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Last few years have witnessed the shift of social technologies from consumer space into organizations (Forrester Consulting, 2010). Organizations are now investing in social technology platforms commonly known as “Enterprise Social Network” (ESN) that can encourage employees across the whole organization in generating, consolidating and sharing information, in addition it also provides a platform to find, connect and interact with each other (Drakos, Mann & Gotta, 2014). Some of the prominent examples of ESNs include tibbr, Yammer, Chatter, and Socialcast that represents the new wave of change in the manner information technology (IT) is used for collaboration in an organization. Recent times have observed increase in the organizational investment on the technology platforms that foster collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing among employees specially on enterprise social network (ESN). Gartner expects that by 2016, around 50 percent of large organizations will have internal social networks like Facebook, and around 30 percent of these will be considered as an essential component of organizational communication (Gartner, 2013). Additionally, Forrester also predicted that the market for social enterprise apps and related services will reach around $6.4 billion by 2016 (Dewing, McCarthy, Mines, Schadler, & Yamnitsky, 2011).
Organizations are using ESN for a variety of objectives that differs in formality and openness. For example, in some organizations the objective is to use ESN for interaction between project teams for coordination and sharing information, while other organizations may use ESN for sharing organizational best practices in addition to encouraging information exchange between employees across the organization (Drakos, Mann & Gotta, 2014). In sum, organizations try to make ESN part of their existing workflows and business processes. However, this can be possible only if employees are engaged and motivated enough to use ESN for their day-to-day communication and collaboration with their team members or co-workers (CIO, 2013).
With organizations expanding geographically there is significant change being observed in the way organizational teams communicate and collaborate. The majority of these changes are contributed by the advancement of information technologies that help employees to stay connected with the members of their team despite location and time constraints. Study conducted by Ferrazzi Greenlight, reports that out of 1,700 knowledge workers surveyed, around 79% workers reported working always or frequently in dispersed teams and are always connected through laptops, Wi-Fi, and mobile phones (Ferrazzi, 2014). Moreover, Teams have grown considerably in size over the past few years irrespective of the industry an organization operates in. One of the key reasons resulting in the increase of team size is the inclusion of experts from all around the world that represents a diverse body of knowledge. However, studies suggest that managing collaboration in teams having more than 20 members becomes a challenge (Gratton & Erickson, 2007). One way organizations deal with this is to invest in technology platform that can provide different ways of interaction for increasing communication and collaboration among team members across the organization (Gratton & Erickson, 2007). This is where ESN can play a significant role in enabling relationship building, information sharing, problems solving, project management, and task coordination within teams (Richter & Riemer, 2012).