Journal:What is the meaning of sharing: Informing, being informed or information overload?

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Full article title What is the meaning of sharing: Informing, being informed or information overload?
Journal Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies
Author(s) Haugsbakken, Halvdan
Author affiliation(s) Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Primary contact Email: Halvdan dot Haugsbakken at ntnu dot no
Year published 2018
Volume and issue 6(1)
Page(s) 46–58
DOI 10.5324/njsts.v6i1.2546
ISSN 1894-4647
Distribution license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Website https://www.ntnu.no/ojs/index.php/njsts/article/view/2546
Download https://www.ntnu.no/ojs/index.php/njsts/article/view/2546/2796 (PDF)
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Abstract

In recent years, several Norwegian public organizations have introduced enterprise social media platforms (ESMPs). The rationale for their implementation pertains to a goal of improving internal communications and work processes in organizational life. Such objectives can be attained on the condition that employees adopt the platform and embrace the practice of sharing. Although sharing work on ESMPs can bring benefits, making sense of the practice of sharing constitutes a challenge. In this regard, the paper performs an analysis on a case whereby an ESMP was introduced in a Norwegian public organization. The analytical focus is on the challenges and experiences of making sense of the practice of sharing. The research results show that users faced challenges in making sense of sharing. The paper indicates that sharing is interpreted and performed as an informing practice, which results in an information overload problem and causes users to become disengaged. The study suggests a continued need for the application of theoretical lenses that emphasize interpretation and practice in the implementation of new digital technologies in organizations.

Keywords: enterprise social media, sharing, public organizations, Norway

Introduction

In the last decade, many private and public organizations have started to take great interest in enterprise social media platforms (ESMPs).[1] Implying an expansion of Enterprise 2.0[2], the term refers to a platform used for internal communication in organizations. ESMPs contain a range of features that are used to share and organize information, such as tagging systems, user profiles, search engines, follower features, discussion boards, and group features. Known examples of ESMPs are Yammer and Facebook@ work. The platforms are assumed to bring a range of benefits for organizations and for the organization of work processes. These benefits can include enhancement of the quality of internal communications and workflows. A central practice related to the successful use of ESMPs is active engagement by users or employees through the sharing or co-creation of content, although the workplace principle is not always easy to put into practice.

Since the end of the 2000s, several large Norwegian private and public organizations have introduced ESMPs to their employees. The incentive for their acquisition is motivated by various goals. For example, they can reduce internal organizational barriers, enhance organizational communications, and cut down on time spent sending e-mails. In this way, one can attain a greater overview of organizational activities and the competencies of employees. In this regard, ESMPs are presented as a solution that can contribute to solving traditional management challenges that are faced daily by public organizations. In the wake of this development, discourses focusing on the importance of sharing in organizations emerge. Top and middle managers stress the sharing of work and engagement via ESMPs as means of bringing about organizational change and unity and the use of digital technologies in work life. Surfing on the top of such management discourses is an emphasis that employees embrace a “sharing culture.” Such developments substantiate the importance of analyzing the meaning of "sharing" through social constructionist research perspectives regarding the use of technology in organizations.

In 2012, a Norwegian County Authority decided to upgrade its intranet to become an ESMP, an effort initiated by the top management. The goal was to simplify the workspace because the employees previously worked across separate forms of information and communications technologies (ICTs). A further objective was to transfer work practices from e-mail and local storage to the newly acquired platform by sharing. Although the technical implementation of the ESMP was successful, top management found that employees were not sharing work as intended. By using a practice perspective on technology and the organization of work, as well as related research on enterprise social media[3][4], this paper questions how a group of employees working in the County Authority interpret the meaning of sharing and put it into practice through the ESMP. The use of a practice perspective indicates that employees face challenges in interpreting the meaning of sharing. Sharing is interpreted and performed as an informing practice, which results in an information overload problem and disengaged users.

In order to tackle the research question, the paper is divided into different parts. The following section addresses the scholarly discussion upon which the study is based. Thereafter, the research strategies used to complete this study are outlined. The research findings are subsequently presented, before the research results are discussed in relation to the relevant research horizon. The final part concludes the paper.

Theoretical perspective

Sharing has emerged as a significant social action performed by billions of social media users worldwide. In general, sharing brings with it a range of claimed unintended consequences[5], and it can be defined as a practice that originates in reconstituting dynamics and reciprocal relationships between the material properties of social media and social action. As such, it has affected the organization of social life. For example, what people share on social media draws media attention and is predicted by traditional media as having positive and negative effects on our well-being. The sharing of experiences can create community awareness on civic matters that are important to society, but also accusations of egocentric behavior. We also see that ongoing online socialization may lead to new mediated practices such as phubbing and digital detox. "Phubbing" is defined as the act of ignoring a person’s surroundings through the use of a cellphone, which is deemed an impolite action. "Digital detox" is understood as a period in which a person stops using electronic, web-connected devices such as smart phones and tablets. These indicate that the organization of communicative practices in the digital sphere can become unmanageable and chaotic. Although research on social media and sharing has proliferated, organization researchers have yet to fully frame the impact of sharing on organizational life.

