Examining Contributions to a Corporate Microblog as a Basis for an Employee Incentive System

Table of Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Table of Contents

Table of Figures

List of Abbreviations

1 Introduction
1.1 Research Thesis
1.2 Document Structure

2 Social Software and Enterprise
2.1 The Web
2.2 Social Software
2.3 Enterprise
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 (John P. Kotter)
3.3 Management By Objectives (Peter F. Drucker)
3.4 Balanced Scorecard (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 Definition of ‘Desired Behaviors’
7.2 Hashtags
7.3 Data Fields
7.4 Scoring Components
7.5 Sample Group Selection
7.6 Influence Metric (INF)
7.7 Utiliy Metric (UTI)
7.8 Composite Incentive Score (CIS)
7.9 Examples
7.10 Scoring Results
7.11 Examination of Correlations

8 Summary
8.1 Research Methods
8.2 Summarization of Findings
8.3 Critique
8.4 Topics for Further Research

9 Bibliography and References

10 Appendix
10.1 SQL Queries

Abstract

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 publication 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.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my college professors, especially Prof. Paul Kirchberg and Prof. Frank Lehmann, who assisted and supervised this study.

At my workplace, Allison, Gerit, John and Thomas have been instrumental in providing the data that became the basis for my research. Philipp deserves thanks for a thorough review of my writing at short notice and during evening hours. Oliver was very helpful as a sparring partner for developer tools and SQL syntax and semantics. Brigitte, Charlotte, Katharina, Miriam, Felix, Jürgen, Heiko and Klaus have helped provide the methodical link between the data set and desired employee behavior. I have lost count of the inspirations I received from talking with colleagues and business partners, near and far, about the possibilities and limitations of social software in the workplace. Obviously, every single notice that our colleagues posted to the microblog has contributed to the findings I could make. Everyone’s engagement on the new medium is sincerely appreciated.

Both my parents have been tremendously helpful as proofreaders and, maybe less obviously, as role models and sources for the inspiration and energy required to stay the course towards the completion of an academic publication. My brother continues to amaze me, because our walks of life and work environments are so different – yet our thinking, our accomplishments, appearances and our judgments have often times turned out so similarly.

This work is dedicated to my wife, who has always provided tremendous motivation and support for everything I have done – and to the loving memory of my dear uncle, Helmut.

Table of Figures

Fig. 1: Twitter’s ‘timeline’, menu of actions (reply, retweet, favorite)

Fig. 2: Globalization hazards and opportunities (from [Kott96], p. 19)

Fig. 3: Model of the ‘Balanced Scorecard’ (from [Kapl96], p. 9)

Fig. 4: Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (visualization)

Fig. 5: Example: visualization of a website click path analysis

Fig. 6: Example: website audience demographics for gofeminin.de

Fig. 7: Example: consumer feedback on a commerce website

Fig. 8: Klout score for Barack Obama, U.S. President

Fig. 9: Socialmention search results example

Fig. 10: Facebook Insights, ‘Reach’ and ‘Unique Users by Frequency’

Fig. 11: Facebook Insights, ‘Who Is Talking About’

Fig. 12: Notice volume on the platform (daily, with 30-day average)

Fig. 13: Snapshot of a ‘timeline’ on the corporate microblog platform

Fig. 14: Subscribers per individual, ordered by number of subscribers

Fig. 15: Usage of the ‘favorite’ feature per user, ordered by volume

Fig. 16: Usage of the ‘repeat’ feature per user, ordered by volume

Fig. 17: Example of notice propagation: ‘crowdsourcing pilot’

Fig. 18: Example of notice propagation: ‘e-mail migration’

Fig. 19: Active/reactive/passive users, before and after social software

Fig. 20: ‘Long tail’ curve characteristic

Fig. 21: Monthly notice volume and incentive score (user ID 41)

Fig. 22: Monthly notice volume and incentive score (user ID 48531)

List of Abbreviations

illustration not visible in this excerpt

1 Introduction

Social media and social networks seem to be conquering human relationships. While the most prominent example, Facebook, came under market pressure after making the third-largest initial public offering (IPO) in U.S. corporate history and the largest IPO ever in the technology sector^[1], many investors are still confident that a community of one billion people all across the planet will provide significant returns. People use smartphones with location-aware mobile applications to access Facebook and countless other social platforms – Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Groupon, Foursquare, just to name a few – any time and from everywhere: on vacation, from home, at work, or from the commutes in-between. The underlying technology, called social software, provides intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces, inviting contributions from and encouraging dialog among participants. People use it to form communities and maintain relationships online, establishing an entirely new generation of socio-technical systems.

