Collaborative Thinking

Design Considerations For Enterprise Social Networks: Identity, Graphs, Streams & Social Objects

2012-01-26T12:33:33-05:00

I've submitted a proposal for the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. Feedback appreciated on the session and if it's worthwhile, indicate so with a "thumbs up". Thanks...

http://boston2012.e2conf.spigit.com/Page/ViewIdea?ideaid=5069

Towards A More Participatory Culture: Enterprise Q&A

2012-01-19T09:42:43-05:00

In October of 2011, AIIM (the Association for Information & Imaging Management, a non-profit research, community and educational association), published a survey-based report that examined social business and Enterprise 2.0 trends. I had the good fortune to hear about the results first-hand when I co-presented with AIIM’s President, John Mancini, on a social networking panel at the Gilbane Conference held in Boston last November. John summarized the work and results of the study. One of the more interesting data points and trending analysis I found intriguing was a growing interest in a class of social application AIIM refers to as “Enterprise Q&A”. Historically, when people ask what the common application use case scenarios are for E2.0, the most frequently cited examples have been: expertise location, online communities, and ideation (innovation).

Why the growing interesting in Q&A applications? Perhaps because it’s a pain point all of us – from front-line worker to senior executive – can relate to in our everyday work experience. All of us can recall situations when we’ve had a question about something and have not been able to find an answer through the information and contacts at our disposal. We ask our colleagues. We send out e-mails. We might try discussion forums, knowledge-base applications, and of course – search engines. However, even if we are fortunate enough to find the content, the information may not be presented in a fashion that addresses our need. Sometimes the “question” is not easily resolved by locating content related to the question. Often, what people are asking for (indirectly) when they pose a question is to have a conversation with someone to “make sense” out of that issue. Connecting co-workers via Enterprise Q&A enables people to reach consensus, collaborate on a response, and co-create a workaround. Beyond “answering the question”, this type of conversation allows participants to contribute personal experiences and share work practices that are not formally documented. Passing along the folklore, the unwritten context around a particular question can be a powerful means for people to learn in a social situation. The insight collectively gained can be more insightful to its participants than simply sending someone off to read a document or wiki.

As organizations invest in social collaboration platforms, many of these systems will have, or soon include, an Enterprise Q&A capability. I believe design methods that prioritize the user experience and social interaction, not just Q&A automation, will deliver the best solution in the long run. While it seems to be straightforward (ask a question, get an answer), the cultural and social networking dynamics are nuanced. Those nuances are easily overlooked if solution providers implement Enterprise Q&A from a technological perspective. Below are several questions you might want to ask yourself if you are looking into this topic:

Where should the question get published to maximize the change of getting a applicable answer? While industry exuberance for activity streams makes it the likely candidate, is that always the proper mechanism?
If activity streams are leveraged, is posting a question into a stream cluttered with lots of other items vying for attention the right approach? Should we visually distinguish a question from other types of activity stream entries? What other filtering options should be considered so that questions receive the proper priority?
If posting a question into a stream is not always the best design decision, what other options should be considered? Should we decipher the meta-data associated with a question and map them to expertise tags of people and communities? If so, we can then define a notification process and ping those individuals and groups through different alerting options?
Should submitting questions into an activity stream include the ability to specify people, roles, communities, or other group structures? If so, will this design approach become a forcing function for better filtering of activity stream items so that “my questions” pop up in a pre-defined view of my activity stream? Cisco Quad already does this via its Watch List capability.
What if certain types of topics and questions can only be answered if people possess certain credentials? How do we address security and compliance (risk mitigation) needs in a Q&A solution?
How far should we go in terms of automation? Should there be some type of workflow included that supports an escalation or service level parameter? Should people matched to a question receive reminder notifications? Should questions have “due dates” associated with them? Or does this capability remain informal and rely on voluntary participation? Should people be able to “opt out” of Q&A requests?
As people participate in the Q&A environment, should they have the option to link those questions and responses to their profile? If I answer questions on E2.0 for instance, should my profile have a tab (or other design construct) that shows “My Q&A” where people can quickly see the types of topics and insight I’m currently involved in and historically provided? Today, we add tags to our profile to make claims of our expertise. Associating Q&A to the profile allows people to see how I am performing those claims – this in turn helps validate the relevant tags I’ve added (e.g., E2.0).
Should the organization be able to apply analytical reporting to Q&A data collected over time? Organizations are often interested in connecting people and groups from different parts of the enterprise. Q&A interaction data can potentially show how people are traversing organizational boundaries of various types (e.g., geographic, reporting, role/title, etc). For instance, it might be a surprise to find that answers are coming from groups unaffiliated with the person and business unit posing the question. Organizations might find that Enterprise Q&A helps bridge disparate groups or that there is an advantage in this type of serendipitous interaction that can potentially lead to more regular conversations between people and groups over time that are spatially or structurally separated.
What role will “gamification” practices have when designing the Q&A user experience? Beyond the obvious badges, leadership boards and such, how do we design affordances that encourage personal and teaming motivations, how do we interweave incentives that balance cooperation and competition, feedback loops, and reinforcement mechanisms? However, I have not (yet) explored the topic of gamification to any great detail so my thoughts here are a work-in-progress.

Questions are powerful social constructs – more so when they are placed in a public sphere for broad audience participation. A question creates an invitation for co-workers to visibly participate. That public interaction provides people with the opportunity to reinforce their identity as a subject matter expert, or expand their identity if they are not known for, or expected to have, that type of insight. Self-presentation in a public sphere can help workers become recognized beyond their job duties (which might be stereotyped by colleagues and management). If their contributions are valued, that reinforcement can help employees gain a sense of “belonging” which in turn can influence how workers identify with the organization, its goals, and its values.

