Implications for Practice

at the relationships between multiple actors and how they form and develop.

Recent literature highlights how the study of social networking in organizations through tools such as ESM requires attention to the deeper structures that underlie the workings of these networks (Trier and Richter 2015). To explore these deeper structures, the relational perspective allows for an equal consideration of any actor who enters into relation and underlines how it is not useful to separate the individual actors, but rather focus on their mutual existence as the point of analysis. For the investigation of ESM at work, the controversy analysis revealed how looking at interactions in the controversies provides insight into the relationships that describe the social dynamics of ESM at work. Through the analysis of the prevailing conflicts and disagreements, the four steps of the controversy analysis were instrumental in revealing the threads of the social fabric and the nature of social dynamics in each case organization. Observing the relation between actors through the controversy analysis provided a method of identifying and analyzing certain instantiations of the relation between actors. While the relational constructivist perspective is not a new perspective in research (Hosking 2011; Özbilgin 2006), its addition to the analysis of the social dynamics of ESM at work provided novel insight into how the relationships in these dynamics were formed and reformed on the ESM platform. In sum, this insight emphasizes how focusing on a relational perspective enable us to look beyond a fit between task and technology and towards describing the underlying social dynamics of technology use and organizational practice.

groups across certain boundaries. This study provides managers with a way of understanding ESM at work by moving beyond the technical capabilities and towards an integrated perspective in which ESM, sociality and work come together to explain the underlying social premise of the platform use in the organization. The social fabric framework can work as a strategic and operational instrument to identify social dynamics on the ESM platform through eliciting these dynamics and creating a visual representation of the social fabric that can be used for reflecting upon and engaging in collective dialogue about present and desired states. Based on this, I outline the specific insights gained on social dynamics of ESM at work with regard to the implications for practice.

Insight 4: Organizations can utilize the social fabric framework to elicit the social dynamics of the organization’s use of ESM

The synthesis of the research reveals how the threads of the social fabric can provide rich insights into the interactions taking place on the ESM platform. While the organizations studied all highlighted the interactions between organizational members as important, explaining what these entail or how they formed and developed proved difficult. Revealing the threads of the social fabric thus serves as a way of making these interactions more tangible by viewing them in light of the different thread’s characteristics. The elicitation of the interactions and the analysis of how these interactions form a certain pattern of relationship conveys how the entanglement between ESM, sociality and work creates a dynamic space for interaction which can facilitate both top-down, regulated and directive relationships on the one hand, as well as bottom-up, self-regulated and communitive relationships on the other. This indicates that working with the social fabric, as well as identifying and reflecting which patterns of relationships are favored, can help managers elicit the social dynamics of the organization on the ESM platform. The follow-up sessions at two of the case organizations revealed how the threads of the social fabric and the patterns provided the organizational members with a language for addressing the dynamics that took place. In particular, specifying the ratio of each thread manifestation led to insight into how interactions on the platform were dominated by a certain balance. Through these insights, presenting the nature of the interactions on the ESM platform became

more tangible for the organizational members, as they could use the terminology of the social fabric to pinpoint the characteristics of the activities on the ESM platform. The social fabric framework then works as a way of eliciting the interactions and patterns of relationships forming on the ESM platform but also evokes feedback and discussion among those who interpret what is going on, thus creating a common ground for the use of the technology in practice (Carlile 2004).

Insight 5: Organizations can utilize the social fabric framework to create visual representations of the social dynamics of the organization’s use of ESM Mapping the different social fabric configurations across the three case organizations revealed how the three case organizations have very different ways of interacting on the ESM platform. The visual configurations of the social fabric allows for a display of the patterns of relationships, as well as their development.

This presents interesting implications for practice as the complex dynamics of the social environment on the ESM platform become manifested in a shape, providing insight into the evolving patterns of relationships on the ESM platform. Utilizing visual representations to explain organizational data can provide powerful and meaningful insights into complex phenomena (Meyer 1991). The social fabric makes it possible to create representations of the interactions and relationships that form on ESM, which are otherwise difficult to describe and capture. Further, the social fabric framework allow the visualization of the fluidity (Faraj et al. 2011) of the online ESM medium by creating a flexible structure for observing and visualizing interactions and patterns of relationships on the ESM platform as they evolve over time. In addition to highlighting the dominant patterns of the social fabric, the visual representations also revealed how the ESM platform should not be considered as being equivalent across different organizations. While the ESM platform Yammer is normally promoted as a technology which ‘fits-all’ (Yammer 2015), investigating the social dynamics on ESM demonstrates how the technology can encourage many different interactions and patterns of relationships. Pinpointing these different social dynamics of the same ESM platform across diverse organizations makes the social fabric configurations useful for discussing the exact application and future use of the technology within the organization (Leonhardt Kjærgaard and Jensen 2014). The navigation of the ESM

platform and its use in the organization is a matter of looking at how the technology is appropriated within the social fabric of the organization and working with specific initiatives based on this understanding.

Insight 6: Organizations can utilize the social fabric as a means of reflecting upon and creating a collective dialogue about the present and future desired state.

As highlighted in the introduction, a major challenge for organizations and for managers is to plan and work strategically with the use of ESM in the organization. To initiate this strategic thinking, managers can utilize the social fabric configurations as a springboard for a collective discussion about the prevailing work practices on the ESM platform. As part of my concluding work with the case organizations, the social fabric framework proved invaluable for allowing the organizations to gain insights into the social fabric of their ESM platform. The social fabric configurations in each of the case organizations gave insight into the behavior on the ESM platform and how this formed and reformed over time. Moreover, it highlighted how the social fabric underlying the practice of collaboration took different forms. The different social fabric configurations then revealed how the same ESM platform sparked different forms of interaction and patterns of relationships across each organization and specific work practices.

The application of the social fabric framework highlights the importance of considering the interaction between organizations and technology in light of the specific contexts and technologies, rather than suggesting abstract and overall strategic initiatives that transcend all organizations (Orlikowski 1992). The reflection and dialogue encouraged by the social fabric framework can enable the creation of specialized strategies for ESM in the specific organizational context.

Reporting back to the case organizations, the practical implications of this work have been revealed by the ability of the social fabric configurations to give the organizations a language for, and a way of, considering ESM at work. This has both offered insights into the current state of the organizations, as well as provided directions for future initiatives when it comes to ESM at work. Based on this, the social fabric framework becomes a way for organizations to capture the current

state of the social dynamics on the ESM platform as well as to utilize this to plan for future initiatives and ways of interacting on the platform.