Investigating the Social Fabric of Collaboration

presents an illustration of the organization whereby the social dynamics on Yammer are oriented towards a general information sharing that is recognized by a community, one in which social content is welcomed and where distinctive relationships emerge. The case study of HighPower also emphasizes the informative relationships, but the social fabric shows how directive relationships are also formed on the Yammer platform. The social dynamics are then characterized by the directing of professional content in general context interactions where the informative relationships are central and recognized. The controversy analysis of the debate professional-social content reflected how the culture of the organization to a high extent relies on these formal distributions of information. Finally, the fragmented social fabric emerging at BetterHealth highlights specific relationships and directive relationships, focusing on professional content and a necessity evaluation through posting of important information to the platform. The social fabric at BetterHealth seems to illustrate an issue that arises through the fact that, while organizational members are mostly interacting in distinctive relationships, there is also a tendency towards directive relationships and sharing of important information. In this sense, important information might not be seen or taken account of when, to a large extent, people interact on the platform based on distinctive relations. The social fabric can help distinguish the overall types of relationships that dominate the interactions and relationships on the ESM platform within an organization, as well as to indicate contradictions within the individual patterns.

social fabric underlying collaborative initiatives is presented in detail in paper 4.

Figure 8 shows the social fabric configurations formed across three collaborative initiatives carried out on the Yammer platform in the three case organizations (see Appendix 8 for data representation). The collaborative initiatives selected all represent a Yammer group set up for enabling collaborative problem solving around a certain task. Again, it is evident how the social fabric forms differently across the three case organizations. In addition, the social fabric configurations reveal insights into how the relationships appear to highlight the different social dynamics on the ESM platform in the collaborative practices.

The collaborative initiative at TopConsulting is the Yammer group ‘Share Your Code’, which is set up for members to share knowledge and solve problems about coding. The purpose of the group is for organizational members to help each other solve concrete problems within coding issues. The social fabric configuration associated with collaboration in the ‘Share Your Code’ group are oriented toward relationships of an informative nature through the general context, news perception and praise giving. In addition, relationships of a more distinctive nature appear by the chatter about particular topics that are shared and discussed among a few group members. Besides this, the sharing of social content is supported by the members evaluating with the platform as a frill through voluntarily engaging in the group, thereby strengthening the communitive relationships. Finally, some corrective relationships emerge from the reprimands that follow chatter on professional content.

TopConsulting: ‘Share Your Code’ group HighPower: ‘Office 365’ group BetterHealth: ‘IT’ group Figure 8: Social Fabric Configurations of Collaborative Initiatives on Yammer in Three Case Organizations

Necessity General News Praise Social Frill

Specific

Chatter

Reprimand

Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive

Corrective

Necessity General News Praise Social Frill

Specific

Chatter

Reprimand

Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive

Corrective

Necessity General News Praise Social Frill

Specific

Chatter

Reprimand

Professional Directive Informative Communitive Distinctive

Corrective

The collaborative initiative at HighPower is the group ‘Office 365’ that deals with the implementation of a new operating system. The purpose of the group is to enable organizational members to share knowledge and solve problems that they may have with the new system. The group consists of 120 members, all of which are users of the new system. The social fabric of the collaboration in the ‘Office 365’ group focuses on directive relationships by proving professionally-oriented content in a general context. In addition, informative relationships are observed in the large quantity of news acknowledged by the members of the group. Some distinct conversations emerged among members in specific contexts and dealing with off-topic issues. Lastly, corrective relationships emerge when the chatter perception of certain professional-content was reprimanded with regard to questions being asked that had already been answered.

The social fabric forming in the collaboration on the ‘IT’ group at BetterHealth shows the directive pattern and the distinctive pattern as dominant. The collaboration at BetterHealth is the ‘IT’ Yammer group, which was established to enable employees in the IT department to work together for the rapid sharing of knowledge and problem solving. The group has 16 members and its purpose is to share knowledge so that everyone in the IT department has a general idea of what is going on and can help each other solve problems with the IT systems. The formation of the social fabric in the ‘IT’ group at BetterHealth shows how the interactions are reliant upon a large quantity of professionally-oriented content which is presented in the general context of the group and which is aimed at providing important specific information that must be taken into consideration, reflecting a directive nature of the relationships. The directive pattern emerges when the IT manager encourages the members to read the articles and take note of his information. The distinctive pattern emerged, as interactions are voluntarily initiated by members on the platform aimed at a specific context and taking on the form of chatter. Finally, a limited news perception and a smaller amount of social content seem to introduce some hints of informative and communitive relationships, but these are inhibited by the lack of praise and recognition on the platform.

The different configurations of the social fabric provide insight into how the interactions guiding collaboration between the organizational members on the ESM platform are based on diverse social fabric configurations. Describing the different social dynamics that underline the collaborative initiatives allows for an understanding of how the interactions between the organizational members create different foundations for collaboration within the organization. Thus, the social fabric configuration highlights how collaboration on an ESM platform should not be treated as a set activity, but rather is subject to huge differentiation depending on the social fabric that forms as its base.

Through the social fabric framework, the different components of ESM, sociality and work come together, explaining the foundations for how social relationships form on ESM as well as providing an understanding of how these mediated relationships relate to work. In terms of the three domains, the integrated perspective involves the consideration of how the social fabric forms, but more importantly, transforms through the use of ESM. The different social fabric configurations display the way in which relationships form depending on the balance of the interactions along the social fabric threads. The social fabric can then also serve as a way of orienting the interactions of the ESM platform within the organization. Accordingly, working with the social dynamics of the organization on ESM can be based on knowledge about the existing social fabric configuration and perspectives on desired configurations. As part of the empirical work, the follow up sessions carried out at two of the case organizations revealed how the organizational members, when confronted with the social fabric configuration, started to discuss what actions and interactions they could take to enforce certain relationships. The IT manager at BetterHealth noted, ‘so if I want to strengthen the informative relationship here then I should put more effort into praising people when they post information or news that I value...’

(ITM_FollowUpMeeting_BH). On a more general level, the social fabric configurations worked as a way for the organizational members to reflect on their actions on the Yammer platform in a way they had not previously considered. The discussions in the follow-up sessions made it clear how the language of the social fabric in terms of threads and patterns of relationships aided in the deciphering of

differences in perceptions of how and for what purpose the Yammer platform should be used within the organizations. Reflecting on this in relation to the initial interviews, the descriptions from the organizational members of how they would post and comments on the Yammer platform suddenly became more elaborate, using the terminology of the social fabric in terms of which relationships they valued and how this reflected in the actions and interactions. The social fabric configurations serve as a way of understanding existing social dynamics of the organization but can also provide a way of informing future activities on the platform.

In this section, I have introduced the social fabric framework as an integrated perspective for understanding the social dynamics of ESM at work. The findings presented have highlighted my perspectives on the three domains of ESM, sociality and work, and how these have informed the development of the social fabric framework. They also highlight how my main insights for understanding the social dynamics of ESM at work arose from the interaction between the three domains and the way that these were enacted in the practice on the ESM platform.

The creation of an integrated view on ESM at work through the social fabric enables an understanding of ESM use in relation to the social dynamics of the organization. Configuring the different social fabrics of the case organizations gave valuable insight into the dynamic and diverse nature of the relationships that form on the ESM platform. In particular, the social fabric configurations showed how the relationships changed over time and were different across the three organizations and in the organizational practice of collaboration. Finally, the follow up meetings with the case organizations revealed how the social fabric framework enabled both insights into existing and current relationships but also supported the direction of future activities and interactions on the ESM platform.