ė ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

Gintarė Žemaitaitienė, Asta Tiškutė, Agnė Tvaronavičienė

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INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY

Economics & Sociology, Vol. 9, No 2, 2016

303

Gintarė Žemaitaitienė, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania, E-mail: [email protected]

ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING: INNOVATION DIFFICULT

TO ADOPT? Asta Tiškutė, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania, E-mail: [email protected] Agnė Tvaronavičienė, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania, E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT. By having a positive effect on management sustainability, enterprise social networking (ESN) tools are becoming a more prominent form of communication within enterprises. Despite the reasonably predictable benefits of ESN tools for communication and information sharing within organizations, the experience in a number of companies shows that such innovations are not easily adoptable. An analysis of failure instead of success stories gives a wider understanding of the risks and dangers that organizations might face and ways to overcome them. The chosen theoretical framework of diffusion of innovation gives a couple of different perspectives of the same situation, analysing premises of innovation decision, innovation development, innovation process variables and actors. The research completed emphasizes on the importance of combining different stakeholders’ positions to have a 360-degree view of the situation, make an analysis of organizational climate and have in mind a specifics of the ICT-based innovation itself. However, most important tasks are to plan steps of innovation development and to support the system in detail.

Received: February, 2016 1st Revision: April, 2016 Accepted: June, 2016 DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2016/9-2/21

JEL Classification: O33, O35, Q55

Keywords: Social Media, Enterprise Social Networking, Innovation Diffusion Theory.

Introduction

The promotion of social innovation has been widely identified as one of the EU’s

priorities because it contributes to the improvement of the quality of life of citizens and national competitiveness (Dobele et al., 2015). The concept of social innovation often refers also to social media as tools affecting everyday communication. It is clear that in the contemporary world social media tools are becoming a more prominent form of communication, not only among individual consumers but also within enterprises (McKinsey Global Institute, 2012). Every day, organizations use different social media platforms, including one of the most popular tools, social networking sites (Goeman, 2013). In fact, the adoption of social networking services together with other social media platforms in different organizational contexts is considered to hold potential for value creation in such areas as internal and external communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing, etc. (Ahlqvist et al., 2008). Evidence from different researches shows that information-rich social media enabled networks have a positive effect on management sustainability: they affect work outcomes,

Žemaitaitienė, G., Tiškutė, A., Tvaronavičienė, A. (2016), Enterprise Social Networking: Innovation Difficult to Adopt? Economics and Sociology, Vol. 9, No 2, pp. 303-318. DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2016/9-2/21


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change network structures, give economic benefits (for example, lowering transaction costs or contributing toward becoming more profitable), improve work performance (especially in information diversity and social communication) and affect productivity and job security (Wu, 2013; Zyl, 2009). Although the positive effects are undeniable for both business and public sector organizations’ sustainable management, the risks and dangers are the reason to go deeper into the analysis of whether to put effort into social media adoption. Researchers have discovered risks in legal, security, privacy, intellectual property, copyright matters, misuse, waste of time and other resources, and even employees’ reluctance or resistance to participate themselves (Turban et al., 2011).

Almost everybody is now affected by social media (Vaško and Abrhám, 2015). Usage of social media technologies affects the previously established structure of organization (for example the emergence of virtual organizations) and has led to the development of so-called internal Social Networking services or Enterprise Social Networking (hereafter ESN) tools: private social networks created for use within organizations. One leading example of this innovation is Yammer, launched in 2008. Yammer is described by the company itself as a “collaboration software and business applications [that] allow you to get connected to the right people, share information across teams and organize around projects” and which is “used by more than 200,000 companies worldwide”, including DHL, Shell, Unicef UK, various universities, etc. (Yammer.com; Pinto, 2014). Lithuania is no exception: even though the concept of ESN is still very new, it was announced in October 2014 that within the website www.3erdve.lt a social network Yammer was integrated as a personal and safe platform for communication between all Lithuanian libraries (Lietuvos nacionalinė biblioteka, lnb.lt).

The newest research (Durkin, Lokshina, 2015) confirms that “integrated wireless and mobile communication technologies are key success factors, even if there are challenges presented by such issues as the SLA (Service Level Agreement), security, privacy, mixed mode usage and deployment, and finding the appropriate business models for profitable growth”. However, despite the reasonably predictable benefits of ESN tools for communication and information sharing within organizations, the experience in a number of companies shows that such innovations are not easily adoptable. After a rapid spread across various enterprises and being adopted by most leading companies in the world, news began to appear that the actual use of ESN has not been as high as hoped and that management is struggling to make it work (Roe, 2014). Thus, a number of organizations which choose to adopt ESN tools are possibly facing an implementation failure, mostly due to a lack of sufficient knowledge about this particular type of innovation and their diffusion process.

