Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. and Hackney, C.E.a.R. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-08-2013-0063

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Volume 27, Issue 1

It gives us great pleasure to welcome our readers to the first issue of the 27th volume of Journal Enterprise Information Management (JEIM), and express our appreciation to them for their continuous support during the past year. The continuous update of the journal's scope to promote theory and practice has led to an increase in submissions that has allowed us to further the quality of the journal. This special issue on “Social Media in Business and Education” incorporate excellent “quality” submissions that focus on providing a mixture of theoretical and practical contributions. The research work presented in these papers highlight that social media are playing a rapidly expanding role in both companies and in teaching and learning.

The aim of the special issue is to explore Web 2.0 technologies, including Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Wikis and YouTube, for business and education exploitation. The next generation of social media will involve social networking, document sharing, collaboration and interoperability. In doing so, the evolving managerial, academic and pedagogical approaches were considered to raise the profile of research in technology-enhanced applications; spread good practice in the use of Web 2.0 technologies for business and learning; and facilitate collaboration between practitioners, researchers and policy makers. To ensure that JEIM has the most comprehensive, current and relevant coverage of all topics related to social media in business and education, researchers and leading experts in their particular areas of research were invited to contribute manuscripts that offered an in-depth discussion of the key issues, concepts and trends related to the special issue topic. All papers were peer reviewed to ensure the quality of the journal was maintained. The essence of social media is user engagement where the co-creation of content is enabled is explored in detail. The adoption of these systems has generated significant societal change and it is still unclear as to the extent of their impact, favourable or unfavourable, on business and education. In essence, social media is now all-pervasive where society has been transformed through how users nurture personal online relationships, communicate for work or pleasure, purchase products and services and engage in recreational activity.

Following rounds of extensive reviewing, this special issue offers five submissions which are representative of new and novel ideas in social media research.

The first issue of volume 27 commences with a research paper by Rupak Rauniar, Greg Rawski, Jei Yang and Ben Johnson, entitled “Technology acceptance model (TAM) and social media usage: an empirical study of Facebook”. The first paper offers an interesting perspective on the need for theory to understand users’ attitudes and behaviours in relation to social media. As noted, the popularity and proliferation of these new technologies require academics and practitioners to recognise critical features for their deployment. In this respect, the paper revisits the technology acceptance model (TAM) where decades of research have reported valid approaches to the adoption of these systems (Davis, 1986). An applied example is considered through user acceptance of Facebook. The research presents insightful observations through potential influences based upon ease of use, uses critical mass, site capability, perceived playfulness, trustworthiness and perceived usefulness. The approach was theoretically tested with 398 respondents and an enhanced TAM model proposed. The empirical findings validate that the proposed social media TAM model supports all the hypotheses of social media usage behaviour. The results of this study provide evidence for the importance of additional key variables to TAM in considering user engagement on social media sites and other social-media-related business strategies.

The above research paper is followed by a conceptual paper by David Wagner, Gabriele Vollmar and Heinz-Theo Wagner, entitled “The impact of IT on knowledge creation: an affordance approach to social media”. This research paper applies concepts of knowledge creation within social media through a consideration of a range of appropriate technologies including, groupware, video conferencing, idea processing and collaborative document production. The focus in this respect is on interactive systems which collectively provide user-generated content through co-creation, discussion and sharing. The concept of affordance is considered where the technologies which allow user engagement are critically reviewed (Boyd, 2010; Faraj et al., 2011; Treem and Leonardi, 2012). These are subsequently presented in relation to their influence upon knowledge creation. The authors claim that this research is of high theoretical and practical significance, as it links two formerly independent literatures and, in doing so, provides an innovative viewpoint on how social media and their affordances may support knowledge creation. The contribution is the mergence of affordance theory with the social media arena and the insights gained regarding the knowledge creation process.

Then we have another conceptual paper by Deepa Ray, entitled “Overcoming cross-cultural barriers to knowledge management using social media”. This conceptual research furthers the natural consideration of the exploitation of knowledge management facilitated through social media. This is achieved by investigating the barriers to knowledge management due to various national cultural dimensions. The author refers to a recent Forrester report (2012) which highlights the importance of reducing barriers between users and information. This research replicates the research presented by Wagner et al., noting the value of tools for knowledge access, sharing and transfer within a social media environment. The essence of cross-cultural factors is considered through an understanding of how social media can support knowledge management processes. The role of social media in mitigating resistance to knowledge diffusion as a result of a cultural dimension is explored. The author claims that this conceptual research is an attempt to bring together three areas of research:

• knowledge management;

• national culture; and

• social medial.