Corporations are increasingly expecting business benefits from such platforms for employee-to-employee networking, enabling virtual teamwork and cross-divisional communities of practice or to improve internal communications, organizational learning, problem solving and enterprise knowledge management. Before any of those benefits can be harvested, however, social software platforms have to be introduced into an organization successfully. Such an initiative will often require strategic and cultural changes before the new spirit of collaboration seamlessly integrates with everyday work tasks and corporate procedures.

Since the success of social software is, by nature, dependent on broad adoption and the quality of employee contributions, companies will be looking for ways to promote usage of the new platforms and influence employee behavior accordingly. Now that the first corporate implementations of social software are available and adoption is progressing, it seems promising to define desired employee behaviors and then analyze whether the variety of individual contributions collected on this kind of software platform can be used to find actual evidence of these behaviors.

1.1 Research Thesis

The following thesis was formulated to guide the research effort:

„An analysis of content in a corporate microblog provides a measurement of desired employee behavior that can be used in an incentive system to encourage active use and promote technology adoption“.

This publication will now attempt to confirm this thesis empirically. It uses a data set derived from an actual corporate microblogging implementation.

1.2 Document Structure

Before detailing the empirical data analysis in chapters 6 and 7, this paper presents the emerging theoretical foundations for the corporate use of microblogging in particular and social software in general (chapter 2). Furthermore, a short literature survey introduces the scientific theory behind corporate change management, corporate strategy and the role of employee incentive systems for strategic alignment (chapter 3). Another short chapter (4) examines the analytics commonly used to measure the success of traditional media, by analogy. Some practical examples of social network analysis (5) shall round off the academic survey.

2 Social Software and Enterprise 2.0

Microblogging is a rather new phenomenon. In March 2006, for example, the now omnipresent social networking service Facebook introduced a feature allowing its users to share brief status updates among their friends. July the same year, the dedicated microblogging service Twitter was launched^[2]. Twitter is now immensely popular, its name being de-facto synonymous to microblogging in popular perception. Adoption of the Twitter service is seemingly ever-growing^[3]. Due to the intensity of innovation in this area, the object of investigation changes rapidly and scientific analysis becomes relatively difficult.

Meanwhile, however, there seems to be a broad consensus to classify microblogging as a social technology (a social medium or, more generally, social software), and, as such, as a Web 2.0 phenomenon. Since this research examines the use of microblogging in a corporate context, it is also necessary to present a definition of Enterprise 2.0, an umbrella term that has been coined to characterize business applications of Web 2.0 technology and principles. For the purpose of this treatment, it thus seems practical to define these categories – Web 2.0, social software, Enterprise 2.0 – prior to examining microblogging as a specific technique.

2.1 The Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 is quite frequently used, but controversial. In a stricter sense, Web 2.0 is not a scientific definition, but rather the outcome of a brainstorming with practitioners^[4]: At an industry conference in 2005, attendants were asked to name novel, remarkably successful internet services since the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2001. A broad, seemingly diverse range of contributions arose, but upon closer examination, there were also striking similarities.

On the one hand, all those Internet offerings were broadly soliciting and encouraging contributions from their users, allowing participation while not requiring the possession of any technical skills^[5]. On the other hand, and by contrast to traditional web software, they seemed to facilitate the combination of data from various sources and applications from various areas^[6] in an open fashion and in a rather playful way^[7]. Another common characteristic of Web 2.0 applications is their openness with respect to the data and services that they provide: In many cases, application programming interfaces (APIs) were provided for unrestricted access, spawning unforeseen, creative uses; allowing the consumption of those services on a wide range of devices^[8] and operating system platforms^[9].