This all leads to the importance of better understanding the process of adoption of innovation in organizations, especially of a new information and communication technology such as an ESN service. There is already extensive research on the diffusion of innovations: in 2009 Les Robinson counted more than 6,000 of them (research and field tests), including a number of empirical research in the area of communication (Rogers, 2003; Robinson, 2009). In particular, when looking at the adoption of information technology, most commonly used models are Technology Acceptance Model or TAM (Davis, 1989), Theory of Planned Behaviour or TPB (Ajzen, 1991), Theory of Reasoned Action or TRA (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and most recently, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology or UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Researchers using these models (or their combinations) have shown that a number of factors influence the adoption or rejection of new information technology: perceived usefulness, perceived ability to use (or capacity), perceived relative advantage, compatibility, personal innovativeness, willingness of individuals, different contextual factors within organization, etc. (Carter and Belanger, 2004; Agarwal and Prasad, 1998; Cooper and Zmud, 1990; Walker, 2002).


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However, despite wide-ranging research on the factors influencing successful adoption of innovation, the failure of implementing new initiatives in organizations remains widespread and reported failure rates are found as high as 93% (Decker et al., 2012). According to Rogers (2003), the pro-innovation bias leads researchers to underemphasize the rejection or discontinuance of innovation, thus not learning about certain important aspects of diffusion and limiting our knowledge. The goal of this article is to address this issue by taking into account the suggestions regarding the pro-innovation bias and looking at the actual case of ESN tool implementation failure within an organization, and in this way learning more about the particular aspects of its diffusion process.

Research problem. A growing number of organizations worldwide are implementing new ESN tools. However, despite a vast amount of existing research on the adoption process of various ICTs, a significant number of implementation failures still occurs.

The purpose of the article is to research the failure of ESN tool adoption process in the Lithuanian branch of a selected company.

To achieve this purpose, further objectives are formulated: 1) To provide a short overview on the concept of ESN and its use in organizational

setting; 2) To prepare a theoretical framework of innovation diffusion within organizations; and 3) To determine the factors affecting the success of adoption of ESN tool in the selected

company from the perspective of process of innovation adoption. Methodology. A qualitative research strategy was chosen and a case study was

conducted, since it enables the exploration of a phenomenon within its context using a variety of data sources and allows multiple aspects to be revealed and understood (Yin, 2011). The research was carried out in the organization (hereafter “the Company”), where the ESN tool Yammer was available for internal use for 9 months until it was decided to discontinue its use due to a low rate of adoption. Qualitative methods were used to explore and define possible factors related to the adoption of an ESN tool. This included document analysis: the review of existing primary literature, the analysis of existing archival records from the Company (previous internal employees’ inquiry results, evaluating the need of ESN), and was combined with semi-structured interviews with experts inside the Company (the persons responsible for innovations related decisions and their implementation). This study provided a deeper understanding of the innovation decision process within the organization and also gives premises for further quantitative research of all employees of the organization.

A medium-sized company (according to EU categorization) specializing in the construction and distribution industry was chosen for this case study. The company’s headquarters are located in Vilnius, Lithuania and there are two regional offices: one in Riga (Latvia) and one in Moscow (Russia). The company has been in business for 20 years and at the time of research had 111 employees in total (66 in Lithuania, 35 in Russia and 10 in Latvia). The company was chosen due to several reasons. First, employees need to communicate and collaborate across several countries on an everyday basis, requiring the use of various ICTs in order to stay in business. Second, the Company is a medium-sized company, and micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) constitute 99% of companies in the EU (Fact Sheets on the European Union, July 2015) which means the results would be relevant for a wide range of companies. Finally, at the moment of preparation for this research, ESN tools were still quite a novelty in Lithuania and it was a great opportunity to be able to research a case in which one type of prominent ESN software was tried out.

Three experts responsible for innovation-related decisions and implementation were interviewed for this study. A purposive sample was used, since it was important that the chosen experts were the main initiators and implementers of the innovation and that they had necessary knowledge and experience communicating about Yammer.


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Table 1. Expert characteristics Recent

position Responsibilities Position during Yammer implementation

Previous working experience

Expert A Head of Administration (for 2 years)

Managing the IT, Finance, Design and Personnel departments

Worked in the IT department (for 5 years)

Was working in the field of telecommunications

Expert B Director of the Company since 2015

---

Worked as Head of Development and Innovation department (for 3.5 years)

Working in the Management of Public Communication at Vilnius Gediminas Technical university

Expert C

Project manager (for 1 year and 6 month)

Implementation of various innovative, communication related projects (was responsible for the ESN tool project)

Project manager (implementation of ESN tool was one of the first projects)

Project manager in (HAI.lt) and National Student Academy (NSA); working in organizing various other trainings, conferences and events

Source: authors.