In consequence, such dynamics call for the development of a research perspective that discusses the meaning of sharing in organizations by use of ESMPs, especially where sharing assumes a different role than that intended. This argument is valid for several reasons. Surprisingly, organizational scholars who study knowledge-sharing processes by use of knowledge management systems (for example) claim that what is actually shared by users on platforms for the sharing of work has yet to be adequately framed.[6] In particular, a knowledge gap seems to exist regarding the formation of sharing processes and how this is related to emergent properties coming from the use of recursive technology in work processes.[7] Instead, the knowledge management research stream has examined predefined assumptions of sharing[8][9] and conditions that prevent the sharing of knowledge in virtual communities.[6][10][11]

With the advent of ESMPs in organizations, there is an urgent need to formulate and facilitate a new and much broader research agenda. This has been seen in organizational research, which has introduced new definitions of platforms and has criticized existing definitions of social media for their shortcomings. An example of a new definition is enterprise social media, which is defined as: “web-based platforms that allow workers to (1) communicate messages with specific coworkers or broadcast messages to everyone in the organization; (2) explicitly indicate or implicitly reveal particular coworkers as communication partners; (3) post, edit, and sort text and files linked to themselves or others; and (4) view the messages, connections, text, and files communicated, posted, edited, and sorted by anyone else in the organization at any time of their choosing.”[1] This definition is a modified version of Kaplan and Haenlein’s[12], who define social media as a “group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”

Current definitions of social media are criticized for failing to adequately explain organizational processes.[13] To accommodate these limitations, we find an emerging body of research studying ESMPs that uses a social constructionist research lens on technology and the organization of work.[14] This research stream has (among others) developed an "affordance" perspective[15] to grasp the impact of ESMPs in organizations. Affordance[15] stresses the advantages of technologies. It argues that technologies can be perceived as beneficial in performing activities without paying attention to what an object “is,” that is, to ask what it can afford.[13] The focus on perception means to put emphasis on an object’s utility, and affordance provides the possibility of understanding action potential and the capabilities of a technology, and how it can be linked to processes in organizations.[13] The affordance lens is used to place greater emphasis on the meaning of materiality, which is said to have diminished in value as other concepts dominate the research agenda, such as sociomateriality.[16] Affordance is linked to critical theory, which is deemed as providing new innovative ways of addressing the relationships between materiality and immateriality.[17] A critical theory approach assumes the existence of multiple realities that operate interchangeably and independently of one another, with the implication that actors and objects are self-contained entities that influence each other through impacts or social interaction.[17]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Leonardi, P.M.; Huysman, M.; Steinfield, C. (2013). "Enterprise Social Media: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies in Organizations". Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12029. 
  2. ↑ McAfee, A. (September 2006). "Enterprise 2.0 Inclusionists and Deletionists". AndrewMcAfee.org. http://andrewmcafee.org/2006/09/enterprise_20_inclusionists_and_deletionists/. 
  3. ↑ Orlikowski, W.J. (2000). "Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations". Organization Science 11 (4): 367–472. doi:10.1287/orsc.11.4.404.14600. 
  4. ↑ Orlikowski, W.J.; Gash, D.C. (1994). "Technological frames: making sense of information technology in organizations". ACM Transactions on Information Systems 12 (2): 174–207. doi:10.1145/196734.196745. 
  5. ↑ Merton, R.K. (1936). "The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action". American Sociological Review 1 (6): 894–904. doi:10.2307/2084615. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Ardichvili, A.; Page, V.; Wentling, T. (2003). "Motivation and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge ‐ Sharing communities of practice". Journal of Knowledge Management 7 (1): 64–77. doi:10.1108/13673270310463626. 
  7. ↑ Kosonen, M. (2009). "Knowledge sharing in virtual communities – A review of the empirical research". International Journal of Web Based Communities 5 (2): 144–63. doi:10.1504/IJWBC.2009.023962. 
  8. ↑ Chen, C.-J.; Hung, S.-W. (2010). "To give or to receive? Factors influencing members’ knowledge sharing and community promotion in professional virtual communities". Information & Management 47 (4): 226-236. doi:10.1016/j.im.2010.03.001. 
  9. ↑ Wasko, M.M.; Faraj, S. (2005). "Why Should I Share? Examining Social Capital and Knowledge Contribution in Electronic Networks of Practice". MIS Quarterly 29 (1): 35-57. doi:10.2307/25148667. 
  10. ↑ Ardichvili, A. (2008). "Learning and Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities of Practice: Motivators, Barriers, and Enablers". Advances in Developing Human Resources 10 (4): 541–44. doi:10.1177/1523422308319536. 
  11. ↑ Ardichvili, A.; Maurer, M.; Li, W. et al. (2006). "Cultural influences on knowledge sharing through online communities of practice". Journal of Knowledge Management 10 (1): 94–107. doi:10.1108/13673270610650139. 
  12. ↑ Kaplan, A.M.; Haenlein, M. (2010). "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media". Business Horizons 53 (1): 59–68. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Treem, J.W.; Leonardi, P.M. (2012). "Social Media Use in Organizations: Exploring the Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association". Communication Yearbook 36: 143–89. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2129853. 
  14. ↑ Leonardi, P.M.; Barley, S.R. (2010). "What’s Under Construction Here? Social Action, Materiality, and Power in Constructivist Studies of Technology and Organizing". Academy of Management Annals 4 (1): 1–51. doi:10.5465/19416521003654160. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Gibson, J.J. (1986). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0898599598. 
  16. ↑ Mutch, A. (2013). "Sociomateriality — Taking the wrong turning?". Information and Organization 23 (1): 28–40. doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2013.02.001. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Leonardi, P.M. (2013). "Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality". Information and Organization 23 (2): 59–76. doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2013.02.002. 

Notes

This presentation is faithful to the original, with only a few minor changes to presentation. In some cases important information was missing from the references, and that information was added. The original article lists references alphabetically, but this version—by design—lists them in order of appearance.

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