Enabling Digital Work in Organizations: Empirical Investigations of the Enterprise Social Media’s Introduction Process and Outcome Perspective

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Sven Dittes

Enabling Digital Work in Organizations

Empirical Investigations of the Enterprise Social Media’s Introduction Process and Outcome Perspective

Dissertation

Wirtschafts-

wissenschaft

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FernUniversität in Hagen

Enabling Digital Work in Organizations

Empirical Investigations of the Enterprise Social Media’s Introduction Process and Outcome Perspective

Dissertation

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grads

eines Doktors der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Dr. rer. pol.) der Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaft

der FernUniversität in Hagen von

Sven Dittes, M.Sc.

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Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Stefan Smolnik Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Sabine Fließ Tag der Disputation: 17.03.2021

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This doctoral thesis investigates the introduction of enterprise social media (ESM) platforms in the context of enabling digital work in organizations. Thereby, this thesis examines several research questions, such as (1) the relationship between an employee’s ESM use and the intended positive outcomes, (2) the role of organizational climate in the context of this relationship, (3) the difference of functional principles compared to old and more outdated information and communication technology (ICT), and (4) the process and activities of successfully introducing digital work and ESM platforms. In order to answer these questions, five separate but cumulative essays showcase the results of this dissertation by shedding light on different facets within the framework of the overall research project. This introductory essay provides an overview of this entire research project by highlighting the overall motivation, summarizing the foundations and research questions, showcasing the complete research process, and outlining the thesis’ structure by demonstrating how the five independent essays relate.

Keywords: Enterprise social media, digital work, research process, survey-based research, longitudinal research

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Lists of Figures

Figure 0-1. Classification of ESM platforms, traditional intranets, and groupware systems in

the 4C framework ... 14

Figure 0-2. Overview of research framework and questions... 15

Figure 0-3. Simplified overview of research paradigms ... 16

Figure 0-4. Research process ... 19

Figure 0-5. Overview of thesis’ structure ... 26

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Tables

Table 0-1. Exemplary applications of an enterprise social media platform ... 9

Table 0-2. Comparison of relevant research paradigms ... 18

Table 0-3. Overview of data collection ... 21

Table 0-4. Overview of related publications ... 23

Table 0-5. Overview of unrelated publications ... 25

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1 Motivation

The need for digital work in organizations is omnipresent (e.g. Richter et al., 2018). This need came to light once again in the current COVID-19 crisis and the corresponding lockdown situation, where the opportunity of employees working digitally from home became an important asset for organizations in order to continuously sustain and drive their business (Deloitte, 2020). However, digital work, which refers to working online by using information and communication technology (ICT) (Davison & Ou, 2014), was already an important topic for many organizations even before this crisis. For example, due to globalization, many organizations operate worldwide, and digital work can help collaborate and coordinate when working in dispersed teams (Dulebohn & Hoch, 2017). Furthermore, employees struggling with their work-life balance (Fritz & van Knippenberg, 2018) and their work-family conflict (French et al., 2018) also demand digital work in order to gain more flexibility and mobility in their daily work (Richter & Richter, 2019).

In order to enable their employees to work online and to facilitate digital work, many organizations introduce enterprise social media (ESM)¹ platforms (Dery et al., 2017).

ESM platforms are powerful ICT for facilitating digital work, since they bundle and integrate a diverse range of tools (Kügler et al., 2015a). This range of tools refers to traditional collaborative tools, such as file exchange servers, chatting tools, and discussion forums (Pontikakos et al., 2005), as well as Web 2.0 (social) tools, such as social networking tools, wikis, and blogs (Bughin, 2008). According to the literature, the introduction of ESM platforms potentially yields various positive effects and benefits for organizations² such as an increase in employee productivity (Wehner et al., 2017). However, considering practice, many organizations fail at reaching the intended benefits when introducing ESM platforms (Chin et al., 2015). Two main reasons for this failure in leveraging the ESM platforms’ potential for digital work can be identified: The employees show wrong usage behavior that prohibit unfolding the full potential (Dittes et al., 2019) and the employees tend to avoid using

1 Frequently used synonyms are ‘enterprise social software’ (Kügler et al., 2015a), ‘enterprise social media’

(Kane, 2015), ‘enterprise social network’, and ‘enterprise social networking’ (Fulk & Yuan, 2013;

Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2016).

2 I performed a structured literature review of the various positive outcomes of ESM platforms: Please see Dittes and Smolnik (2017) for further details and an overview.

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ESM platforms (Buettner, 2015) due to, for example, employees being resistant to change (Greeven & Williams, 2017).

Therefore, this thesis aims at shedding light on both problematic areas when introducing ESM platforms for the purpose of facilitating digital work. First, I investigate the relationship between an employee’s use of an ESM platform and various benefits or outcomes³. Second, I further examine the approach and process of introducing an ESM platform in order to convince and motivate employees to use an ESM platform – and to use it correctly – for facilitating digital work. Thereby, I performed various research projects and collected empirical data at several organizations. Hereby, I mainly focused on a survey-based research approach using quantitative measures and analyzed the data using structural equation modelling. Furthermore, in a number of cases, I also collected qualitative data via interviews, which were used in the data analysis for triangulation purposes (Wilson, 2014). Moreover, in certain cases, I applied a longitudinal research design by collecting empirical data at several points in time in order to contrast and track differences and developments. Drawing on this, a main contribution of this thesis is to showcase the actual added value of ESM platforms (Aral et al., 2013) and to observe various effects and changes over time (Dittes & Smolnik, 2017; Högberg, 2018). Furthermore, investigating the ESM platforms’ introduction process and rollout activities, I derive several recommendations for practitioners (see Section 5 for a full overview of the main theoretical and practical contributions).