The interviews were held in January 2015 in the headquarters office of the Company, where meetings are usually held; therefore it was a known, comfortable and thus trusted environment for the interviewed experts. The interviewer (the author of this paper) had previous experience in conducting semi-structured interviews (holding three focus group interviews and one individual interview during a bachelor of psychology studies) and felt comfortable talking to the experts. The interviews (in average 38 minutes long) were recorded using a digital audio recorder and later transcribed. Non-verbal communication was noted during the interviews and added to the transcripts. 1. Understanding the concepts of social media and ESN tools

Social media as we understand today would not be possible without advances in Information and Communication Technologies (hereafter ICT), especially over the last few decades. The internet had been a communication revolution (Matyasik, 2014). As the internet became more and more accessible, its capabilities and applications have also evolved. These technological advances have led to what is now referred to as Web 2.0. As Gretzel notes (2015), the terminology itself implies a technological point of view (version 2.0) and signifies progress and development: over the years, internet-based tools and technologies have become more sophisticated, interactive, accessible and specialized. In light of these achievements, today the understanding of social media is determined by continuing advances in ICT and the new capabilities it brings. It is quite challenging to define the term “social media”, but it is obvious that definition should include several main elements. For example, according Ahlqvist et al. (2008), the definition of social media is built on three corner stones: content, communities and Web 2.0. Their definition of social media states that: “social media refers to the interaction of people and also to creating, sharing, exchanging and commenting contents in virtual communities and networks” (Ahlqvist et al., 2008). Other authors stress the technical element as a key of the concept. Social media in this case can be defined as technologies that “enable users to consume, contribute, share and augment content online” (Tuten, 2012). Within the descriptions of social media, this can be seen as such expressions


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as: software applications (Kugler et al., 2014), social platforms (Kane, 2015; Majlah, 2012), internet-based applications (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010), tools (Cooper, 2014), digital technologies (McKinsey, 2013) etc.

M. Išoraitė (2014) states that “a lot of companies derive substantial benefits from social media, but this measure is necessary to learn to use effectively”. According to McKinsey (2013), social media tools are: social networks, blogs/microblogs (which are widely recognized as powerful marketing tools (Išoraitė, 2015)), ratings and reviews, shared work-spaces, media and file sharing, social gaming and a few others. Other authors present quite similar categorization (for example, Solis, 2008; Kane, 2014). It is obvious that “social technologies” is a somewhat broader term and usually used in different contexts. Thus, even though we sometimes speak of social media technologies this should not be automatically understood as meaning social technologies in general. Also, it seems worth mentioning that the term “social media” is more often used to describe the whole phenomena as such, while “social media tools” to refer to technologies. However, they both are often used interchangeably.

Social networking is one of the main tools of social media. Its impact on our everyday life can be easily illustrated taking into account that in year 2016 there will already be 2.13 billion active social network users around the globe, compared to 1.4 billion in 2012 (Statista.com, 2015). As the appeal of social media grew and individuals from different demographics have integrated social networking into their daily activities, its use inevitably diffused into such areas as politics, education and business. While the adoption rate of Social Networking Sites (SNS) in organizations was half the rate of private consumers, the number of enterprises adopting various social media tools, including SNSs, is increasing exponentially (McKinsey, 2012; Ahlqvist, 2008).

According to Leonardi et al. (2013) there were three primary paths for the emergence of enterprise social media in organizational contexts: 1) use of publically available social networking and microblogging sites, 2) in-house developed proprietary solutions (often built as prototypes by computer and information technology companies), or 3) private implementation of open source or proprietary software (installed on a company’s own servers or acquired as a hosted software service). Having in mind a clearly expressed demand for the use of social networks within companies, information technology developers naturally were interested in how organizations could employ new computer-based social media applications. This gave rise to such products as the Beehive system, developed at IBM, which encompassed many features from popular public sites but was restricted to IBM employees. Beehive was followed with other systems, developed by HP, Microsoft and similar companies. Today a number of features and practices of these first entries are incorporated into other internal systems and commercial products (IBM now offers Connections, Microsoft offers SharePoint, etc.) (Leonardi et al., 2013).