Resulting from the heuristic definition, arguably, the term Web 2.0 does not seem to be used and understood consistently^[10]. The choice of terminology could in fact be criticized: Contrary to what the analogy to a software product’s version number (2.0) suggests, no upgrade or enhancement of WWW technology is involved^[11]. Technological advances in fact play only a marginal role to constitute this new generation of Internet services: The underlying innovations^[12] are supplements or enhancements of conventional Web technology.

2.2 Social Software

An apparently more precise term than Web 2.0 is social software^[13]. “Social software applications are supporting, as part of a socio-technical system, human communication, interaction and collaboration. The actors are thereby leveraging the potential and contributions of a network of active participants.”^[14] In this definition, the idea of a system in both the social and the technical senses is crucial: The active inclusion and utilization of participant contributions is the single most important characteristic for social software.

For an early example of how an application of this principle has significantly influenced the course of Internet history, let us look at Google’s PageRank algorithm^[15]: With Page Rank, priority for any given search result does not at all depend on attributes of the page in question, but rather on the quality and number of links from other, external documents to the page in question. PageRank effectively applied the technique of academic citation to Internet search^[16]. Rather than considering the properties of the web content itself, the new algorithm assessed how other contributions considered its relevance (assuming that hyperlinks are only placed to content that is considered relevant). PageRank, in essence, was based on relationships between web pages rather than their content. Building on this idea, Google could deliver better and more useful search results than any other Internet search engine at the time^[17]: With the introduction of PageRank, search rankings were much harder to manipulate.

Nowadays, the social software principle is reaching a lot further. There are countless practical examples of platforms built around substantial contributions from participants, in the Internet as well as for internal corporate use (Intranet). The most popular and successful Internet example for a service built upon community contributions, arguably, is Wikipedia^[18], but there are also examples of corporate Intranet platforms based on Wiki software to provide collections of employee knowledge^[19].

2.3 Enterprise 2.0

By analogy to Web 2.0, elements of corporate strategies that build on user-generated content and social software platforms for business benefit are termed Enterprise 2.0.

According to Michael Koch and Alexander Richter, Enterprise 2.0 is about “comprehending the concepts behind Web 2.0 and social software, and attempting to transfer and apply them to collaboration in enterprises”^[20]. Corporations embrace the new paradigm and hope for better business performance because there is “the observation that established corporate infrastructures do no longer live up to the requirements of knowledge work. […] It is seen as a central management task to provide easy access to the implicit know-how, experience and ideas of knowledge workers”^[21].

Because, as we saw, social software is a socio-technical system, successfully establishing an Enterprise 2.0 work environment is more dependent on human factors than on technical features^[22]. The openness that comes with social software presents challenges to corporate management. The free flow of information, irrespective of traditional organizational or hierarchical boundaries, threatens to dilute authority, requiring new leadership styles and demanding new leader qualifications and behaviors. Grown up with digital devices and naturally accustomed to Internet technology, young professionals are now high potentials in a time where demographic change puts the supply for talent under additional pressure^[23]. The literature review in chapter 3 will provide more detail on theories examining corporate change management, corporate strategy and strategic alignment.

2.4 Microblogs and Microblogging

A microblog is a specific breed of social software that allows its users to exchange short messages with potentially any other user of the platform. Such messages can be sent and received from a wide variety of devices and irrespective of location, on personal computers, on conventional mobile phones^[24], or on Internet-connected smartphones. Each participant can observe a constant stream of messages on the platform by following (subscribing to) the contributions of any number of other users at their own liberty, thereby effectively configuring their own personal stream of news updates that the platform then presents to them in strictly chronological order^[25]. Participants can interact with other users’ messages, so that information travels across the network and conversation threads can emerge. Using the Twitter service as an example, it is possible for the recipient of any microblog communication to

- respond to the message (), commencing or advancing dialog
- spread the message further (), exposing the content to a wider audience
- mark the message as useful (), recognizing the original contribution as valuable.

Twitter is designed for maximum speed and simplicity: Each of these interactions takes users of the service only a single mouse click.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Fig. 1: Twitter’s ‘timeline’, menu of actions (reply, retweet, favorite)^[26]

The entire dialog takes place in public – any user can subscribe to any other user’s messages – unless specific privacy settings are put in place by one of the parties in conversation. The verb used to describe activity on a microblog platform is microblogging.