The introduction of this thesis is structured as follows: In Section 2, I introduce the terms digital work and ESM platforms as the two main concepts of this thesis. In Section 3, I derive detailed research questions that guided my research and that will be answered in this thesis. For answering these research questions, Section 4 states the underlying research design and process for the various research projects. Section 5 presents this thesis’ structure and provides summaries of the five essays that together form this cumulative dissertation. In conclusion, Section 6 summarizes this thesis’ main theoretical and practical contributions.

3 I use the terms benefits, (positive) outcomes, and (positive) effects synonymously for the purpose of this thesis by referring to the employees’ individually perceived benefits of using an ICT (or more specifically an ESM platform).

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2 Introducing digital work and enterprise social media

In the following, the two main terms and concepts that underlie this thesis are introduced.

2.1 Digital work and creating a digital work environment

For the purpose of this thesis, digital work⁴ is defined as work that employees carry out online via using ICT (Davison & Ou, 2014). Thereby, ICT for digital work needs to enable employees to collaborate online via information and document sharing, communicating, and discussing to work on a problem (Lopes et al., 2015). By doing this, digital work can unfold various positive effects and benefits for organizations, such as enabling working in globally distributed teams (Mattarelli & Tagliaventi, 2010), improving employee productivity (Attaran et al., 2019), and increasing work flexibility (Ens et al., 2018; Richter et al., 2018) by, for example, supporting home office work (Dittes et al., 2019).

However, research indicates that introducing digital work requires more than just rolling out ICT that enables online collaboration. For example, Lin and Kwantes (2015) emphasize the importance of social interaction and informal talks, such as at the water cooler or coffee kitchen, for creating a good and healthy work environment. In this context, Shravasti and Bhola (2015) define a work environment as “working conditions at the workplace, which may either encourage or discourage employees to work.” Thereby, a healthy work environment serves as an enabler that empowers employees to complete their work (Veitch, 2011). Returning to the importance of social interaction and informal talks for forming a work environment, Noe (1986) states that on an abstract level a work environment consists of a task dimension and a social dimension. Similarly, this thesis builds on Mottaz (1985) as well as Karahanna et al. (2005), who introduce a task dimension, which refers to doing the job, and a social dimension, which refers to the interactions with co-workers, for conceptualizing a work environment.

Lau et al. (2000) transfer this conceptualization to the context of introducing digital work and introduce the social dimension as using ICT for “building social relationship and solidarity among [...] team members” and the task dimension as using ICT for “the part of communication that is specifically directed toward getting the project work done.” In sum, this thesis builds on this conceptualization by assuming that ICT needs to provide a holistic digital work

4 The terms ‘digital work’, ‘virtual work’, and ‘digital labour’ are often used synonymously in this context (Mrass et al., 2017).

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environment by simultaneously addressing both dimensions in order to successfully facilitate digital work.

Furthermore, referring to digital work, Cascio (2000) states that it is “not appropriate for all jobs.” Moreover, he states that there are various job characteristics that determine the applicability of digital work, such as whether being at work is necessary for the performance or the degree of direct contact with co-workers (Cascio, 2000). In this context, Shamir and Salomon (1985), for example, state that digital work and working at home are

“more applicable for white-collar and professional workers than for production workers.”

Referring to white-collar workers, research states that digital work is very fruitful in the context of knowledge workers (Ferrazzi, 2014; Köffer, 2015). Regarding knowledge work, I draw on Pare and Elam (1995) who define it as “a nonrepetitive, nonroutine work that entails substantial levels of cognitive activity.” For the purpose of this thesis, I therefore focus on knowledge workers and their specific job characteristics when researching digital work and the provision of a digital work environment.

2.2 Enterprise social media to foster digital work

As stated, many organizations introduce ESM platforms in order to support their employees with digital work (Dery et al., 2017; Forsgren & Byström, 2018). Defining ESM platforms, this thesis utilizes one of the most commonly used definitions by Leonardi et al. (2013): “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.”

In enabling the employees to perform all these actions, ESM platforms bundle and integrate ICT through various applications in a single powerful platform (Kügler et al., 2015a).

ESM platforms emerged as part of the Enterprise 2.0 movement, which was started a decade ago by McAfee (2009a). Enterprise 2.0 stands for the implementation of new and modern ICT in organizations (McAfee, 2009a). Therefore, a main focus of ESM platforms is on Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking, wikis, and blogs (Bughin, 2008). Thereby, Web 2.0 refers to the “social use of the Web which allow people to collaborate, to get actively involved in creating content, to generate knowledge and to share information online.” (Grosseck, 2009).

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However, ESM platforms can also integrate other and formerly developed ICT, such as instant messaging and file sharing (Guy et al., 2013).

Table 0-1 shows an overview of exemplary applications that are integrated in an ESM platform.

Application Definition Classification in

4C framework Communities Community pages allow users to “create and join

communities of interest. As part of these communities, other content can be shared, including blogs, bookmarks, files, forums, and wikis.” (Guy et al., 2013)

Collaboration

Discussion forums

Discussion forums “allow employees to initiate discussions

for others to review and contribute to.” (Cook, 2008) Collaboration File sharing File sharing applications enable “users to upload files they

authored. Users can share a file with others even if they are not the authors, download the file, comment on it, or ‘like’ it.”