Since questions and answers are often an iterative social process, the collaborative mass of contributions over time weaves together a network of people connected by a common interest even though they might have differing professional backgrounds and views. These types of “answer networks” can potentially create value in their own right. Participants in such Q&A exchanges have access to social scaffolding they can leverage to form their own communities and perhaps come together on issues beyond the Q&A connection that brought them together. From a design perspective, the question acts as a social object that can mobilize networks, enable social roles to emerge, and allow for creation of social capital.

However, establishing a technological structure that facilitates Enterprise Q&A should not be positioned as some type of panacea. There’s no assurance that employees will share what they know, or that answers will always be perfect. It does not guarantee spillover affects that lead to better levels of employee engagement elsewhere. Alone, it’s unlikely to transform the organization or cause dramatic cultural change. Enterprise Q&A is just one of many affordances social collaboration platforms mediate. There are a host of organizational, leadership, communication, governance, change management, and related practices that need to be designed and championed effectively to influence employee participation and deliver desired business outcomes.

The report is available for download here (note: you do need to provide contact information prior to access).

Are We In A "Post E2.0 Era"?

2012-01-02T10:58:29-05:00

I just read an interesting report from my ex-colleague Larry Cannel from Gartner ("The Post-2.0 Era: Social in the Context of My Work"). It was recently published under the Burton IT1 Research if you have access. My thoughts - not directly in response to Larry's report, just in general concerning Enterprise 2.0 (which is what came to mind as I read the document)...

Are We In The Post-2.0 Era?

Yes. And No.

The term “Enterprise 2.0” (E2.0) has been around since 2006. However, many of the technologies associated with E2.0 have been around longer (e.g., blogs, wikis, RSS) while others emerged post-2006 (e.g., micro-blogging). The most recent definition of E2.0 is on Andrew McAfee’s blog:

Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.

Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities.

Platforms are digital environments in which contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time.

Emergent means that the software is freeform, and that it contains mechanisms to let the patterns and structure inherent in people’s interactions become visible over time.

Freeform means that the software is most or all of the following:

Optional

Free of up-front workflow

Egalitarian, or indifferent to formal organizational identities

Accepting of many types of data

The term has been abused to the point where its definition has been stretched and altered to fit the agenda of vendors, analysts, and media pundits. However, if we are trying to determine whether we are in a Post-E2.0 era, I think it is important to acknowledge definitions and intended meaning from the person who invented to term (Professor McAfee). It should be noted that McAfee I believe also stated that there were parallels his use of the term E2.0 and Web 2.0.

Before getting to a Post-E2.0 era it’s also relevant to think about the Pre-E2.0 Era. Before the term E2.0 emerged, the collaboration market was pretty stable from a technology viewpoint. While people used e-mail to collaborate, technically e-mail was considered a messaging tool. Collaboration technologies included discussion forums, web conferencing, and virtual workspaces. Virtual workspaces were the “hot topic”. They aggregated document libraries, discussion forums, team calendars, and some level of task organization, into a cohesive destination – a single place for people to “go to” when they needed to work together. Other technologies such as portals, search, content management, instant messaging and presence tools helped round out the typical collaboration manifest (even though they were not technically collaboration tools per se). There had been earlier inflection points in the timeline of collaboration tools as well. Expertise location grew out of the KM heyday of the late nineties for instance. Still, around 2006, the technology landscape was fairly stable.

It should also be noted that the idea of “contextual collaboration” had also emerged circa 1999. The idea of embedded collaboration services contextually within line of business applications, like virtual workspaces, would help drive adoption, and increase effectiveness of collaboration experiences. Portals represented the best-in-class capability back then to enable contextual collaboration since application and collaboration portlets could be composed into a single, integrated user experience. While there were plenty of technology limitations, it’s important to historically note that today’s siren call to integrate social tools into business apps and processes is not a new idea. The argument is redundant with the case made over decade ago that contextual integration of collaboration tooling is better than forcing people to go to another place to get work done. That said, we do have better tools, integration methods, architectures, etc to accomplish this goal in a more comprehensive manner.

So when E2.0 emerged, we (as an industry) had already gone through a cycle of tools, suites, and platforms that started out as stand-alone silos and evolved into platforms with development interfaces that allowed people to build collaborative applications, and integrate collaboration services into portals. The tooling was not as advanced as what we have today, but the cycle is similar in certain respects to what we are witnessing happening in the market today re: E2.0.

One thing E2.0 accomplished is that it gave a name to an underserved area of collaboration. E2.0, per McAfee’s definition, targeted emergent collaboration rather than the more activity-centric/document-centric collaboration prevalent at the time. E2.0 identified a more free-form type of information sharing and collaborative interactions where participation was optional, more community-centric, and “free of up-front workflow”. E2.0 platforms made people’s interactions visible over time – a counter to the virtual workspace tools that were often made more permission-based. Even though E2.0 remained a “squishy” concept and encouraged the type of evangelism that often derailed KM efforts, it did open the door to a new array of tools that were categorized as enterprise social software: blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging, bookmarking, micro-blogging, and so on.

Since then, the E2.0 (enterprise social software) market has evolved from an array of stand-alone tools and suites to an environment where platforms are becoming more dominant. Development interfaces are maturing, and we are beginning to see “social applications” (e.g., ideation, Enterprise Q&A) emerge and discussion of how social capabilities need to be integrated with line-of-business applications.

Social platforms that started off as an explicit destination site (mimicking the model made popular in the consumer market) are now becoming an integration hub that enables a distributed social experience across devices, content, and applications as well as a centralized store of people’s social data. This does not mean that stand-alone tools no longer have their place in the overall ecosystem, but increasingly such tools need to integrate and co-exist with infrastructure services that embed social capabilities.

