................................................................ 40 3.1.4 Pre-processing the data ......................................................................................................... 41 3.2 Selection of analysis tools .............................................................................................................. 41 3.2.1 The R programming language .............................................................................................. 41 3.2.2 UCINET
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