(Guy et al., 2013)

Cooperation

Instant messaging Instant messaging “allows one person to communicate with another (or with groups) over the Internet or an internal network in real time.” (Cook, 2008)

Communication

Microblogging Microblogging is based on allowing “users to exchange small elements of content, such as short sentences, individual images, or video using a maximum of 140 character messages.” (Razmerita et al., 2014)

Communication

Social bookmarking Social bookmarking refers to users sharing “bookmarks of both intranet and Internet pages, and annotate them with tags.” (Guy et al., 2013)

Cooperation

Social networking and profile pages

Social networking applications “allow users to create a profile

and become friends with other users.” (Cook, 2008) Connection Weblog (Blog) Weblog allows “users to write blog posts, comment on their

own or other posts, and ‘like’ other posts or comments.” (Guy et al., 2013)

Communication

Wiki Wikis are webpages that “can be collaboratively edited”

(Cook, 2008) that allows for simple distribution and easy traceability (Razmerita et al., 2014).

Collaboration

Table 0-1. Exemplary applications of an enterprise social media platform (Cook, 2008; Deans, 2012;

Guy et al., 2013 and Razmerita et al., 2014)

In order to classify the above-mentioned applications, this thesis applies the 4C framework of enterprise social media that was introduced by Cook (2008) as an adoption of the 3C model – first introduced by Ellis et al. (1991) – which is a very popular framework in the realm of groupware research.

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The 4C framework is a classification model for ESM applications where the 4Cs stand for an application’s main purpose and use case (Cook, 2008):

(1) Communication refers to applications that allow employees to “converse with others, either by text, image, voice or video, or a combination of these.”

(2) Cooperation refers to applications that allow employees to “share content with others in structured and unstructured ways.”

(3) Collaboration refers to applications that allow employees to “collaborate with each other on particular problems, directly and indirectly in both central and distributed ways.”

(4) Connection refers to applications that allow employees to “make connections with and between both content and other people.”

Table 0-1 shows how the stated exemplary applications can be categorized according to the 4C framework based on Deans (2012) and Cook (2008); in this table, only the main category is displayed, since the categorization is not clear-cut and applications might address various categories. To summarize, this thesis focuses on ESM platforms providing applications that generally addresses all four use case categories in order to enable digital work.

3 Research gap and research questions

Based on the motivation, in the following, I refine the two major problematic areas when introducing digital work by deriving more detailed research questions, which will be answered throughout the course of this dissertation. For this purpose, two structured literature reviews were performed in the context of this thesis following the recommendations of Webster and Watson (2002). Literature reviews serve as a good starting point for research projects, since the literature reviews allow for assessing the status quo of research as well as uncovering gaps in the current research body that can be filled with specific research.

3.1 A long way to go from employees’ use to positive outcomes

As stated in the motivation section, research maintains that introducing ESM platforms for facilitating digital work potentially yields various positive outcomes for the employees (Wehner et al., 2017), such as improving an employee’s work performance (e.g. Ali-Hassan et al., 2015; Bala et al., 2015; Lu et al., 2015; Pfaff & Hasan, 2007;

Steinhüser et al., 2011; Wehner et al., 2017), increasing work flexibility (e.g. Griffith et al., 2015; Patroni et al., 2015), and creating more innovative ideas (e.g. Gray et al., 2011; Kügler & Smolnik, 2013).

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Despite these promising beneficial outcomes for employees, practice shows that ESM platforms sometimes “fail to materialize [their] intended benefits” (Chin et al., 2015). Furthermore, McAfee (2009b) states that “doubts persist about the value of these […] tools even when they are being actively used.” Relying on this, Wang and Senecal (2007) postulate that ICT needs to be functional by providing “functions needed by users to perform their tasks” in order to leverage the intended positive outcomes. Consequentially, researching the relationship between an employee’s ICT use and the resulting outcomes has become of major interest within the realm of information systems (IS) and management research. For example, understanding how ICT use can improve employee performance has developed into a major research stream for understanding the outcome perspective of ICT use (e.g. DeLone & McLean, 1992;

Lucas Jr, 1975; Robey, 1979). In this context, Kügler et al. (2015b) state that there were not always consistent results regarding the relationship between an employee’s ICT use and the resulting performance impact, since certain research indicates a very strong positive relationship while other research does not find any such relationship, thus, making this relationship non-trivial and rather complex. Consequently, this thesis aims at investigating the complex relationship between an employee’s use of an ESM platform and the corresponding outcomes.

Furthermore, investigating the research on this relationship between the use of ESM platforms and their effects and outcomes, I performed a structured literature review. Thereby, I synthesized and contrasted the outcome perspective of ESM platforms facilitating digital work as a first step of my dissertation process and also published and presented the results of this literature review at a major conference in the field of IS research (please see Dittes and Smolnik (2017) for the publication). This review’s results confirm a rather complex relationship between an employee’s ESM use and various outcome factors on the employee level by indicating the existence of mediating effects. Thereby, a mediation effect relates to a situation where the impact of two variables – in this case the degree of ESM use and an employee-level outcome such as enhancing the work performance – is intervened by a third variable (Hair et al., 2016), for example, the improvement of knowledge exchange, meaning that the effect depends on the manifestation of a third variable. However, this literature review showed that research investigating such mediating outcomes and relationships among the various outcomes is still scarce (Dittes & Smolnik, 2017).

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Consequently, this thesis aims at further investigating the relationship between ESM use and its outcomes as well as the corresponding mechanism by deriving the first research question:

RQ1: How does an employee’s ESM use lead to the intended positive outcomes and how are various outcomes related?

3.2 The role of organizational climate as enabler

When it comes to leveraging the potential positive outcomes of introducing ESM platforms for digital work, research states the importance and influence of the organizational culture and climate (e.g. Engelbrecht et al., 2017; Patroni et al., 2016; Richter & Wagner, 2014).