Sound familiar? This is a more advanced version of what was transpiring circa 2006, albeit with better tooling, methods, and architectures, etc. It’s not a perfect comparison – mobile and analytics are much more prominent today than earlier, consumerization of IT, etc. etc. Still, I find the parallels interesting and often not recognized.

So back to the original question – are we in a Post E2.0 Era?

Yes: The technology has become less volatile. We’re not seeing the continued wave of new tools entering the space as we did years ago. The user experience and tooling is becoming more ubiquitous. In some ways, this is the Hype Circle playing. We are also beginning to think less of E2.0 as an end in-and-of-itself and more of a means-to-an-end. Organizations are not doing E2.0 for the sake of E2.0 but to improve certain business and organizational capabilities. The more we talk about the non-technology aspects of employee participation, information sharing, collaboration, etc – then E2.0 has achieved its goal and it’s time to move on. For instance, E2.0 has opened up the door to analytics being an integral part of collaboration strategies – something that was not assumed prior to E2.0. We do need to think in more purposeful ways, adopt a renewed focus on worker experiences – however we need to avoid losing some of the softer goals (e.g., KM-related) of E2.0.

No: While the technology discussion is less prominent, there is much to be learned and applied from a non-technological perspective. We have barely scratched the surface of our understanding when it comes to issues raised by E2.0 pertaining to identity, participation, social networking, social capital, media literacies, and so on. We are also just at the beginning when it comes to understanding the cultural, structural, and change management aspects of what E2.0 dynamics trigger. While it’s fashionable to dismiss the softer aspects of E2.0 and over-generalize / over-simplify that we merely need “to get work done”, that viewpoint will likely result in very traditional approaches when it comes to applying E2.0 technologies to improve worker productivity and business performance.

For me, the issue is not “do we focus on the community and social networking aspects of E2.0 … OR … do we focus on integrating E2.0 into business activities to get real work done” – I would rather suggest that strategsts replace the OR with an AND to find the proper balance. Each side has value and a focus on both is necessary.

Missing Pieces: The Activity Stream Aggregator

2012-01-01T13:58:08-05:00

Industry discussions on the value of activity streams have been going on for a few years. The concept is pretty straightforward. Social network sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn in the consumer space as well as many enterprise social software vendors) display a chronological list of human-readable content fragments that describe actions taken by people and applications. For example, in Facebook this capability is referred to as a News Stream. Typically, an activity stream lists status updates from the people in your social graph as well as from applications you have given permission to publish into your stream. That permission might be direct, or indirect (e.g., a “like” gesture results in a subscription subsequent updates).

Promised benefits are many. Some industry experts go as far as to claim that activity streams represent a new type of “inbox” that will replace e-mail. Other experts claim that activity streams enable work to be more “observable” enabling a new type of ambient intimacy (being able to safely watch from a distance without being directly involved in that activity). Industry strategists also position activity streams as an important mechanism for extending an individual’s social graph as well as a means people can leverage to mobile their social network connections (e.g., by posting a question into the activity stream). There is also an argument that activity streams represent a new type of “social presence” that extends presence concepts linked to unified communications (e.g., a person’s activity stream gives people a richer mental model of what someone is doing over time that presence indicators and status messages within IM clients). Activity streams are becoming an integral part of any discussion on the enterprise social graph. Mining the data store containing the sum of all activity stream items is being discussed as an opportunity for organizations to discover interesting work patterns.

What I’ve listed above is illustrative and not meant to be a finite list of possible benefits. What I’ve tried to point out though is that while there are real and significant affordances enabled by activity streams, there is some risk that as an industry, we are portraying activity streams as a panacea to whatever problem ails you as an organization. It also masks discussion of the key architectural component needed, the activity stream aggregator, which will help make the credible benefits of activity streams a reality.

Why do we need to think about an activity stream aggregator? It’s not because of where are today in the industry. Today, every enterprise SNS solution in the market aggregates activity stream items that originate within its own environment. Few, if any (none that I’m aware of), implement a standardized framework for aggregating activity stream events that occur externally (proprietary API’s don’t count). This is where the industry is heading. To succeed, there is a need for a common collection of mechanisms that enable a standardized means of aggregating activities that occur outside a particular SNS. This gap is actually what ignited work to define an industry standard (originating in the consumer space) called “activitystrea.ms”.

What drove interest in standardizing activity streams in the consumer market is linked to FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook in 2009). FriendFeed was a popular aggregator that harvested information from a variety of social sites (music, blogs, photos, status updates, etc) and expressed that information in a common format. Two design and architectural issues created a scaling challenge for FriendFeed. First not all sites offered a public interface (e.g., RSS) that resulted in construction of custom connectors. Second, a formatting process was necessary to render activity stream content in the uniform manner. Building custom connectors clearly creates a scale issue (e.g., development time, maintenance, etc) and the lack of a common risked some loss of context and fidelity of the original content. The activity streams standard emerged to alleviate these barriers and improve interoperability between providers of social network sites and various content providers that wanted to publish into the activity stream of multiple SNS’s.

The same activity steam dynamic (interoperability between enterprise SNS’s and internal content providers (e.g., CRM, ERP, and HRMS systems) exists today. However, the market has been slow to respond. The activitystrea.ms standard is still not widely implemented by enterprise social software vendors as well as not widely adopted by various content providers. Some of the delay could be attributed to maturity of the standard and/or competitive pressures (vendor desire to own the enterprise activity stream), but more likely we’re faced with a “which came first – the chicken or the egg” dilemma. Until content providers support the standard why should enterprise social software vendors implement the standard? Conversely, until enterprise social software vendors implement the standard, why should application vendors make their content available via activitystrea.ms? And in either situation, there is a competitive aspect that cannot be avoided – especially if that vendor is both an application/content provider and offers it’s own SNS (it can be argued that there’s some short-run advantage by being a walled garden initially). Additionally, there are valid concerns regarding security and compliance that might slow down “opening up” of certain content being published into an activity stream.