Contrary to what the name might suggest, microblogging is actually closer in nature to instant messaging (chat) than to blogging^[27]. Due to the fact that updating one’s microblog takes significantly less time than writing a contribution to one’s blog, microbloggers typically update their status several times per day, whereas bloggers only publish new articles once every few days^[28]. The possibility to compose messages from anywhere, independently of location, e.g. via cell phone text messages or from smartphone, has added to the popularity of microblogging.

After Twitter’s immense success, other significant social or professional networking sites have given their users possibilities to keep their contacts informed with short, regular status updates^[29]. Unlike other social software technologies, especially Wikis and Blogs, however, microblogging does not seem to be widely recognized as a technique for professional or corporate use.

2.5 Corporate Uses for Microblogging

An increasing number of commercial microblogging implementations is available to corporations, either as an Internet-based cloud service (e.g. Yammer^[30], Communote^[31] ), or as a specific feature of an Intranet-based collaboration platform (e.g. Jive^[32], Blogtronix^[33], JustConnect^[34] ). Moreover, the established providers of enterprise software (like customer relationship, sales force management or collaboration infrastructure solutions) are also adding microblogging features to their suites (e.g. Saleforce Chatter^[35], Tibco Tibbr^[36] ). It can thus be said with certainty that there is a considerable supply of microblogging solutions in support of business processes and business operations^[37].

Several recent examples have highlighted singular cases where microblogging was put to business use, most notably related to internal communications, knowledge management, employee social networking and collaboration. An impressive collection of respective cases has been compiled by a group of scientists from the Universität der Bundeswehr Munich and St. Gallen University, featuring, most notably, studies of examples from CapGemini^[38], Communardo^[39] and Siemens Building Solutions^[40].

From a perspective of teamwork in software engineering, a notable study has highlighted the potential of social software, including microblogs, to enable “new ways for software teams to form and work together”^[41].

Examining project management and project teamwork, the possibility of using a microblog for communication on distributed virtual teams and as an alternative to e-mail, has been described in an earlier study by the author of this publication^[42].

2.6 Adoption and Change

Social software relies on contributions from a broad range of individuals. In order to successfully introduce a social software platform into an enterprise, employees must participate in a change effort that affects their attitudes and behaviors rather fundamentally: Where they were previously used to consume data and information passively, e.g. browsing the news stories on a static corporate intranet, they will now have to become more engaged, acting not only as consumers, but also as producers or publishers of content. That’s why the following chapters will present an overview of theories behind organizational change and incentive systems to motivate the individual and on the evolution of publishing from Gutenberg’s printing press to user-generated content.

3 Change Management and Incentives

There seems to be a consensus that corporations generally are under stronger pressure to react and adapt to the dynamics of their market environment – hence, to change – than they were a decade or a generation of leaders ago. As one source^[43] points out, “with less global competition and a slower-moving business environment, the norm back then was stability and the ruling motto was if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Before reviewing scientific theory around corporate change, the next section will elaborate how the globalization of markets and competition since the 1990s has been a source of hazards (more competitors, increased speed of competition), but also a source of opportunity (bigger markets, fewer barriers).

Arguably, the forces of globalization do not apply equally to all sorts of enterprises: A corporation in a regional market, dealing with material goods and physical products, may well be under less pressure to change than a global corporation dealing with immaterial goods or services such as media or information. Given the specific object of this study, though, it is necessary to emphasize the global economic environment: The microblogging platform examined in chapters 6 and 7 was implemented at a global corporation with employees in over 70 countries. In such a business environment, the particular challenges of the information age – strategic alignment, knowledge management and virtual teamwork – certainly operate most forcefully. That is why we begin by introducing globalization as a phenomenon before looking more specifically at corporate change, management by objectives, the balanced scorecard, technology adoption models and corporate incentive systems.