In order to assess the current body of research in this context and to derive a research gap to fill in my thesis, I performed a second structured literature review (please see Dittes and Smolnik (2016) for the published version of this literature review in the proceedings of a major IS conference). Referring to this review’s findings, it is essential to first explicate the difference between organizational climate and organizational culture: Goffee and Jones (1996) characterize organizational culture as the “glue that holds organizations together.” Furthermore, Schein (2010) defines organizational culture as employees’ shared values, beliefs, and practices within an organization. In the context of introducing new ICT, the organizational culture concept is often applied to explain successful adoption (Gallivan & Srite, 2005;

Leidner & Kayworth, 2006). In contrast to the organizational climate concept, Tesluk et al. (1997) state that “both climate and culture deal with the ways by which organization members make sense of their environment [but] culture operates at a greater level of abstraction than climate.” However, the conceptualization of organizational culture by Schein (2010) introduces various layers that make the concept of organizational culture very difficult to observe and empirically assess (Scott et al., 2003). Consequently, this dissertation instead uses the concept of organizational climate, since it is referred to as an approach

“of quantifying the culture of an organization” (Permarupan et al., 2013). In doing this, organizational climate is defined as a “set of properties of the work environment, perceived directly or indirectly by the employees who work in this environment and assumed to be a major force in influencing their behaviour” (Ireland et al., 1978).

Furthermore, the findings of various studies indicate the organizational climate’s importance when introducing ESM platforms (e.g. Schiller & Meiren, 2018), but it remains unclear how this importance manifests (Dittes & Smolnik, 2016). Based on this and on social cognitive

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theory, where Lin (2016) states that organizational climate is an important concept of affecting employee behavior, this thesis aims at filling this research gap by investigating how organizational climate helps and acts as an enabler of leveraging the potential positive outcomes of ESM platforms.

Moreover, the literature review states that the manifestation of an organizational culture is an aspect that is important for acting as an enabler: For example, Richter and Wagner (2014) stress the importance of openness and transparency, Sarker et al. (2011) state that trust is essential for an ESM platform to impact employee performance, and Giermindl et al. (2018) conceptualize community commitment as an introducing factor. Thus, the second research question for this thesis can be formulated as:

RQ2: How is an organizational climate manifested that fosters the leveraging of the positive outcomes on employee level?

3.3 From groupware and traditional intranets to ESM platforms

Building on ESM platforms that facilitate digital work, many companies tend to understand ESM as a new technical development and as a silver bullet (Forsgren & Byström, 2018).

However, practice shows that introducing an ESM platform does not work on the basis of a new and impartial environment. Instead, it replaces former structures, procedures, and – especially – ICT.

First, ESM platforms are often introduced in order to replace groupware systems from the 1990s.

In this context, ESM platforms cannot be considered as a new and disruptive technological development for facilitating digital work but rather as a further stage in ICT development emerging from groupware systems (Razmerita et al., 2014). Groupware systems were therefore developed to “support groups of people engaged in a common task” (Ellis et al., 1991). While early groupware systems mainly focused on supporting work groups, thus, enabling them to achieve their project goal, ESM platforms focus on building organization-wide and non-project- related communities (Koch et al., 2015). Classifying according to the introduced 4C framework, Ellis et al. (1991) state that groupware systems mainly support communication, collaboration, and coordination use cases (see Figure 0-1).

Second, in practice, ESM platforms are often introduced as social intranets and as a replacement of the traditional intranet (Williams & Schubert, 2018). In the 1990s, traditional intranets have therefore been developed for the purpose of providing a central employee portal in order to

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provide information (Curry & Stancich, 2000). Thereby, traditional intranets serve the purpose of the organization communicating with the employees. Furthermore and according to Ward (2010) as well as Curry and Stancich (2000), communicative and collaborative functionalities, such as instant messaging and discussion forums, were added to the traditional intranet in the course of time (see Table 0-1). In sum, Figure 0-1 shows a simplified overview of the differences between ESM platforms, groupware systems, and traditional intranets according to the 4C framework.

Figure 0-1. Classification of ESM platforms, traditional intranets, and groupware systems in the 4C framework

Referring to the performed literature review on the outcome perspective of ESM platforms (Dittes & Smolnik, 2017), this thesis addresses a major research gap by utilizing those differences and investigating the outcome perspective. This is achieved by applying a longitudinal research setting in order to compare and contrast the effects on the intended outcomes. Consequently, this thesis addresses research gaps by showcasing the actual added value of an ESM platform (Aral et al., 2013) and by observing various effects and changes over time (Högberg, 2018). Thus, the third research question can be derived as:

RQ3: How do the functional principles of leveraging positive outcomes for an ESM platform differ from those of previous ICT, such as groupware systems and traditional intranets?

3.4 Implementing digital work successfully

Building on the introduction of ESM platforms replacing existing structures and procedures, Richter et al. (2018) state that facilitating digital work requires more than only making new IT such as ESM platforms available to the employees. In this context, Orlikowski (2016) posits that these new ICT might reconfigure existing work practices. Thus, practice shows that the employees tend to avoid using the new platforms (Buettner, 2015), since they are often resistant

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to change. For example, instead of embracing the new offered work flexibility of digital work, many employees still prefer a regular routine of going to the office every day (Ratti & Claudel, 2016). In order to overcome this, disseminating these new ICT requires that employees need to make sense of their working habits and embrace the new possibilities that they offer (e.g. Aral et al., 2013; Bharadwaj et al., 2013; Richter & Riemer, 2013). Therefore, introducing and capitalizing on digital work require a shift in traditional thinking about how organizations and employees define work. Consequently, this thesis aims at investigating the process whereby ESM platforms are introduced to encourage digital work. By applying a change management perspective, the following research question adheres to the general need in IS research to address practical problems “through the development of tools, techniques, and practices” (Benbasat & Zmud, 1999). Based on this, the research gap of deriving “managerial implications [that] are important in order to implement effective […] ESM [platforms]”

(Dürr et al., 2016) is addressed by the fourth research question:

RQ4: How can ESM platforms be successfully introduced and sustainably established in an organization to support digital work?