Right now, it seems like there will be a slow progression towards interoperable standards-based activity stream aggregators. Right now I see 5 major inflection points to track:

Level 1: Enterprise SNS-specific activity stream aggregator

Where we are today.

Level 2: Enterprise SNS + consumer activity stream aggregator

Blending in select content from consumer sites (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc).

Level 3: Vendor-specific, portfolio-wide activity stream aggregator

Standards-based activity stream interoperability across all application and infrastructure products within a single vendor.

Level 4: Enterprise-wide activity stream aggregator

Application content providers can all publish to various internal SNS’s and any enterprise SNS can aggregate activities from any application content provider.

Level 5: Enterprise-wide + external business entity activity stream aggregator

A federation model emerges that enables activities to be shared across business boundaries (e.g., supply chain, etc).

On top of all this – which will take time, so clearly we are at the beginning of a long journey – we will need to deal with other important capabilities within activity streams such as filtering. I also believe that we will see “designer streams” emerge that are purpose-built for either certain audiences or specific business processes. Lastly, the data store aspects of activity streams (including security and compliance needs) and the integration of activity streams into the enterprise social graph (both topics not covered in this post), will gain higher visibility and importance as we mature beyond where we are today (Level 1).

Thoughts?

Abstract: Social Capital (Key Ideas)

2011-12-31T14:51:42-05:00

Field, J. (2008). Social Capital (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Abstract

John Field is Director of the Division of Academic Innovation and Continuing Education at the University of Stirling. His book, Social Capital, is part of a complimentary collection of essays to the series, Key Sociologists. The author continues to focus on the topic of social capital as it apples to lifelong learning. In this publication, Field adopts a social networking centric view of social capital. The connections people establish through social networks create resources that can be subsequently leveraged (thus the association that this intangible “good” is a type of capital). Field also introduces the role of “agency” and connects the ability to act to social capital. People will use both formal (institutions and entities of various kinds) and informal structures to mobilize and apply social capital in enabling (positive) and constraining (negative) ways. While social capital is a relatively simply concept, Field concludes that conceptualizations to-date are incomplete, too loose, and even possibly flawed. The lack of theoretical maturity concerning social capital suggests that more empirical investigation needs to be done. For instance, how participants mobilize their networks to activate their social capital is one topic Field notes. What can be concluded is that social capital is the property of relationships. Also, social capital delivers no value unless its participants possess the agency to leverage it. A more through examination of social capital also enables researchers to gain a better understanding of the “meso level” of social structures that integrates individuals to broader societal-wide structures.

Membership in networks is key for social capital to form and evolve. Field frames the work of Bourdieu and Coleman in the context of their respective era and context. Bourdieu examined social capital in an era where elites and social hierarchy were dominant. Coleman’s perspective was influenced by the field of economics and the theory of rational choice / rational action. For Coleman, social capital was driven by an individual’s desire to maximize his or her own self-interests. Social capital was a means for rationalizing how people managed to cooperate (investing in a future reciprocity rather than an immediate gain). It seems that social capital becomes more of a public good and rationalizes collective action, even though individuals are pursuing their own agendas, according to Coleman. Social capital then is more of a by-product of a cooperative pursuit by individuals to further his or her own self-interests.

In addition to Bourdieu and Coleman, Field points to the work of Robert Putnam and his influence on raising the visibility of social capital. Putnam’s perspective comes from the political and public policy realm. He is best known for the book, “Bowling Alone”. Putnam focuses on the decline of social capital in the U.S. and attributes its collapse to the decline in civic and social engagement (note: others in the field argue that Putnam ignores new structures and forms of social capital). For Putnam, “social capital” refers to the collection of networks, norms of reciprocity, and the trust that arises within them which enables its participants to act together more effectively to pursue their shared objectives. Putnam also distinguishes between types of social capital: “bridging” (social capital that brings diverse participants together) and “bonding” (social capital that reinforces solidarity within a homogeneous group). Field also notes that Bourdieu, Coleman, and Putman have not dived deeply enough into the negative aspects of social capital.

Field notes the contribution of Pamela Paxton to the thinking around social capital. Specifically, that social capital can have different effects at the individual and community level – that there can be differing sphere’s of social capital that can act with or against each other. Field also highlights the contribution of Nan Lin who examines social capital and how participants cooperate and gain reciprocity in the context of strong and weak ties (leveraging the work of Granovetter). Lin suggests that certain mechanisms help lead to the type of cooperation and reciprocity necessary for social capital to deliver positive benefits (e.g., information, influence through intermediaries, confirmation of trustworthiness, and reinforcement of promises and commitments). However, Field notes that cooperation that benefits its participants does not always result in a positive benefit to society (which gets back to negative aspects of social capital that can sometimes be a derivative result).

Measuring social capital is challenging and Field points to the work of the World Bank and OECD in this area. Indicators of social capital are often proxies that do not directly measure social capital and can mislead as well as inform. There is also the risk that attempts to measure and adjust policies to influence social capital can come across as attempts at social engineering.

Keywords: social_capital, social_structures, social_networks, Field

Abstract: Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology

2011-12-29T15:22:41-05:00

Source:

Portes, A. (1998). Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology. Annual Reviews.