3.1 Globalization

John P. Kotter identifies four major factors that have been driving what is more generally referred to as globalization^[44]:

1. Technological change (faster and better communication, faster and better transportation, more information networks connecting people globally)
2. International economic integration (fewer tariffs, currencies linked via floating exchange rates, more global capital flow)
3. Maturation of markets in developed countries (slower domestic growth, more aggressive exporters, more deregulation)
4. Fall of communist and socialist regimes (more countries linked to the capitalist system, more privatization).

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Fig. 2: Globalization hazards and opportunities (from [Kott96], p. 19)

A more contemporary source^[45] cites three major reasons why corporations and their strategic leadership have been under pressure to change faster and more drastically in the first decade of the 21st century:

1. Globalization
2. A new quality of competition through new forms of collaboration between enterprises (partnerships, networks)
3. New communication technologies.
Speaking of the post-cold-war global economy as the information age, Norton and Kaplan^[46] state that organizations are now “built on a new set of operating assumptions”, namely:

1. Cross-functions: integrated business processes that cut across traditional business functions.
2. Links to customers and suppliers: integrating supply, production and delivery so that operations are triggered by customer orders, not production plans.
3. Customer segmentation: offering customized products and services that can be tailored to a variety of demands while still being produced at reasonable cost.
4. Global scale (as seen above).
5. Innovation: shrinking product life cycles require continuous improvement in processes as well as products.

Interestingly, while the three sources use different terms to describe the economic environment and the factors driving corporate change, they all clearly point out the influence of technological developments and the role of information technology. So it seems plausible that microblogging – as the introduction of a new information management paradigm, turning consumers into producers (see 4.5) and providing new features for the diffusion of information (see 5.5) – is an appropriate example to illustrate the necessity for organizational change.

3.2 Organizational Change Management (John P. Kotter)

Scientists examining and describing how organizations react to changing competitive environments have concluded that organizational change is a complex subject. Not only do processes and systems require redesign and improvement, but individuals with their variety of personalities have to be aligned, or even inspired, to follow a common vision and a set of goals supporting the desired changes. John P. Kotter, for example, has distilled his research into a generic eight-stage model for an organizational change process^[47]:

1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
4. Communicating the Change Vision
5. Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture

Several stages in this process seem to underline the importance to reach out to a broad base of employees in order to solidify the change. Examining one example of an unsuccessful transformation initiative from a human resources perspective, for example, Kotter found out that^[48]:

- performance evaluation forms captured nothing about the core of the new vision
- compensation decisions were made much more on not making mistakes than on creating useful change
- promotion decisions seemed to have at best a limited relationship to the desired change effort
- recruiting and hiring systems were only marginally supporting the transformation

Irrespective of the specific example under examination, this list is a good summary of four major general characteristics in any human resources management system or process that can be designed to either support or hinder organizational changes: performance evaluation, compensation, promotions, recruiting/hiring.

Human resources management systems and processes that spell out and actively support the goal of the change process are also critical when it comes to anchor the new approach in the culture of the organization for the long term. If any change is to be sustainable without constant extra investments and efforts, then, at some point, the successful new behaviors and practices have to become firmly rooted and incorporated in the corporate culture. This will make the organization less dependent on individual contributions and should help preserve the desired behaviors over generations of employees, even if key people retire, or in times of increased turnover^[49].

In order to accomplish such long-term sustainability, desired behaviors have to be recognized (performance evaluation) and ideally rewarded (compensation). People who successfully model the desired change have to be supported in their careers (ideally promoted), and new employees entering the workforce should be selected based on criteria that support the goals of the change effort (recruiting/hiring).

These requirements towards human resource management systems and processes deserve emphasis: As socio-technical systems, their success is dependent on human factors more than technical capability. But how can all this be accomplished while recognizing the complexity of today’s global business environment for a multi-national corporation? Long-standing theories can be helpful, especially management by objectives, the balanced scorecard and – since we are specifically interested in the adoption of an information system – technology acceptance models.

3.3 Management By Objectives (Peter F. Drucker)

Changing organizational demands require carefully adjusted objectives. Especially during periods of change, objectives that are properly broken down and tied to the goals of the desired organizational transformation can provide a powerful management instrument to lead employees through uncertainty and turbulence^[50]. The fundamental management theory, however, is much older, predating globalization and the notion of Enterprise 2.0 by decades.