To summarize, Figure 0-2 shows how the four research questions are related and fit together in a research framework that serves as a basis for this thesis.

Figure 0-2. Overview of research framework and questions

4 Research design

In the following, the research design for this thesis is presented. However, before describing the detailed research approach and actions that were performed in the context of this thesis, I will discuss the underlying research paradigm.

ESMUse Outcomes

Organizational Climate

RQ1 RQ2

GroupwareSystem&TraditionalIntranet RQ3

Project Perspective Employee Perspective

ESMPlatform forDigitalWork

Introduction Processand Activities

RQ4

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4.1 Research paradigm

According to Wahyuni (2012), a research paradigm refers to “a set of fundamental assumptions and beliefs as to how the world is perceived which then serves as a thinking framework that guides the behaviour of the researcher.” Being philosophical in nature, there are several paradigms that serve as a basis for conducting research (Kaushik & Walsh, 2019).

Guba and Lincoln (1994) therefore state three interconnected philosophical questions that differentiate the research paradigms and that are also introduced as philosophical dimensions by Wahyuni (2012): ontology, epistemology, and methodology. For the purpose of this thesis introduction, I rely on an illustration by Grix (2018), who posit a simplified overview of how the different dimensions relate.

Figure 0-3 shows this overview along with the corresponding philosophical questions.

Figure 0-3. Simplified overview of research paradigms (based on Grix (2018) and Guba and Lincoln (1994))

Examining the prevailing research paradigms in IS research, Chen and Hirschheim (2004) state that positivism and interpretivism are most commonly applied as research paradigms. However, this thesis follows a rather post-positivism research paradigm. Table 0-2 shows an overview and comparison of the three research paradigms according to the three dimensions.

In the following, I focus on elaborating the post-positivism research paradigm – however, please see Guba and Lincoln (1994) for a more detailed description and comparison of the positivist and interpretivist perspective.

Although post-positivism has emerged from the positivist research paradigm in the mid-20^th century, a few of the underlying philosophical assumptions differ by rejecting central tenants

Research Paradigm

Ontology Epistemology Methodology Research

Process

Which precise procedures can we use to acquire knowledge and which data can we collect?

What is the nature of reality?

What can be known?

How to acquire knowledge?

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of positivism (Trochim & Donnelly, 2001). It is important to mention that the meaning of each of the terms “are often debated, understood, and communicated in multiple ‘correct ways’”

(Killam, 2013) and, thus, in the following, I rely on Guba and Lincoln (1994) when assessing the philosophical dimensions for consistency purposes:

Investigating the ontology, post-positivism follows a critical realist perspective, which states that there is a reality that can be apprehended by researchers but only imperfectly due to “flawed human intellectual mechanism and fundamentally intractable nature of phenomena”

(Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Post-positivism hereby contrasts positivism and a naïve realism that assumes researchers can unrestrictedly assess the reality (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Building on this and examining the epistemology, dualism and objectivism of positivism cannot be blindly transferred to the post-positivism paradigm, since these concepts imply that the researcher and the investigated phenomenon are independent entities and the researcher can investigate the phenomenon without influencing it or vice versa. However, since post-positivism acknowledges, for example, the flawed human intellectual mechanism, dualism and objectivism remain an ideal and, therefore, post-positivism tends to rely on the “external guardians of objectivity” (Guba & Lincoln, 1994) by, for example, comparing the extracted knowledge and findings to pre-existing knowledge, i.e., other researchers’ findings, or the assessment of a critical community, such as co-authors, reviewers, etc. After the findings have been positively assessed, they are, in the light of post-positivism, stated as probably true – until they become falsified. Based on the same argument, the methodology of post-positivism aims at falsifying hypotheses instead of verifying them according to positivism. Thereby, post-positivism applies the perspective of critical multiplism by using various different data sources for triangulation purposes. Thus, post-positivism research can apply quantitative methods, such as surveys, and qualitative methods, such as interviews. However, Mertens (2014) states that quantitative methods are currently predominant in post-positivism.

In conclusion, I acknowledge the conceptualization of Grix (2018) as well as Saunders et al. (2007), who posit the differentiation of research paradigms as a continuum with positivism and interpretivism as opposing perspectives. Applying this, post-positivism can be stated as lying in between these extreme points, but leaning a little bit more toward the positivist side based on historical development. Thus, even though this thesis follows a post-positivism research paradigm, the manifestation of various dimensions can slightly shift in the various research projects. In this context, Saunders et al. (2007) state that post-positivism applies

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a “range of methods and data types to fit subject matter.” Similarly, the research paradigm of pragmatism – that has evolved more recently – postulates a more pragmatic philosophical basis for conducting research, since the research paradigm must only fit the research that is being conducted (Kaushik & Walsh, 2019; Wahyuni, 2012).