Abstract

Portes is professor of sociology at Princeton University. His primary focus is on economic sociology with an emphasis on immigration and urbanization. In this paper, Portes examines the origins of social capital, concentrating mostly on the works of Bourdieu, Loury, and Coleman. Portes concludes that there is a level of enthusiasm for the concept of social capital that is unlikely to subside. However, while the formation, evolution, and application of social capital is a dynamic with sound research grounding, that grounding is also incomplete. There is a risk that proponents of social capital will over-reach and see it as a remedy for too many of our major social issues. Portes points out that the processes that underpin social capital have been historically examined in other contexts. There is a temptation to “re-label” some of this prior work as “social capital” to modernize presentation of the information. Portes also infers that there is a tendency for us to celebrate its positive value of social capital without critical examination of its negative effects. A more dispassionate assessment of social capital is necessary in the field to better situate its theories and applications. Overall, Portes adopts a positive position on social capital as a phenomenon and consequence of sociability.

Portes credits the first modern-day analysis of social capital to Pierre Bourdieu. Portes’ interpretation of Bourdieu’s work credits him with focusing on the benefits that accrue to individuals through their participation in groups with the intent of that sociability to create the resource (i.e., social capital). According to Bourdieu, social capital enables people to gain access to a variety of benefits (economic and cultural – introduction to experts, status, etc). Social capital is fungible and creates unspecific obligations over an unknown time period with no promise of return (that is, there is no guarantee of reciprocity).

My Note: It seems that Portes and/or Bourdieu seem to agree with Burt (in Neighbor Networks) that benefits of social networks are not a given – that affordances of any relation need to be accompanied by a strategy at group and individual levels to be in a position to claim that resource (social capital) down the road. This connects nicely to work done recently by Ellison (Benefit of Facebook Friends) concerning her research on the cultivation of social resources (CSR) and other work that examines “social grooming” as a means of gaining future reciprocity.

Portes makes note of Loury’s work but seemingly in passing as a gateway to the work of Coleman (who Coleman acknowledges in addition to Nan Lin and Mark Granovetter). Coleman’s definition is somewhat vague, focusing on social structures and how such structures facilitate actions of its actors as the core elements. With such an umbrella framework, a lot of associated processes can be framed under the social capital label. Portes seems to prefer the more explicit distinctions made by Bourdieu that distinguishes social capital from the resources acquired through it.

Portes seems to be advocating that more research is needed to understand the motivations of recipients and donors of social capital. Portes sees a systematic approach as distinguishing between “(a) the possessors of social capital (those making claims); (b) the sources of social capital (those agreeing to these demands); (c) the resources themselves”.

Absence of such analysis has led to much confusion in how the term “social capital” is used and its scope when applied. For instance, social capital is often hidden in other contexts according to Portes. A good example is Granovetter’s “strength of weak ties” findings re: referral for a job by someone with whom you have lost touch with can be viewed as the reciprocity expectation created through social capital processes.

Portes identifies other definitions of social capital as well:

W. Baker: “a resource that actors derive from specific social structures and then use to pursue their interests; it is created by changes in the relationship among actors”
M. Schiff: “the set of elements of the social structure that affects relations among people and are inputs or arguments of the production and/or utility function”
R. Burt: “friends, colleagues, and more general contacts through whom you receive opportunities to use your financial and human capital”

Portes concludes then that the consensus definition for social capital has become as follows: the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures.

There are negative aspects of social capital such as: its use to exclude outsiders, its abuse by other group members (“free riding”), as a means of control (demands for solidarity with community norms limits personal behaviors). The negative causes and consequences are often overlooked, as we tend to view social capital as only a positive phenomenon.

Keywords: social_capital, social_structures, social_networks, Portes

Youth & Privacy: Research Shows That They Do Care

2011-12-22T13:09:33-05:00

There’s an unfortunate myth that persists when it comes to youth and privac (at least in my opinion, based on research and findings I've read). While it’s fashionable to make broad claims that “youth don’t care about privacy”, there are credible studies that have been conducted by reputable researchers that show that youth do indeed care about privacy. Such findings do not mean that youth do not make the same careless mistakes that we all do and it's not too difficult to find examples of people, young and old, making a mistake when it comes to the use of social media or participating in social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

If we take the "oops" examples aside, what I've summarized is that there are

A lack of media literacies (e.g., skills, competencies) when it comes to using social media
A lack of awareness of the affordances offered by a social network site to limit one's "publicness" (e.g., not knowing that privacy controls are available)
A result of actions (or inactions) taken by the provider of the social network site (e.g., provider changes lack notice and consent encouraging the revealing of information not meant for a broad audience)
Actions taken by a trusted connection to make information "more public" than was originally intended (e.g., a friend tags you in a photo or checks you into a location)

My respectful disagreement with studies proclaiming "youth don't care" is that they promote a certain stereotype and often infer that people knowingly place themselves out there for everyone to see (a typical "Gen Y" caricature) - that there's a willful intent. Studies I've reviewed come to a different conclusion and that has been by position for some time now.

There are of course always examples of people behaving badly, purposefully disregarding policies or intentionally acting in ways that avoids expected behaviors – but generalizing that into a trend is a leap of faith that I have not seen supported enough in research. Surveys alone are often not deep enough and often reach superficial results depending on the way questions are phrased and who participates.

For your reference, I’ve read several studies that I rely on to support this line of reasoning re: youth do care about privacy but are not always private for reasons other than "intent":

A recent Pew Research study on Reputation Management and Social Media:

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Reputation-Management.aspx

A Berkman study on Youth , Privacy and Reputation:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1588163

Social Privacy in Networked Publics: Teen's Attitudes, Practices, and Strategie

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1925128

First Monday, a peer-reviewed research journal published an article on how people struggle with Facebook privacy settings:

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3086/2589

ReadWriteWeb picked up on the study and summarized the findings:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study_youth_not_only_care_about_facebook_privacy_t.php

The Office of Privacy Commissioners of Canada has also published information on the myth that youth do not care about privacy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guoyjHMYdrs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Millennials at Work: Reshaping the Workplace: Research From PwC

2011-12-15T11:21:24-05:00

Interesting research on workforce trends:

PwC Survey: Millennials at work 2011

View more presentations from PwC

Mock Thesis Proposal: Personal Support Networks During Periods Of Employee Transition, Part 2

2011-12-12T15:02:31-05:00

This post is Part 2 of my Mock Thesis Proposal. Part 1 is located here. The Abstract is repeated.

