Social media and social networks seem to be conquering human relationships. Corporations are increasingly expecting business benefits from such platforms for employee-to-employee networking and internal collaboration. But firstly, social software platforms have to be introduced into an organization successfully, which often requires strategic and cultural changes before the new technology effectively supports everyday work tasks and corporate procedures. Companies will thus be looking for ways to promote usage of the new platforms and influence employee behavior accordingly.
After a review of selected relevant scientific theory and practical examples for social software analysis, this thesis analyzes employee contributions to a corporate microblogging platform in order to find a metric for organizationally desired behaviors. The nature of microblogging – short text messages that propagate across a network by means of very basic mechanisms, like subscription, repeats or responses – seems very well suited for such an analysis. Two metrics, describing an employees’ influence across the network and the utility of their contributions as recognized by peers, were combined in a single numerical score. Such scoring could be used as a factor within an employee incentive system intended to reward extraordinarily active or useful contributors.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Thesis
1.2 Document Structure
2 Social Software and Enterprise 2.0
2.1 The Web 2.0
2.2 Social Software
2.3 Enterprise 2.0
2.4 Microblogs and Microblogging
2.5 Corporate Uses for Microblogging
2.6 Adoption and Change
3 Change Management and Incentives
3.1 Globalization
3.2 Organizational Change Management (according to John P. Kotter)
3.3 Management By Objectives (according to Peter F. Drucker)
3.4 Balanced Scorecard (according to Kaplan and Norton)
3.5 Technology Acceptance Models
3.6 Strategic Alignment and Incentive Systems
4 Conventional Media and Media Reception
4.1 Print Media
4.2 Broadcast Media
4.3 The Internet and Website Analytics
4.4 Consumer Feedback and Customer Reviews
4.5 User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism and Prosumers
4.6 Impact
5 Social Software Analysis and Information Diffusion
5.1 Klout
5.2 Socialmention
5.3 Facebook Insights
5.4 Practical Relevance of Klout and Facebook Insights
5.5 Information Diffusion
6 The Data Set
6.1 Notices
6.2 Subscription and the Timeline
6.3 Favorites
6.4 Repeats
6.5 Replies
6.6 Hashtags
6.7 Group Memberships
6.8 Examples
6.9 Interpretations
7 Analysis, Measurements and Scoring
7.1 Desired Behaviors
7.2 The “#platformwin” Hashtag
7.3 Observations
7.4 Sample Group Selection
7.5 Influence Metric (INF)
7.6 Utiliy Metric (UTI)
7.7 Composite Incentive Score (CIS)
7.8 Examples
7.9 Scoring Results
7.10 Examination of Correlations
8 Summary
8.1 Research Methods
8.2 Summarization of Findings
8.3 Critique
8.4 Topics for Further Research
Research Objectives and Core Themes
The primary research objective is to empirically validate whether content analysis within a corporate microblog can provide measurable indicators of employee behavior, which can subsequently be integrated into an incentive system to promote active platform usage and technology adoption.
- Analysis of corporate microblogging as a socio-technical system for internal communication.
- Investigation of change management theories and incentive systems in modern business environments.
- Development of quantitative metrics (Influence and Utility) to evaluate employee contributions.
- Application of data analysis techniques to derive meaningful behavioral scores from raw microblog data.
Excerpt from the Book
6.1 Notices
The inaugural notice on the platform, being the first item in the data set, dates from May 18th 2010. The most recent notice is dated May 3rd 2012. Consequentially, this analysis spans almost two years’ worth of data.
In total, 51,111 notices have been posted, an average of approx. 19.8 notices per active user as defined above. The most active individual has posted 2,496 notices.
The busiest day was December 15th 2010 with a total of 763 notices posted. On that day, a promotional flash mob was organized, intended to promote usage of the platform, calling on the community of contributors for especially intense participation. On several other days with unusually high platform activity (February 24th 2011, March 21st 2011, July 28th 2011), enthusiasts accompanied internal organizational gatherings, like townhall meetings or house fairs, by liveblogging on the social software platform from their mobile devices. Discounting Saturdays and Sundays, but counting holidays (because of the global user base), there was an average of approx. 98.5 notices per working day.
Summary of Chapters
1 Introduction: Introduces the rise of social software in corporate environments and outlines the research objective of utilizing microblog content for incentive systems.
2 Social Software and Enterprise 2.0: Defines the conceptual landscape including Web 2.0, social software, and Enterprise 2.0, while explaining the nature of microblogging as a corporate tool.
3 Change Management and Incentives: Reviews theoretical frameworks for organizational change and corporate management strategies, providing the foundation for integrating microblog activity into incentive programs.
4 Conventional Media and Media Reception: Explores traditional media metrics and the transition toward user-generated content, setting a baseline for comparing new digital analytics.
5 Social Software Analysis and Information Diffusion: Examines practical analytical examples like Klout and Facebook Insights and explores the academic theory behind information spread in networks.
6 The Data Set: Details the empirical data source derived from a corporate implementation, including user participation statistics and feature usage like hashtags and group memberships.
7 Analysis, Measurements and Scoring: Presents the methodology for defining desired behaviors and the derivation of mathematical metrics (INF, UTI, CIS) to score individual employee contributions.
8 Summary: Reviews the research methodology, synthesizes the core findings regarding the feasibility of the proposed scoring model, and offers a critique alongside suggestions for future research.
Keywords
Microblogging, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Corporate Strategy, Change Management, Employee Incentive System, Performance Measurement, Information Diffusion, Data Analysis, User-Generated Content, Strategic Alignment, Behavioral Metrics, Network Analysis, Knowledge Management, Employee Engagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this thesis?
The thesis explores the potential of using content contributions within a corporate microblog as a basis for designing employee incentive systems to encourage platform adoption and productive collaboration.
What are the core thematic areas?
The research covers Enterprise 2.0 concepts, organizational change management, conventional media metrics, information diffusion theory, and empirical data analysis of social networking behavior.
What is the central research question?
The research seeks to answer whether an analysis of microblog content can reliably measure desired employee behavior, thereby justifying its use as a component in an incentive program.
Which scientific methods are applied?
The study utilizes literature review for theoretical foundations and empirical analysis of a corporate database, employing SQL queries to define and calculate behavioral metrics.
What does the main body of the work address?
It addresses the intersection of technical microblogging features with human resource management, specifically looking at how individual actions like replying, repeating, and favoriting can be quantified.
Which keywords best characterize this work?
Key terms include Enterprise 2.0, microblogging, employee incentive system, behavioral metrics, strategic alignment, and information diffusion.
What is the significance of the #platformwin hashtag?
It acts as a qualitative marker, identifying specific instances where community members acknowledge that a microblog contribution successfully solved a professional problem.
Why did the author use a logarithmic scale for the Influence Metric?
A logarithmic scale was chosen to ensure that users who simply accumulate a large number of followers do not gain an disproportionately massive advantage, thereby keeping the incentive system fair.
How is the Composite Incentive Score (CIS) calculated?
The CIS combines an Influence Metric (INF) and a Utility Metric (UTI) with a weighting of 30% and 70% respectively, prioritizing contributions deemed useful by peers.
- Quote paper
- Jochen Adler (Author), 2012, Examining Contributions to a Corporate Microblog as a Basis for an Employee Incentive System, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/196182