Positivism Post-positivism Interpretivism

Ontology Naïve realism:

Reality is independent of social actors and objective

Critical realism:

Reality exists independently of social actors, but is interpreted through social conditioning

Relativism:

Reality is socially constructed, subjective, multiple, and may change

Epistemology Dualist/objectivist:

Findings are true

Focus on causality and law- like generalizations

Modified dualist/objectivist:

Findings are probably true Focus on explaining within a context

Transactional/subjectivist:

Findings are created Focus upon the details of situation, the reality behind these details, subjective meanings, and motivating actions

Methodology Experimental/

manipulative:

Focus on verification of hypotheses

Mainly quantitative methods, such as

experiments, surveys, and statistical analysis of secondary data

Modified experimental/

manipulative; critical multiplism:

Focus on falsification of hypotheses

Quantitative and qualitative methods (no preference), and encourage mixed-method case studies

Hermeneutical/dialectical:

Focus on interpretation of meaning

Mainly qualitative methods, such as ethnography and case studies (interviews)

Table 0-2. Comparison of relevant research paradigms (based on Guba and Lincoln (1994), Wahyuni (2012), Sorrell (2018), Lincoln et al. (2011), and Springett (2010))

4.2 Research process, projects and publications

Structuring the description of the underlying research process, this thesis builds on, combines, and simplifies several research process models (e.g. Creswell, 2014; Kumar, 2019;

Thornhill et al., 2009; Urbach & Ahlemann, 2010). Figure 0-4 shows the prototypic research process applied for each research project that was conducted in the scope of this thesis. In the following, the process steps are successively described. However, interpreting the following process step descriptions, it is important to understand that in the context of this thesis, several research projects were simultaneously or successively performed. Although the following

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describes the actions performed for each stage on a more general level, the precise actions taken in each research project might vary slightly.

Figure 0-4. Research process

Identifying the research problem

Before formulating and deriving a precise and detailed research problem that will be addressed in a particular research project, I performed – as already mentioned in Chapter 3 – two structured literature reviews on (1) the outcome perspective of ESM platforms research (see Dittes and Smolnik (2017) for the resulted publication) and (2) the role of organizational culture and climate (please see Dittes and Smolnik (2016) for the resulted publication). According to Webster and Watson (2002), performing literature reviews “is an essential feature of any academic project.” Literature reviews can therefore serve various purposes such as relating the research projects that are being conducted to a larger and ongoing dialogue (Creswell, 2014) and allowing to identify research gaps to be filled by future studies (Webster & Watson, 2002).

As a result of the performed literature reviews, various research gaps and needs in the form of research agendas were derived and developed that served as a basis for deriving this dissertation’s four research questions that are presented in Chapter 3. In order to answer these main research questions, four main research projects were initiated over the course of time.

Each research project addresses one or several facets of the main research questions and, thus, serves as a further piece of the puzzle in the bigger picture of this thesis. Thereby, more detailed research questions were developed for each research project in order to motivate the particular research endeavor. Each research project is motivated from both a theoretical and a practical perspective: The theoretical perspective draws on deriving a gap in the current body of research that will be filled, and the practical perspective draws on deriving a gap in order to ensure the relevance of the study.

Research Problem

Theoretical Foundation &

Research Model

Research Process

Data

Collection Data Analysis Discussion &

Publication

1 2 3 4 5

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Developing the theoretical foundation and deriving a research model

Based on the underlying research paradigm of this thesis, the second step of the research process deals with extracting and processing the relevant literature that can serve as a theoretical foundation and also for developing hypotheses that will be evaluated in the course of each research project. Thereby, I mainly followed the descriptions of Creswell (2014) for performing deductive research. In doing this, literature from various research disciplines, such as psychology, behaviorism, as well as organizational and management science, is reviewed for each research project that serve as a theoretical foundation in order to answer the identified research problems and research questions. Based on this foundation, a research model is developed that consists of various variables and predictive statements in the form of hypotheses of how these variables are related.

Collecting empirical data

Evaluating the derived hypotheses and research models, this thesis mainly relies on a survey- based research approach. Survey-based studies “measure these variables and test their effects using statistical methods” (Bhattacherjee, 2012). Hereby, I performed several case studies and collected empirical data in one or multiple organizations resulting in four different overall research projects (see Table 0-3 – Project A-D). However, before collecting the empirical data in order to evaluate the hypotheses, measurement instruments had to be developed in order to make the attitudes and behavior of the studies’ participants observable and measurable (Creswell, 2014). Developing such measurement instruments, I mainly relied on Straub (1989) to operationalize the variables of the research models in each research project. Thereby, proven and recommended measures were extracted from the literature as recommended (e.g Kankanhalli et al., 2005; Stone, 1978) and collected in a question pool. Based on this initial pool, the measures were continuously refined and adjusted in order to fit the research projects.

In doing this, the wording was adjusted to fit the context of the research projects with the purpose of enhancing comprehensibility and clarity (Suddaby, 2010) by, for example, conducting joint workshops with the case studies’ stakeholders. Furthermore, card sorting and item ranking exercises were performed with several groups of researchers (Moore & Benbasat, 1991).

After having implemented robust measurement instruments, data collections were performed in each research project. Organizations from various industries were approached that either had

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already implemented an ESM platform for promoting digital work or were about to implement such ICT. For collecting data, questionnaires were implemented in online survey tools and distributed to the employees. These online questionnaires did not only include the measures that were developed to assess the variables but also questions assessing various demographic information that also serve as control variables as well as an attention question in order to filter for inattentive responses. Table 0-3 shows an overview of the empirical data collected for each research project.

Project Organizations Data collection

approach Main data set (survey)

Supplementary data

A International business software provider

Single survey 147 survey responses /

B International finance and

insurance company (& two contrasting case studies)

Single survey 247 survey responses 19 interviews in a multiple-case design with two further contrasting case studies

C International

automotive supplier Longitudinal approach: survey and interviews at multiple times

First data collection:

401 survey responses

/

Second data collection:

Six interviews

D International

automotive supplier Longitudinal approach: survey and interviews at multiple times

First data collection:

20 interviews

Second data collection:

/

15 interviews

Third data collection:

18 interviews

Summary: A total number of 3,971 survey responses were collected and 78 interviews were conducted in the context of this dissertation.