Abstract

Social Network Sites (SNS) create multiple affordances employees leverage during their employment lifecycle. In this Masters Thesis, I examine how a SNS helps employees during transitional periods such as: joining the company, moving into a new position, and navigating through organizational disruption. Personal support networks are one type of SNS affordance employees can exploit when seeking information, mentoring, advice, problem-solving help, or opinions on the “folklore” of another group or business area. Output from this work will identify employee personal support practices, the influence media, management, and culture have on such practices, and benefits that accrue to employees and employers.

Methodology
Relevant Experience and Expertise
Research/Production Plan
Bibliography

Methodology

The study will include research from both scholarly and mainstream media sources that are related to this thesis. In addition, analysis and interpretation of research sources will be combined with the following quantitative and qualitative methods:

Survey: The purpose of using surveys is to obtain a sampling of data points from a population of management and employees. Aggregated results should reveal trends regarding (1) manager and employee views on use of a SNS for reasons of personal support, (2) preferences regarding use of different types of media, (3) opinions on the influence culture has promoting or inhibiting personal support networks, and (4) benefits that might accrue to workers and the organization. Data collection would occur through use of web-based questionnaires.

Sample Questions

How frequently do you communicate with co-workers for assistance to do your job better?
1. Range: 1 (rarely) – 7 (very often)
2. What tools are used?
  
  i. F2F, e-mail, phone, SNS
How frequently do you go to co-workers for career advice?
1. Range: 1 (rarely) – 7 (very often)
2. What tools are used?
  
  i. F2F, e-mail, phone, SNS
How frequently do you go to colleagues to assist you with problem solving?
1. Range: 1 (rarely) – 7 (very often)
2. What tools are used?
  
  i. F2F, e-mail, phone, SNS

Observational: The purpose of field observational techniques in this study is to gain immersive, qualitative insight regarding people’s opinions on topics related to this thesis. Specifically, a hybrid approach that combines elements of contextual design and contextual inquiry will be used. Individual and small groups of employees will be allowed to “tell their stories” within a defined topic area. The observer (myself) will minimally facilitate and guide the session. The goal is to passively observe the conversation while taking copious notes. Afterwards, an “interpretation session” will be conducted to synthesize the notes into a collection of affinity statements. Affinity statements are sorted into a three-layer hierarchy that can subsequently be analyzed.

Sample Storytelling Topics

Mentoring: What role does your SNS play within your mentoring program from the view of its participants and by management?

This open-ended statement would lead to an ad-hoc conversation with the individual or group. The role of the observer is to not provide answers or to prompt participants to go down certain paths. The observer does keep the discussion “boxed” within the topic area and can ask follow-up questions to specific responses to surface additional context to statements made during the session.

Interviews: Interviews provide in-depth background on specific areas of interest in the study. While difficult to generalize into broad horizontal trends, interviews can reveal subtle and nuanced in-depth insight on specific topics that are difficult to call out through other means. Interviews can also “bring a story to life” and can actually reflect an individual’s own experience with personal support networks. As such, interviews could evolve as a type of oral history. Interviews will likely occur both face-to-face, over the telephone, and through electronic means (e.g., Skype). Use of Twitter and its hashtag feature (e.g., #MikeChat) could be used to facilitate an open discussion on the topic as well.

Sample Interview Questions

If you were trying to transfer to a new position in another group, would you “check them out” on your internal SNS to find out more about:
- The people in the group
- The type of work they do
- What type of expertise seemed to be necessary
- Whether people seemed happy
Would you use the SNS to “follow” people in that group? Would you join communities related to that group’s work as a way to build relationships with people in those teams?
How would your manager or supervisor react if they discovered that you were interested in transferring to that group?

Industry studies: Vendors (e.g., IBM and Cisco) and consultancies (e.g., McKinsey, Deloitte) often publish industry reports covering the use of social media, social networks, and Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise. These reports often cover technology and its applied use, including applications that might be relevant to this study. Industry Analyst firms (e.g., Gartner, Forrester) also provide reports that analyze a variety of topics involving employee engagement, culture, and social networking. Although these reports are often behind a “pay wall”, it might be possible to gain access to these reports for academic use.

Methodology Alignment, Limitations & Challenges

Since I am an online student taking only one course per semester, this Mock Thesis will act as a “living document”, evolving over time as assumptions and issues related to personal support networks shift. The theoretical framework with its three domain areas should remain fairly stable. Over time, additional research sources, courses, and my own professional activities will help fine-tune the framework. The thesis may evolve to become more refined, focusing more on a particular application of a personal support network (e.g., mentoring programs), or shift slightly to look at different types of “employees” (e.g., contingent staff, exempt vs. non-exempt staff, retirees returning as consultants, former staff still with the firm but now reporting to an outsourcer) and how different types of employer/employee relationships influence participation in a SNS and use of personal support networks.

In terms of limitations and challenges, some of the selected research methods may be difficult to actually execute. For instance, the observational component typically involves some type of “call for participation” which may not result in enough firms participating. Also, firms must allow employees to talk freely and must be confident that sensitive information and use of the firm’s name be held in confidence. Travel on my part may not always be feasible. The interpretation session and creation of the three-layer hierarchy typically requires an additional 1-2 people to collaborate with on the effort. Those resources might not be available. There may also be a need to gain permission from my employer to gain funding and to use normal work hours for purposes of this study.

