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Enterprise Social Networks As Digital Infrastructures - Understanding the Utilitarian Value of Social Media at the Workplace

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Enterprise Social Networks As Digital Infrastructures - Understanding the Utilitarian Value of Social Media at the Workplace Information Systems Management ISSN: 1058-0530 (Print) 1934-8703 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uism20 Enterprise Social Networks as Digital Infrastructures - Understanding the Utilitarian Value of Social Media at the Workplace Christian Meske, Konstantin Wilms & Stefan Stieglitz To cite this article: Christian Meske, Konstantin Wilms & Stefan Stieglitz (2019): Enterprise Social Networks as Digital Infrastructures - Understanding the Utilitarian Value of Social Media at the Workplace, Information Systems Management To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10580530.2019.1652448 © 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Published online: 26 Aug 2019. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=uism20 INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT https://doi.org/10.1080/10580530.2019.1652448 Enterprise Social Networks as Digital Infrastructures - Understanding the Utilitarian Value of Social Media at the Workplace Christian Meske a, Konstantin Wilmsb, and Stefan Stieglitzb aDepartment of Information Systems, Freie Universität Berlin and Einstein Center Digital Future, Berlin, Germany; bDepartment of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany ABSTRACT KEYWORDS In this study, we first show that while both the perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment of Enterprise social networks; enterprise social networks impact employees’ intentions for continuous participation, the utilitarian digital infrastructure; value significantly outpaces its hedonic value. Second, we prove that the network’s utilitarian value usefulness; enjoyment; is constituted by its digital infrastructure characteristics: versatility, adaptability, interconnectedness adoption; use continuance; small- and medium-sized and invisibility-in-use. The study is set within a software engineering company and bases on enterprises (SME); PLS-SEM quantitative survey research, applying partial least squares structural equation modeling. Introduction of utilitarian and hedonic motivations to use an ESN, which can be used for work purposes but also imports In conjunction with the popularity of public social media basic principles from public social media and therefore like Facebook or Twitter (Larosiliere, Carter, & Meske, may be seen as a mean to socialize and increase enjoy- 2017), the implementation of social media within organi- ment. Our first goal is to close this research gap by zational contexts has significantly increased over the last comparing the impact of perceived usefulness and per- years and became an important focus of the information ceived enjoyment on employees’ ESN use continuance systems research community (Engler & Alpar, 2017;Soto- intentions. Acosta, Cegarra-Navarro, & Garcia-Perez, 2017). Our second goal is to identify factors, that influence the Enterprise social networks (ESNs) such as Confluence, employees’ perception of the ESN’s usefulness, as this IBM Connections, Jive, Slack, Sharepoint or Yammer aspect has two major implications for information systems have hence started to play an increasingly influential managers. If they do not know why the ESN is useful, it is role at organizational workspaces. However, since parti- difficult to justify a corresponding project to the top man- cipating in the provided ESN is usually not mandated, agement (Pérez-González, Trigueros-Preciado, & Popa, organizations often face the challenge of voluntary ESN 2017; Wehner, Ritter, & Leist, 2017), what may impede adoption and continued use (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016; introducing the ESN in the first place. In addition, man- Engler & Alpar, 2017), why there is a high risk that ESN agers face the challenge to communicate the work-related projects fail and lead to significant sunk costs. From added value of the ESN to the potential participants. literature on public social media we know, that hedonic Shortcomings may lead to impeded ESN integration, or motivations like enjoyment are recurrently mentioned as limited acceptance and usage (Iglesias-Pradas, Hernández- important factors for users to adopt or continually use García, & Fernández-Cardador, 2017; Riemer, Stieglitz, & social networks (e.g. Chen & Sharma, 2013;Hu,Poston,& Meske, 2015). While ESNs have often been described as Kettinger, 2011; Song, Wang, Zhang, & Qiao, 2017). At communication or collaboration infrastructures in work the same time, literature on information systems at the contexts (Kwahk & Park, 2016), an empirical investigation work place has shown, that usefulness is one of the most of infrastructure characteristics as antecedents of their use- important predictors for use behavior (e.g. Davis, Bagozzi, fulness is still missing. To fill this gap, we conceptualize &Warshaw,1989; Lu, Yao, & Yu, 2005; Venkatesh & ESNs as digital infrastructures and argue that certain infra- Davis, 2000; Venkatesh, Thong, & Xu, 2016). This rela- structure characteristics, which can also be found for phy- tionship has also been proven in the context of ESN (e.g. sical infrastructures such as railways or roads, make ESNs Engler & Alpar, 2017). However, to the best of our knowl- useful for participants. This perspective helps in edge, no comparison has yet been made between the role CONTACT Christian Meske [email protected] Department of Information Systems, Freie Universität Berlin and Einstein Center Digital Future, Garystr. 21, Berlin 14195, Germany © 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 2 C. MESKE ET AL. understanding that ESNs can be perceived as useful by discussed on a theoretical level but has not been tested employees, even though they are not designed to directly empirically until now. Besides adding first empirical support certain business processes or specific tasks. In the work in this context, our shift in perspective also current information systems literature, the term ‘infrastruc- impacts our general understanding of communication ture’ has been used to describe a multitude or diversity of and collaboration technologies, such as ESNs, as rather hardware devices, software applications, or all-embracing being open work-infrastructures than task-oriented application layers (Pipek & Wulf, 2009). According to artefacts. This in turn influences research on the design, Pipek and Wulf (2009) and based on the work of Star and adoption and management of corresponding infrastruc- Bowker (2002),informationsystemscanbereconceptua- tures, for which we however need a proper understand- lized as digital work infrastructures, and can be described ing of their core characteristics. This has also significant by certain key characteristics: interconnectedness, adapt- impacts on practitioners, since the shift of perspective ability, reflexivity, versatility and invisibility-in-use. In this on ESNs as digital infrastructures and better under- study,weexaminehowtheperceptionoftheseinfrastruc- standing of their perception by employees may influ- ture characteristics influences employees’ perceived useful- ence corresponding investment, selection, management ness as an antecedent of ESN use continuance. and evaluation processes within organizations. Third, Understanding the nature of ESNs is crucial, since they we introduce new constructs to capture infrastructure influence performance, particularly of knowledge-centric characteristics, which can also be applied for adoption organizations (Cleveland & Ellis, 2014; Fischbach, Gloor, and post-adoption studies of other information sys- &Schoder,2009; Leon, Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Gómez- tems, inside and outside of organizations. Gasquet, & Mula, 2017;Wu&Chang,2013). The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: In sum, we therefore pursue to answer the following in the next section, we provide an overview of related two research questions: work on ESNs in organizations, and describe both the utilitarian and hedonic aspects of ESN usage. We also (1) To which extent do both factors, usefulness and introduce the perspective of ESNs as digital infrastruc- enjoyment, influence the use continuance of tures. In the following section, the overall research enterprise social networks in organizations? model and hypotheses are developed. Afterwards, the (2) How do the infrastructure characteristics of enter- research design is described in detail, including context prise social networks influence employees’ percep- information and measurement instruments. Then, we tion of the networks’ usefulness and hence describe the results, including the descriptive statistics, utilitarian value? measurement analysis and hypotheses testing. Subsequently, the findings are discussed and implica- To answer these two questions, in our study, we con- tions for research and practice are derived. This paper duct a quantitative survey in an international, medium- ends with a conclusion and outlook in terms of further sized company that offers software engineering and research. cloud services, and which is one of the leading
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