Table 0-3. Overview of data collection

Table 0-3 shows that in research projects A and B a single data collection was performed whereby the use and effects of an ESM platform were assessed (see RQ1). Furthermore, in project B, the introduction process was investigated (RQ4). For this purpose, the quantitative survey-based data was supplemented with qualitative data by means of conducting interviews.

Moreover, these interviews were extended using a multiple-case design by conducting interviews in various other organizations in order to contrast and synthesize the findings in different contexts. Next, research projects C and D apply a longitudinal data collection setting with multiple data collections at different points in time. Thereby, these research projects did

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not only focus on assessing the use and effects of ESM platforms (RQ1 and RQ2), but the longitudinal setting also allowed comparing states of affair before and after an ESM platform was introduced (RQ3). Furthermore, interviews were conducted in research projects C and D as supplementary data for triangulation purposes (Wilson, 2014), when discussing the findings.

Data analysis

Next, the collected data in each research project was analyzed by evaluating the previously derived hypotheses that are represented in the different research models. For the purpose of data analysis and analyzing the survey-based data, this thesis mainly utilizes structural equation modeling (SEM) through the partial least squares (PLS) method. PLS is a variance-based approach to structural equation modeling. In contrast to covariance-based methods that are intensely used in marketing and management research, PLS is predominately used in the IS research field – in the realm in which this thesis is written – and also yields several advantages in the particular context of this thesis: For example, Hair et al. (2016) state that PLS-SEM is recommended when aiming at identifying driver variables for particular outcomes, when dealing with formative constructs, and when using latent variable scores for later analyses.

Building on this, several analyses are conducted, such as a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) (Weinfurt, 1995) in order to compare the latent variable scores, as well as a multigroup analysis (Hair et al., 2016) to contrast the research models of two data collection points in a longitudinal research setting. As for the supplementary data, the interviews were transcribed and analyzed using measures from qualitative data analysis (QDA) (Bortz & Döring, 2007).

Discussing the results and publication

Eventually, the results of each research project were discussed in the light of the current literature, practical and theoretical implications were derived from the results, and the limitations were acknowledged. Moreover, the results of the various research projects led to several scientific publications.

Table 0-4 shows an overview of the publications that were developed and published in the furtherance of this dissertation.

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Publication

type Title Reference or

authors Publication outlet Ranking VHB- JQ3^* and

status**

Literature

review Is it an Antecedent? Is it an Outcome? No, it’s Culture!

Understanding the Relationship between Cultural Values and the Use of Information Systems Fostering Collaboration

Dittes and

Smolnik (2016) Proceedings of the 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-49)

C (published)

Literature

review Why Are We Doing This Again? Towards Uncovering the Outcome Perspective of Enterprise Social Software Use

Dittes and

Smolnik (2017) Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2017) – Research-In-Progress paper

B (published)

Empirical research paper

Connect Me! Antecedents and Impact of Social Connectedness in Enterprise Social Software

Kügler, Dittes, Smolnik, and Richter (2015a)

Business &

Information Systems Engineering (BISE)

B (published)

Towards a Digital Work Environment – The Influence of Collaboration and Networking on Employee Performance within an Enterprise Social Media Platform

Dittes and

Smolnik (2019) Journal of Business

Economics (JBE) B

(published)

Making Work Flexible – How Enterprise Social Media Impact Employees’

Work Flexibility

Dittes and Smolnik

Information Systems Journal (ISJ)

A (decision 1st round: revise and

resubmit) Empirical

research paper

How Enterprise Social Media Enhance Employee Performance – A

Longitudinal Study on the Role of Networking Impact and Organizational Climate

Dittes and

Smolnik Business &

Information Systems Engineering (BISE)

B

(initial submission under review)

Practitioner transfer

Toward the Workplace of the Future: How

Organizations Can Facilitate Digital Work

Dittes, Richter, Richter, and Smolnik (2019)

Business Horizons C

(published)

Notes:

* VHB-JOURQUAL is the official ranking of the Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft e.v.

(VHB). The VHB ranks the main journals and conference proceedings of a discipline. The latest iteration of this ranking relates to the third version (VHB-JQ3) available at

https://vhbonline.org/vhb4you/vhb-jourqual/vhb-jourqual-3.

** The status is based on the date of submitting the thesis.

Table 0-4. Overview of related publications

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Thereby, this thesis also acknowledges various types of publications that are important in scientific practice. First and as stated, two literature reviews were performed and published;

they serve for the identification of research gaps and give an overview of the state of the art in a particular research field. Second and most importantly in the scientific world, four empirical research papers were written – two of them are published at the date on which the thesis is submitted – that scientifically report on the process and results of the various research projects.

Third, one practitioner transfer report was published that owes to the importance of transferring the scientific results to practice by, for example, providing recommendations, approaches and activities for improving and solving practical problems.

4.3 Additional research projects unrelated to this thesis

Besides the various research projects that aimed at answering the research questions within the scope of this thesis, I performed and participated in various additional research projects while I was a doctoral student and researcher. Table 0-5 shows an overview of these research projects and the resulting publications:

Project Title Reference or

authors Publication

outlet Research method and

data

Ranking VHB-JQ3 and status IT

standardization

Why Don’t You Stick to Them?