Relevant experience and expertise

My background as an industry analyst covering collaboration and social computing (including social media and social networking) for 14 years provides a very high level of expertise when it comes to technology and its application. As an industry analyst, I’ve talked to hundreds of Fortune 500 organizations as well as various federal and state government agencies on deployment of technologies to support improved information sharing, collaboration, and community building. In 2008, I conduced a field research project that leveraged contextual design and contextual inquiry methods to examine social networking trends within the enterprise. In that study, observational methods were applied in 21 organizations involving 65 people representing both business and Information Technology areas. From 1996 through 2005, I had the opportunity to interact with many vendors and industry thought-leaders on topics related to collaboration and social networking. Over the years, I have also developed a strong professional network across different disciplines. These contacts can be leveraged in terms of finding participants or to leverage their subject matter expertise to support the needs of this study.

However, missing in my background has been a firm grounding in the scholarly aspects of media and culture. I enrolled in this program at The New School to alleviate these gaps. Academic guidance from faculty as well as coursework over the next several semesters will help improve my understanding of the inter-disciplinary nature of media studies and how to apply those concepts to this thesis work and my own professional activities. In terms of an action plan, the following courses will support this thesis work: Media Studies: Ideas, Media Studies: Concepts, Interviewing, Focus Groups, Sampling, Discourse Analysis, Collaboration in Networks Environments, Business Strategies for Social Media, Media & Social Theory, and Weapons of Mass Communication.

Research/Production Plan

At this stage of thesis development, it is difficult to construct a timeline and budget forecast that would be relevant. However, there is a sequence of events that would have to occur for components of the study. Those elements are outlined below:

Surveys

Survey Design: Decisions need to be made as to whether a single survey will be used, or multiple surveys specific to different audiences (e.g., management, employees). Questions need to be reviewed to eliminate ambiguity and ensure that they will produce unbiased quantifiable results.

Survey Execution: People need to be solicited to complete the survey. Those participating desirably should represent people relevant to the study (e.g., managers, employees). Professional colleagues will be asked to help with promotion. Twitter and Facebook would also be used for promotional purposes.

Survey Analysis: Excel or other tools should be able to produce statistical results.

Observational Study

Past experience conducting such a study suggests a 3-4 month elapsed timeline. A goal of at 20-25 participants from different organizations would be appropriate. The following production steps are required for a contextual inquiry/contextual design process:

Logistics:

Issuing the “Call for Participation” using Twitter, my personal blog, and professional network. Processing responses to the invitation, including identification of a central point of contact for each firm, securing any needed confidentiality agreements, and defining rules of engagement (including confidentiality needs).
Identifying individuals and groups to solicit for participation in the study (e.g., representatives from Human Resources, management, employees)
Prepare questions for topical area storytelling sessions.
Scheduling sessions

Engagement

Verify profile information on company and participants, assign codes to participants and companies to mask identities.
Complete face-to-face or telephone interviews
Review raw notes with central contact to ensure confidentiality. This may include striking/redacting key terms, acronyms, or statements that might reveal the firm or disclose sensitive information.

Assessment

Replay notes to 1-2 colleagues to socialize interviews and to create affinity notes, and to eventually construct the three-layer hierarchy.

Review

Review findings with all study participants as a “thank you” for participating.

Interviews

One-on-one interviews should be balanced between a management viewpoint and the perspective of the employee concerning personal support networks. Minimally there should be 2-6 interviews collected. Interviews should not take longer than a 30-60 minute discussion. Elapsed time for interviews should be no more than one month and can occur simultaneously to observational work. Interviews should include pre-defined questions but used primarily to “open up” the conversation, allowing the interviewee to tell their own unique story. Notes should be reviewed with the interviewee to ensure confidentiality needs are satisfied.

Bibliography / Mediagraphy

Refer to Literature Review: Improving Work Practices in Times of Change

Mock Thesis Proposal: Personal Support Networks During Periods Of Employee Transition, Part 1

2011-12-12T14:51:49-05:00

Abstract

Proposal and Rationale

Description

In this work, I propose to examine how employees can leverage the affordances enabled through an internal SNS for personal support reasons during professional life transitions such as: joining the company, moving into a new position, and adapting to new professional situations as a result of organizational disruption (e.g., a reduction in force, a re-organization, or combining groups of people together from different companies as part of a merger or acquisition). My belief is that personal support networks provide a direct benefit to employees and an indirect benefit to the organization and management.

Examples of the type of affordances that could be examined include:

Mentoring: the ability for an employee to use a SNS as part of a mentoring program with senior staff members.
Advice: the ability for an employee to pose questions to trusted individuals on professional dilemmas, career issues, or other work-related challenges.
“Folklore”: Employees share knowledge and rumors that help provide important context to situations workers find themselves in. Through these backchannels, employees tap into the “gossip” on how things really get done or etiquettes expected in groups a worker is joining.
Information: A SNS provides employees with a wealth of information on colleagues (via profiles), relationships (via a social graph), interactions (via wall posts, forums, and micro-blogging), and content (via uploaded files).
Literacy development: The relatively low barriers for participation creates affordances that enable employees to expand the ways they create and share information as well as connect and build community with peers. Proficiency in use of media, and recognition from peers regarding their contributions, builds confidence employees can apply elsewhere in their professional life.
Self-learning: Employees can create their own strategies to monitor and educate themselves about areas in the firm they may want to transition into, or follow senior staff to discover how career paths evolve over time.
Personal Brand: Employees can define themselves beyond their formal role by leveraging a SNS and its tools (e.g., blogs, wikis, communities) to display unknown talent. By performing in ways beyond their expected role, employees can enhance their career options by being recognized for their expertise or as a contributor in areas not associated with their position.