ESN may be described as web-based platforms that allow workers to (1) communicate messages with specific co-workers or broadcast messages to everyone in the organization; (2) articulate a list of co-workers with whom they share a connection; (3) post, edit, and sort text and files linked to themselves or others; and (4) view the messages, connections, text, and files communicated, articulated, posted, edited and sorted by anyone else in the organization at any time of their choosing. (Leonardi et al., 2013). The fourth function allows us to evaluate ESN as innovation, because all of those activities can be done and stored in one secure system.

The use of ESN was primarily oriented towards externally directed communications. However, when McKinsey published their report in 2012, they identified a number of areas holding much potential for value creation in enterprises, which already included: 1) external communication; 2) internal communication; 3) knowledge sharing and 4) recruitment.


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Verheyden et al. (2013) conducted research among knowledge-sharing networking organizations regarding their use of various social media types in these four areas. On one hand, their results indicated that social networking sites were among the most popular tools used and that most of the organizations still focused on leveraging social media to communicate with external stakeholders. What is important is that their results also showed that other social media tools, such as blogging, microblogging services and internal (social) networks were also widely used and mostly for internal communication purposes. Already in 2008 social media was analysed from the business perspective by Ahlqvist et al. and various social media tools were classified according to the business opportunities they could provide. Enterprise social networking sites were classified as enablers, meaning that they could be used to accomplish a process of function within a business.

ESN issues raised by the use of public social networking sites within work environments were resolved once various new enterprise social networking platforms were introduced as reliable, private, secure and work-orientated environments. As Dwyyer, Hiltz and Passerini (2007) argued, “trust and usage goals may affect what people are willing to share” (in Boyd and Ellison, 2008).

Once new ESN tools spread across various organizations worldwide and it became obvious that they are here to stay, new research came out trying to distinguish, evaluate and put into some sort of framework all the possible uses and changes that these new technologies can bring.

Kane (2015) presents a platform-independent framework for considering capabilities of enterprise social media. According to him, social media platforms may differ in their features; however, they all have two capabilities which can be beneficial for organizations: “the ability to establish and manage social networks in novel ways” and “the ability to find and access digital content”. These two capabilities can influence organizations in two ways: they can influence employee performance (by enabling more effective interaction) or they can constrain employee behaviour (due to specific system design). Kane argues that even the smallest difference between tools can affect the way content is shared and networks are created. He discusses such questions as the proximity of users in geographical or electronic space and its effect on new hire assimilation; the features allowing the management of negative relationships (such as blocking or hiding them, which may be considered inappropriate); issues with profile authenticity (employees keeping real-world identity vs. the impact of digital profile for their careers).

Partly based on Kane’s previous work and the various enterprise social software use scenarios described, Kugler and Smolnik (2014) proposed a typology of user behaviours related to employees’ use of various enterprise social software applications, including social networking sites. After validating data from 233 employees in the post-acceptance stage, the authors presented a framework based on the type of employee interaction with an enterprise social software platform. The four categories of behaviours include: 1) consumptive use (extent to which the platform is used to acquire knowledge), 2) contributive use (extent to which the platform is used to contribute knowledge), 3) hedonic use (extent to which employees use the platform for entertainment), and 4) social use (extent to which employees use the platform to establish and maintain social relation with their co-workers) (Kugler and Smolnik, 2014).

Taking into account the above, it should be stated that social media, understood as a wide variety of social technology tools allowing the creation, sharing and storage of digital content by members of certain virtual communities, recently gained the innovative form of Enterprise Social Networking. These tools provided the possibility for companies to create secure networks for the needs of their organizations with a wide range of possibilities. In such a way, social networking as a communication phenomenon among individuals was brought to


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enterprises with the challenge to replace ordinary separate communication tools as emails or blogging, as well as to become a substitute for individually oriented social networks in organizations. Even so, every innovation during its diffusion process faces challenges, which will be disclosed in the next part of the article. 2. A theoretical framework of ESN tool adoption within organizations research based innovation diffusion theory

According to the theory of diffusion of innovation, innovation is implemented at two levels: individual and organizational (Rogers, 2003): frequently, individuals do not adopt innovation as long as it is not introduced to the organization. However, innovation adoption on the organizational level is a much more complex and more complicated process than innovation adoption at an individual level. This is the introduction of innovation to a number of individuals at the same time when every individual plays a role in the process and the end of the process changes not individually, but collectively. The adaptation of innovation is for the needs of the organization (needs satisfied), rather than to the original appearance Apart from this, the diffusion model consists of the innovation decision process (innovation decision model) and the innovation development process (development model) (Shea et al., 2006).