Peter F. Drucker pointed out as early as 1956^[51] that corporations must be able to successfully combine individual efforts. Any member of the organization will contribute specifically and uniquely, but a contribution towards a collective, common goal is also required, and from anyone. All efforts have to be aligned in a common direction to create a whole – without gaps, without friction, without unnecessary redundancy^[52].

Based on this ideal, he developed the concept of managing by objectives that has long become a de facto standard in larger corporations^[53].

When managing by objectives, a manager will formulate objectives for each individual contributor that are at the same time motivating and traceably supporting the overall goals of the corporation. Two problems can arise: linking individual contributions to corporate strategy is often difficult or even impossible if not supported by a process (see the next section on the balanced scorecard), and there seems to be a common lack of feedback between managers and employees for the principle to work practically^[54].

To function effectively, it is said that objectives should be stated as clearly (or hard) as possible, being^[55]

- specific,
- measurable,
- attainable,
- relevant, and
- time-bound.

By contrast, statements of goals that are not specific or less measurable are commonly called soft objectives and sometimes dismissed or neglected. Considering employee use of information systems, however, employee behavior seems fairly suitable for objective setting and performance management, because these systems and their digital records are measurable and specific by nature.

3.4 Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan and Norton)

Forty years after Drucker’s initial introduction of objective-based management and leadership, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the balanced scorecard, summarizing it as a concept to “translate strategy into action”^[56] and noting that “an organization’s measurement system strongly affects the behavior of people both inside and outside the organization”^[57].

Kaplan and Norton point out that, historically, the measurement of business has been financial, to a degree that financial success and business success are often understood synonymously. They also reaffirm that it is important to install and maintain measurement systems^[58] which allow fact-based and informed decision-making while eliminating unnecessary factors of personal taste, or individual temper, or short-term mood.

In the area of corporate financial performance, measurability may seem natural, because a currency exists to express success or failure precisely (e.g. based on cash flow variation, operational profitability margin, or return on equity). Far less obviously, though, their theory demands that not only financial performance should be measured. Instead, they suggest a more balanced approach that weighs in performance indicators relating to business performance with respect to customer satisfaction, business process efficiency as well as organizational learning and growth. Their framework suggests that specific indicators should be defined – unambiguously stated objectives along with measurements, targets, and specifically named initiatives like transformation projects – for each of these areas, effectively translating corporate strategy into operational terms. Ideally, all the objectives stated in the balanced score card can be formulated along with performance indicators – items of information collected at regular intervals to track the performance of a system^[59]. Based on such scoring, the corporation can measure whether any objective has been exceeded, met or missed.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Fig. 3: Model of the ‘Balanced Scorecard’ (from [Kapl96], p. 9)

Kaplan and Norton realized that there often was “a large void between the [corporate] mission statement and employees’ day-to-day actions”^[60]. Focusing on measurability while at the same time taking a broader view beyond mere financials, the balanced scorecard intends to translate the high-level vision and mission for an organization into guidance for employees on all levels. The model aims to be practical and applicable in everyday situations. It is intended as a “communication, informing and learning system, not a controlling system”^[61].

3.5 Technology Acceptance Models

In the 1980s, with computer hardware prices steadily decaying and the arrival of the personal computer, information systems were becoming increasingly common in the workplace. A new generation of systems emerged, defined by Fred D. Davis as “systems that are directly used by organizational members at their own discretion and support their work activities”. They were therefore labeled end-user systems^[62].

Davis pointed out that while it was clearly recognized that computers were a driving economical force and end-user systems were going to be economically attractive, investment decisions and design alternatives concerning new information systems were commonly made based on objective performance criteria. He criticized shortcomings in understanding the more subtle subjective factors that could determine whether end-users would broadly accept and actually utilize the new system for everyday tasks. In response to this challenge, he developed the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).

Davis’ model has motivated system designers to continually focus on end-user needs when building software (including, for example, early prototyping and standardized testing). Because of the rapid pace of innovation, designing technology so that the intended users will accept them remains a very relevant topic to the present day. Directly involving end-users in the process^[63], for example, can help significantly to accomplish usefulness and ease of use.

