Mixed methods analysis of enterprise social networks

The increasing use of enterprise social networks (ESN) generates vast amounts of data, giving researchers and managerial decision makers unprecedented opportunities for analysis. However, more transparency about the available data dimensions and how these can be combined is needed to yield accurate insights into the multi-facetted phenomenon of ESN use. In order to address this issue, we first conducted a systematic literature review to identify available data dimensions and integrated them into a conceptual framework. We then adopted this framework as part of a mixed methods research approach to comprehensively analyze an empirical ESN case. With our results serving as a proof of concept we show the insights that can be derived from different data dimensions and how combining these can improve the validity of the analysis. The application of the framework also allows us to derive a detailed guideline for combining different data sources in ESN analysis to support researchers and decision makers.

[1]  Harold D. Lasswell,et al.  Power and Personality , 1948 .

[2]  Robert D. McPhee,et al.  The communicative constitution of organizations: A framework for explanation , 2008 .

[3]  Chong Wang,et al.  Network Positions and Contributions to Online Public Goods: The Case of Chinese Wikipedia , 2012, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[4]  Lei Shi,et al.  Social Network Analysis in Enterprise , 2012, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[5]  Björn Niehaves,et al.  Reconstructing the giant: On the importance of rigour in documenting the literature search process , 2009, ECIS.

[6]  J. Newton,et al.  Hierarchies and cliques in the social networks of health care professionals: implications for the design of dissemination strategies. , 1999, Social science & medicine.

[7]  David Carmel,et al.  Mining expertise and interests from social media , 2013, WWW.

[8]  Viswanath Venkatesh,et al.  Bridging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide: Guidelines for Conducting Mixed Methods Research in Information Systems , 2013, MIS Q..

[9]  Rahul Telang,et al.  Measuring Information Diffusion in an Online Community , 2009, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[10]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology , 1980 .

[11]  Andrew B. Whinston,et al.  Network Structure and Observational Learning: Evidence from a Location-Based Social Network , 2013, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[12]  Tom A. B. Snijders,et al.  Social Network Analysis , 2011, International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science.

[13]  Weiguo Fan,et al.  Tapping the power of text mining , 2006, CACM.

[14]  Rajeev Motwani,et al.  The PageRank Citation Ranking : Bringing Order to the Web , 1999, WWW 1999.

[15]  Paul A. Pavlou,et al.  Visions and Voices on Emerging Challenges in Digital Business Strategy , 2013, MIS Q..

[16]  John Mingers,et al.  The paucity of multimethod research: a review of the information systems literature , 2003, Inf. Syst. J..

[17]  Hasmet M. Uluorta.  The Social Economy , 2009 .

[18]  Samer Faraj,et al.  Why Should I Share? Examining Social Capital and Knowledge Contribution in Electronic Networks of Practice , 2005, MIS Q..

[19]  FarajSamer,et al.  Why should i share? examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice , 2005 .

[20]  Michel Avital,et al.  Designing interviews to generate rich data for information systems research , 2011, Inf. Organ..

[21]  W. Orlikowski,et al.  Explicit and Implicit Structuring of Genres in Electronic Communication: Reinforcement and Change of Social Interaction , 1999 .

[22]  C KaneGerald,et al.  Centrality-is proficiency alignment and workgroup performance , 2011 .

[23]  Claire Cardie,et al.  39. Opinion mining and sentiment analysis , 2014 .

[24]  Ronen Feldman,et al.  Text Mining and Information Extraction , 2010, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Handbook.

[25]  Stefan Stieglitz,et al.  Emotions and Information Diffusion in Social Media—Sentiment of Microblogs and Sharing Behavior , 2013, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[26]  Steven B. Andrews,et al.  Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition , 1995, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[27]  Jennifer Jie Xu,et al.  Business Intelligence in Blogs: Understanding Consumer Interactions and Communities , 2012, MIS Q..

[28]  Alexander Richter,et al.  Malleable End-User Software , 2013, Bus. Inf. Syst. Eng..

[29]  C KaneGerald,et al.  What's different about social media networks? a framework and research agenda , 2014 .

[30]  David Carrera,et al.  Business Process Mining from E-Commerce Web Logs , 2013, BPM.

[31]  Steffen Blaschke,et al.  Organizations as Networks of Communication Episodes: Turning the Network Perspective Inside Out , 2012 .

[32]  Jun Zhang,et al.  A case study of micro-blogging in the enterprise: use, value, and related issues , 2010, CHI.

[33]  Ann Majchrzak,et al.  The Impact of Shaping on Knowledge Reuse for Organizational Improvement with Wikis , 2013, MIS Q..

[34]  Pernille Bjørn,et al.  Managers' Perceptions of Social Software Use in the Workplace: Identifying the Benefits of Social Software and Emerging Patterns of its Use , 2013, AMCIS.

[35]  C. Haythornthwaite.  Social network analysis: An approach and technique for the study of information exchange☆ , 1996 .

[36]  Yi Wang,et al.  Analyzing Communication Interaction Networks (CINs) in enterprises and inferring hierarchies , 2013, Comput. Networks.