There are also benefits to the organization by allowing personal support networks to thrive. From a management perspective, employees that are both motivated and proficient in their role is often the objective of strategic human resource initiatives such as talent management, employee engagement, skill and competency goals, and staff retention metrics. For managers, employees committed to their job and to the organization are more productive, contribute towards a positive corporate culture, and reflect well on the firm when dealing with valuable customer relationships.

Employees today often have a richer media experience outside of work than they do using internal business applications. Smart phones, tablets, gaming, and consumer SNS’s are influencing concepts related to participation, sharing, and privacy. As organizations transition through generational shifts in their workforce, determining the proper work-related use of social media can create differing opinions within leadership teams. Managers with a positive influence on employee use of a SNS can leverage worker participate to facilitate a stronger sense of organizational identity. A negative influence can spread that context to staff, disenfranchising them and inhibiting their use of a SNS to develop personal support networks.

Rationale & Literature Review

Organizations today are faced with an extreme period of uncertainty due to economic, geo-political, societal, environmental, and technological shifts that have occurred over the past few years and continue today, with no foreseeable return of “normalcy” in sight. Management is often unable to communicate to its workforce the firm’s long-term business direction, how the firm plans to stay competitive in the short-run, what new markets should be entered, or the type of structural and cultural transformation is necessary to navigate through this period of uncertainty. As organizations struggle through this malaise, there are more reports in the media on how employees are becoming less committed to their job and employer. If firms are to avoid customer, financial, and competitive decline, any strategic long-term remedy needs to include an employee engagement component.

This situation represents the conceptual framing for my work. How organizations can actually encourage its employees to participate more actively and become more emotionally attached to the company and its mission has led strategists to look at consumer SNS providers and deploy similar technologies designed for use within the enterprise. However, what I see happening in my professional encounters with strategists are approaches to an enterprise SNS that focus on broad corporate goals, narrowly defined improvements to processes, or creation of knowledge-sharing “islands” disconnected from the everyday work of employees. While I am not judging the correctness of those approaches in this thesis, I do believe strategists are missing an employee-centric perspective and are not considering the individual and business value derived from personal support networks. Affordances associated with such networks help employees become more self-organized and in control of certain aspects of their professional life. For employees to become more motivated to perform better, to identify more with the goals of the company (and contribute accordingly), they need to see value in return for that higher level of engagement. That motivation is realized by giving workers more autonomy to self-direct aspects of their career progression. Greater personal control over their career progression can incent employees to gain a level of mastery in their chosen endeavors. This is especially true in times of transition. A SNS designed with certain personal support affordances helps employees creates the social infrastructure they need to better self-direct their career progression. Personal support networks can also provide workers with the emotional scaffolding (e.g., peer and community backing) to handle professional transitions that are contentious, ambiguous or complex. The need for these types of networks have become more important given the commitment gap between companies and its employees, and the implications to employees in terms of their employment.

Based on work previous published in my Literature Review, the thesis study divides existing theoretical research into three domains:

Publics, Media & Participatory Culture: This research area looks at the rise of public opinion as a unique part of social life and how communications media has helped facilitate new forms of participation and collective sharing at a mass scale. Relevant academic perspectives include those from: Baym and Jenkins.
Social Network Sites (SNS): This research area examines how people leverage a SNS for publically interacting with friends, cohorts, and site members to which a person has no association. Also examined is how the SNS model is applied internally within the firm and used by employees to foster personal support networks. Academic perspectives developed by boyd, Ellison, Pearson, McAfee, and Burt are applicable here.
Organizational Identity (OI): This research area looks at how workers deal with issues of identifying with the organization, the influence of managerial relationships and peer networks, and how OI affects workers and the firm. Scholarly perspectives put forth by Cole, Foote, Pratti, and Stirling underpins this area.

Research within each of the above domains either focuses on society in general, the consumer market, or business management and organizational development. There is a gap concerning how theoretical principals and findings interconnect across the various disciplines in ways that apply to employees in the firm. A key aspect of this thesis is to connect existing dots in a new inter-disciplinary way and support this study and its findings through the application of several research methods. Some examples of what we can learn from this work include:

The role of publics in a SNS and how its affordances help people construct identity is often discussed in consumer contexts (boyd, 2011; Ellison, 2011; Pearson 2009). However, in the firm, “identity” of an employee is something ascribed to them based on their job title, role, and business unit association. Will organizations really allow employees to create (and exploit) their own social identities based on interests, experiences, and expertise outside the boundaries of their formal persona? The ability to shape one’s own identity and the context in which that persona is represented is an important component to how personal support networks might evolve.
Participatory culture is often examined in the context of youth, media, and education (Jenkins, 2009). How does his work on participatory cultures apply within a business environment that is managed differently than an educational environment? The cultural dynamics of encouraging low barriers to expression (e.g., use of blogs, wikis, communities) and sense that co-workers value contributions from colleagues would appear to impact development and mobilization of personal support networks.
The influence of hierarchy and how it creates poor commitment levels if workers feel they are outside a particular social group has been examined as part of organizational theory (Cole, 2006). Can personal support networks provide a means for employees to feel that they have pathways across the organization regardless of where they are situated in the hierarchy? If so, such a dynamic should improve how employees identify with the firm.

Results of this study will help strategists understand the value of personal support networks as part of an employee engagement strategy, the role a SNS has in enabling the cultural and media affordances necessary for workers to create, maintain, and mobilize such networks, and benefits to employees and employers.

Part 2 is located here. Part 2 covers:

Methodology
Relevant Experience and Expertise
Research/Production Plan
Bibliography