This research further provides an understanding of how the various cultural dimensions can act as barriers to knowledge management (Ford and Chan, 2003; Möller and Svahn, 2004). It principally outlines explicit social media tools to remedy impediments to knowledge management due to each of the national culture dimension.

Thereafter, we have a research paper by Benjamin Cowan and Mervyn Jack, entitled “The impact of identity on anxiety during wiki editing in higher education”. In this paper, Cowan and Jack attempt to identify whether wiki editing anxiety is significantly affected by identity used when editing (Parker and Chao, 2007; Ebner et al., 2008). In doing so, this paper seeks to explore the hypothesis that changing the anonymity of identity when editing wikis will impact significantly on user-editing anxiety. The objective and argument within the research are unique through the context of a psychology course within higher education. The methodological approach is also interesting from adopting an experimental design to explore the hypothesis " an approach not normally considered within social media research. Whilst using this approach, the users were given extracts to include in their own words on a wiki site used for a psychology course. Users edited the wiki anonymously, using a pseudonym relevant to the context and using a full named identity. The findings are highly insightful from the experience of users engaged in a Web 2.0 application. For example, the research highlights that:

• The effects of anonymity discussed are also in operation in a wiki context, a more fundamentally anonymous context compared to blogs, bulletin boards or general computer mediated communication tools.

Finally, we have Giannis Milolidakis, Demosthenes Akoumianakis and Chris Kimble, entitled “Digital traces for business intelligence: a case study of mobile telecoms service brands in Greece”. This paper considers a highly applied case example of mobile telecoms service in Greece. The research objective is to identify opportunities to exploit social media, as recognised through digital traces and business intelligence for competitive advantage. Recent reports suggest a significant number of organisations are currently analysing data from social media to gain a deeper understanding of customer intentions and decision making (Stodder, 2012). For example, the survey indicates that:

• 26 per cent of respondents’ organisations are currently analysing data from social media;

• 22 per cent are planning to analyse such data within one year; and

• 16 per cent are going to do so within two years.

From the same report, the top three objectives of organisations pursuing business intelligence with social media are:

• 56 per cent gaining a deeper understanding of their customers;

• 31 per cent identifying paths to buying decisions; and

• 30 per cent monitoring and measuring sentiment drivers.

The authors assert that all three objectives relate to gaining a deeper understanding of customers through social media. The relative features of business intelligence are consequently explored with a view to recognising what is actually embedded within social media grounded in the concept of virtual settlements.

We would very much like to thank all our contributors for their excellent high-quality contributions to the social media field and hope JEIM readers will find the submissions invigorating, innovative and valuable.

Zahir Irani
Editor-in-Chief
Chris Evans and Raymond Hackney
Guest Editors

References

Boyd, D. (2010), “Social network sites as networked publics: affordances, dynamics, and implications”, in Papacharissi, Z. (Ed.), Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 39-58

Davis, F.D. (1986), A Technology Acceptance Model for Empirically Testing New End-User Information Systems: Theory and Results, Doctoral Dissertation, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA

Ebner, M., Kickmeier-Rust, M. and Holzinger, A. (2008), “Utilizing Wiki-Systems in higher education classes: a chance for universal access?”, Universal Access and the Information Society, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 199-207

Faraj, S., Jarvenpaa, S.L. and Majchrzak, A. (2011), “Knowledge collaboration in online communities”, Organization Science, Vol. 22 No. 5, pp. 1224-1239

Ford, D.P. and Chan, Y.E. (2003), “Knowledge sharing in a multi-cultural setting: a case study”, Knowledge Management Research & Practice, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 11-27

Möller, K. and Svahn, S. (2004), “Crossing east-west boundaries: knowledge sharing in intercultural business networks”, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 219-228

Parker, K.R. and Chao, J.T. (2007), “Wiki as a teaching tool”, Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, Vol. 3, pp. 57-72

Stodder, D. (2012), Customer Analytics in the Age of Social Media, TDWI Best Practice Report Q3, TDWI, The Data Warehousing Institute

Treem, J.W. and Leonardi, P.M. (2012), “Social media use in organizations: exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association”, Communication Yearbook, Vol. 36, pp. 143-189