Understanding Factors Influencing and Counter-Measures to Combat Deviant Behavior Towards Organizational IT Standards

Dittes, Ahlemann, Urbach, and Smolnik (2015)

Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Wirtschafts- informatik (WI 2015)

Qualitative research based

on expert interviews

C (published)

Because Everybody is Different: Towards Understanding the Acceptance of Organizational IT Standards

Müller, Dittes, Ahlemann, Urbach, and Smolnik (2015)

Proceedings of the 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-48)

Qualitative research based

on expert interviews

C (published)

Standardisierung der Unternehmens-IT – Der weite Weg vom Lippenbekenntnis zu nachhaltigem Nutzen

Dittes, Ahlemann and Urbach (2014)

Wirtschafts- informatik &

Management (WuM)

Practice transfer based on case

study

N/A (published)

A Design Theory for In-Company IT Standardization

Ahlemann, Dittes, Filbrunn, and Urbach (in alphabetical order)

IS Frontiers Design science based on expert

interviews

B (initial submission

under review)

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Review- ing Know- ledge Manag- ement track at HICSS

Eleven Years of the Knowledge

Management Track at HICSS: An Overview

Dittes, Smolnik, Jennex, and Croasdell (2016)

The International Journal of Knowledge Management (IJKM)

Literature review C (published)

Knowledge, Innovation, and Entrepreneurial Systems at HICSS

Jennex, Dittes, Smolnik, Croasdell, and King (2018)

Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS)

Misc- ellaneous short term research projects with colleagues and students

Does the IS Artifact Matter in

Sociomateriality Research? A Literature Review of Empirical Studies

Weißenfels, Ebner, Dittes, and Smolnik (2016)

Proceedings of the 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-49)

Zielgruppendilemma des gleichzeitigen stationären und Online- Handels: Eine

experimentelle Studie am Beispiel des Facebook-Auftritts eines Mode- Einzelhandels- unternehmens

Porst, Dittes, and Smolnik (2017)

Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Wirtschafts- informatik (WI 2017)

Experimental

study design C (published)

When Emotions Go Social – Understanding the Role of Emotional Intelligence in Social Network Use

Hornung, Dittes, and Smolnik (2018)

Proceedings of the 26th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2018)

Quantitative research based on

a survey

B (published)

Vergleich der

Prozessqualität von IT- gestützten und nicht- IT-gestützten Entscheidungs- prozessen in Unternehmen: eine experimentelle Studie

Pinell, Dittes, and Smolnik (2018)

Proceedings of the Multiconference Wirtschafts- informatik 2018 (MKWI 2018)

Experimental

study design D (published)

Table 0-5. Overview of unrelated publications

5 Structure of the thesis and overview of essays

This thesis is set up in a cumulative fashion consisting of multiple essays. Hereby, five of the publications were selected from Table 0-4 to serve as essays for this thesis. Each of the five essays addresses a facet of the overall thesis by investigating one or several research questions

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that were motivated in Chapter 3. Figure 0-5 shows the overall structure of the thesis as well as the order of the five essays.

Figure 0-5. Overview of thesis’ structure

In the following, a short description of each essay is provided (based on the respective Abstract):

Essay 1: Social connectedness as a positive effect of an employee’s ESM use influencing the respective work performance

The first essay aims at investigating the role of social connectedness as a positive effect of an employee’s ESM use influencing the respective work performance. The concept of social connectedness refers to an employee’s feeling of being able to strengthen the personal relationship with co-workers by using an ESM platform. By drawing on empirical evidence of an international business software provider and a sample of 147 employee responses, this essay showcases that social connectedness has a positive impact on an employee’s work performance.

Furthermore, the results show that both an employee’s perceived possibility to improve his/her reputation and the perceived number of co-workers as ESM users positively influence an employee’s feeling of social connectedness – however, the reputation’s effect is significantly stronger.

Essay 2: The influence of collaboration and networking on employee performance within an ESM platform

The second essay aims at uncovering how the introduction of ESM platforms can support creating a digital work environment and how this digital work environment can influence an

2 ^Towards^a^Digital^WorkEnvironment– TheInfluenceof CollaborationandNetworkingonEmployee

PerformancewithinanEnterpriseSocialMediaPlatform

1 ^Connect^Me!AntecedentsandImpactofSocial ConnectednessinEnterpriseSocialSoftware

3 ^Making_Social_Media^Work_on^Flexible_Employees’^{– The}_WorkÎmpactFlexibilityôfÊnterprise

4

5 ^TowardsOrganizations^the^WorkplacecanFacilitate^of^theDigital^Future:Work^How

Title Addressed

ResearchQuestions

RQ1

RQ3

RQ4 HowEnterpriseSocialMediaEnhanceEmployee RQ2

Performance– ALongitudinalStudyontheRoleof NetworkingImpactandOrganizationalClimate

Enabling Digital Work in Organizations: Empirical Investigations of the Enterprise Social Media’s Introduction Process and Outcome Perspective

Sven Dittes

Enabling Digital Work in Organizations

Empirical Investigations of the Enterprise Social Media’s Introduction Process and Outcome Perspective

Wirtschafts-

wissenschaft

FernUniversität in Hagen

Enabling Digital Work in Organizations

Empirical Investigations of the Enterprise Social Media’s Introduction Process and Outcome Perspective

Dissertation

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grads

eines Doktors der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Dr. rer. pol.) der Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaft

der FernUniversität in Hagen von

Sven Dittes, M.Sc.

Table of Contents

Introduction to “Enabling Digital Work in Organizations – Empirical Investigations of the Enterprise Social Media’s Introduction Process and

Outcome Perspective”

Table of Contents

Lists of Figures

Tables

1 Motivation

2 Introducing digital work and enterprise social media

3 Research gap and research questions

4 Research design

5 Structure of the thesis and overview of essays