The model was later combined with other models describing information technology acceptance in an attempt to unify the discipline (by Venkatesh et. al.). The resulting universal model is called Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Most notably for the purpose of this research, UTAUT incorporated social influence as one of the factors contributing to an individual’s acceptance of a new technology^[64].

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Fig. 4: Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (visualization)^[65]

[...]

^[1] http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/17/technology/facebook-ipo-final-price/index.htm

^[2] http://www.twitter.com; cf. [Naon08] as well as [Koch09] p. 35

^[3] cf. [Java07]

^[4] cf. [ORei05]

^[5] such as knowing how to create HTML or using FTP for transferring content

^[6] the term ‘mash-up’ emerged to describe the presentation of any new combination of information from originally distinct sources

^[7] cf. [Buhs09], p. 66

^[8] e.g. originally on PCs with web browsers, but then also on smartphones

^[9] cf. [Koch09], p. 3

^[10] cf. [Back08], p. 3

^[11] e.g. TCP/IP, DNS, or HTTP

^[12] e.g. technologies like Web Services, AJAX, RSS or XSLT should be mentioned

^[13] Even this term, however, is not free from critique: The connotation that
‘social’ activities are also ‘leisure’ activities (i.e. non-work) can be
misleading (cf. [McAf09] p. 16f).

^[14] [Back09], p. 1; author’s translation

^[15] see [Page04]

^[16] cf. [Pari11]

^[17] cf. [McAf09], p. 63ff

^[18] see http://en.wikipedia.org

^[19] cf. [Koch09], p. 37ff

^[20] [Koch09], p. 16; author’s translation

^[21] [Back09], p. 23; author’s translation

^[22] cf. foreword by Andrew McAfee to [Buhs08], p. 1

^[23] cf. [Buhs08]

^[24] Twitter is limiting messages to 140 characters purposefully, so that they can be composed and transmitted as cell phone text messages via SMS protocol

^[25] Because of its chronological order, the resulting stream of updates is called the ‘timeline’

^[26] http://www.twitter.com; screenshot taken from personal timeline, May 2012

^[27] cf. [Koch09], p. 36

^[28] cf. [Java07]

^[29] ‘share an update’ (LinkedIn), ‘message’ (Xing), cf. [Koch09], p. 36

^[30] https://www.yammer.com

^[31] http://www.communote.com

^[32] http://www.jivesoftware.com

^[33] http://www.blogtronix.com

^[34] http://www.justsoftwareag.com

^[35] http://www.salesforce.com/chatter

^[36] http://www.tibbr.com/

^[37] see also [News10]

^[38] http://www.e20cases.org/fallstudie/capgemini-microblogging-als-konversationsmedium/

^[39] http://www.e20cases.org/fallstudie/communardo-software-gmbh-enterprise-microblogging/

^[40] http://www.e20cases.org/fallstudie/siemens-building-technologies-division-globaler-wissens-und-erfahrungsaustausch-mit-references-2/

^[41] cf. [Bege10]

^[42] cf. [Adle11]

^[43] [Kott96], p. 18

^[44] cf. [Kott96], p. 19

^[45] cf. [Hahn06], preface to the 6th edition, p. IX

^[46] [Nort96], p. 4f

^[47] see [Kott96]

^[48] cf. [Kott96], p. 110f

^[49] cf. [Kott96], p. 145ff

^[50] cf. [Dopp08], p. 288

^[51] he actually wrote his hallmark book in 1954, but the only source available was a German-language edition from 1956

^[52] [Druc56], p. 153

^[53] according to [Dörf12], p. 56

^[54] [Dörf12], p. 56

^[55] according to [Dörf12], p. 56f and other sources

^[56] [Kapl96]book subtitle

^[57] [Kapl96], p. 21

^[58] their phrase ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’ ([Kapl96], p. 21) has become a managerial bon-mot

^[59] cf. [Fitz90]

^[60] [Kapl96], p. 25

^[61] [Kapl96], p. 25

^[62] [Davi86], p. 9

^[63] cf. [Abra04]

^[64] cf. [Venk03], p. 452

^[65] [Venk03], p. 447