[37]  Danah Boyd,et al.  Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[38]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[39]  N. Denzin.  The research act in sociology: A theoretical introduction to sociological methods , 1970 .

[40]  Mark S. Granovetter.  T H E S T R E N G T H O F WEAK TIES: A NETWORK THEORY REVISITED , 1983 .

[41]  Kristina Lerman,et al.  Information Contagion: An Empirical Study of the Spread of News on Digg and Twitter Social Networks , 2010, ICWSM.

[42]  Gerald C. Kane,et al.  What's Different about Social Media Networks? A Framework and Research Agenda , 2014, MIS Q..

[43]  Nigel Shadbolt,et al.  Leveraging Social Network Analysis with Topic Models and the Semantic Web , 2011, 2011 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology.

[44]  Valerie J. Caracelli,et al.  Toward a Conceptual Framework for Mixed-Method Evaluation Designs , 1989 .

[45]  Alexander Richter,et al.  Who is Key? - Value Adding Users in Enterprise Social Networks , 2014, ECIS 2014.

[46]  A. Bryman.  Integrating quantitative and qualitative research: how is it done? , 2006 .

[47]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  How does social software change knowledge management? Toward a strategic research agenda , 2012, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[48]  Matthias Trier,et al.  Dissemination Patterns and Associated Network Effects of Sentiments in Social Networks , 2012, 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining.

[49]  Daniel A. McFarland,et al.  Dynamic Network Visualization1 , 2005, American Journal of Sociology.

[50]  Xiaoqing Wang,et al.  A Systematic Examination of Member Turnover and Online Community Health , 2011, ICIS.

[51]  Matthias Trier,et al.  Research Note - Towards Dynamic Visualization for Understanding Evolution of Digital Communication Networks , 2008, Inf. Syst. Res..

[52]  Andrew B. Whinston,et al.  Content Sharing in a Social Broadcasting Environment: Evidence from Twitter , 2014, MIS Q..

[53]  Ricardo Colomo Palacios,et al.  SEMO: a framework for customer social networks analysis based on semantics , 2010, J. Inf. Technol..

[54]  John W. Creswell,et al.  Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research , 2006 .

[55]  Lynn Wu,et al.  Social Network Effects on Productivity and Job Security: Evidence from the Adoption of a Social Networking Tool , 2012, Inf. Syst. Res..

[56]  K. Riemer,et al.  Social Software: Agents for Change or Platforms for Social Reproduction? A Case Study on Enterprise Microblogging , 2010 .

[57]  Gerhard Schwabe,et al.  Identifying Patterns of Idea Diffusion in Innovator Networks , 2013, ICIS.

[58]  Tadhg Nagle,et al.  Exploring the affordances of Social Network sites: an Analysis of Three Networks , 2012, ECIS.

[59]  Ramandeep Kaur,et al.  Web analytics and metrics: a survey , 2012, ICACCI '12.

[60]  Michael Schnegg,et al.  Die Wurzeln der Netzwerkforschung , 2010, Handbuch Netzwerkforschung.

[61]  David Godes,et al.  Introduction to the Special Issue - Social Media and Business Transformation: A Framework for Research , 2013, Inf. Syst. Res..

[62]  Alexander Richter,et al.  "who is Key...?" - Characterizing Value Adding Users in Enterprise Social Networks , 2014, ECIS.

[63]  Saonee Sarker,et al.  The Role of Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams: A Social Network Perspective , 2011, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[64]  Joaquín Goñi,et al.  On the origins of hierarchy in complex networks , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[65]  Xiaojun Zhang,et al.  Explaining Employee Job Performance: The Role of Online and Offline Workplace Communication Networks , 2013, MIS Q..

[66]  Christine Nadel,et al.  Case Study Research Design And Methods , 2016 .

[67]  Eric Quintane,et al.  Short- and long-term stability in organizational networks: Temporal structures of project teams , 2013, Soc. Networks.

[68]  Bala Iyer,et al.  Innovation Impacts of Using Social Bookmarking Systems , 2011, MIS Q..

[69]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Validity Issues in the Use of Social Network Analysis with Digital Trace Data , 2011, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[70]  Michael Koch,et al.  Shaping a social software for a distributed military organisation , 2013, i-Know '13.

[71]  Pär J. Ågerfalk.  Embracing diversity through mixed methods research , 2013, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[72]  Robert E. Kraut,et al.  Editorial Overview - The Interplay Between Digital and Social Networks , 2008, Inf. Syst. Res..

[73]  Ann Lieberman.  The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations , 2005 .

[74]  Alexander Richter,et al.  Functions of Social Networking Services , 2008, COOP.

[75]  Noah E. Friedkin,et al.  Information flow through strong and weak ties in intraorganizational social networks , 1982 .

[76]  Cliff Lampe,et al.  Bowling online: social networking and social capital within the organization , 2009, C&T.

[77]  Veda C. Storey,et al.  Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact , 2012, MIS Q..

[78]  H. Raghav Rao,et al.  Community Intelligence and Social Media Services: A Rumor Theoretic Analysis of Tweets During Social Crises , 2013, MIS Q..