The innovation decision process consists of five stages (Rogers, 2003) which are defined as “the process through which an individual (or other decision-making unit) passes from gaining initial knowledge of an innovation, to forming an attitude toward the innovation, to making a decision to adopt or reject, to implementation of the new idea, and to the confirmation of this decision” (2003, p. 168). The stages of the innovation-adoption process include: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. The decision process starts from (1) the knowledge stage, “when an individual is exposed to the innovation's existence and gains some understanding of how it functions” (Rogers, 2003), and the individual characteristic of the decision-maker, such as their socio-economic and personality variables and communication behaviours, determine whether the process will continue to the next stage. In the (2) persuasion stage, the perceived characteristics of the innovation will determine whether an individual forms a favourable or unfavourable attitude towards the particular innovation. This stage is generally considered the most significant and has been studied most frequently. Based on Rogers (2003), these perceived attributes are relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, observability. The process of innovation decision thus comes to the actual (3) decision stage, when an individual makes a choice to adopt or reject the innovation. It is then followed by the (4) implementation stage when an innovation is put into use (or not) and afterwards by the (5) confirmation stage, where the previous decision is either reinforced and the innovation is still adopted/rejected, or there is a reverse decision leading to a case of later adoption or discontinuance.

In this process, a significant impact on the successful implementation of innovations is the way in which a decision on the adoption of innovation is made. Rogers (2003) divides three main pure types (1) optional innovation-decisions (choices to adopt or reject an innovation that are made by an individual independent of the decisions by other members of a system), (2) collective innovation-decisions (choices to adopt or reject innovation that are made by consensus among the members or by a system), (3) authority innovation-decisions (choices to adopt or reject innovation that are made by a relatively few individuals in a system who possess power, high social status, or technical expertise. This authority innovation-decision is one with which the organization’s employees must comply) and (4) contingent innovation-decision (choices to adopt or reject that can made only after a prior innovation-decision). Of course organizational situations may show one starting point of the innovation –


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top-down or bottom-up and absolute combination of later innovation decisions – to adopt or reject.

An important impetus for innovation development research organizations was provided by Zaltman (1973) in published research on organizations and innovation issues. In this book he started to analyse the two different major stages of development: innovation initiation, the decision to apply innovation, and innovation implementation, innovation in the use of the organization. This research was continued by Rogers. He claims that every organizational structure factor (variable) may be associated with innovation in duplex communication: they are related to the innovation process through innovation initiation phase, or during the adoption/implementation phase (Rogers, 2003, p. 413).

Innovation development (Rogers, 2003) consists of (1) agenda-setting, the point at which the problem of organization is defined and decided and what innovation is needed to resolve it. This stage sets the sequence of actions and defines the hierarchy. It continues with (2) matching, when the solution is selected from one or more innovations and checked whether it is appropriate in concepts and solutions. The first step in implementation is (3) re-defining/restructuring, when either innovationis adapted to the needs of the organization and the structure or the organizational structure is modified due to the innovation. It is followed by (4) clarifying, which means that the innovation is put into service in the organization and the basic idea of its importance becomes clear to a wide range of organization members. In this stage it is particularly important to set the proper speed of implementation. The clarifying stage of the innovation process is an integral part of the organization's structure. For the first time the idea of implementing a novelty for members of organization often does not mean anything and can cause resentment or doubts. Emerging issues and communication on the new technology helps employees become familiar with the innovation. And finally by (5) routinizing the process of innovation, adoption is finished. It marks the moment when innovation becomes integral part of the organization’s daily routine.

The development model of innovation diffusion theory provides insights into which causes (variables) promote or hinder innovation process. Rogers (2003) divides these variables into (1) individual variables, (2) internal organizational variables, and (3) external variables. These proposed variables are supplemented by additional research in the field (e.g. Tannenbaum, Dupuree-Bruno, 1994). The full list of variables is presented in Table 3.

The empirical research of the above-mentioned levels of the theoretical framework was gained from analysis of organizational context, internal company documents and results from two previous employees’ inquiries and finally during the interview with experts. 3. Factors affecting the success of adoption process of ESN tool in the selected company

The first internal employees’ inquiry was done before introducing Yammer and investigated the need for a new social media tool for the organization to use internally. The second inquiry evaluated the actual use of Yammer, reasons for not using, needs of an enterprise social networking or a similar tool, etc. It was conducted after the introduction of Yammer, when it was already obvious that the tool is not working and just before closing it. Both inquiries were done in Lithuanian and Russian languages (Russian is an official communication language between employees, as well as English) as they were intended for employees of the whole Company. The first inquiry collected data from 25 respondents from the Lithuania office and 9 from the regional offices; the second inquiry had 21 and 9 respondents respectively. They showed that before the introduction of Yammer, the means and tools used for information and communication within the Company consisted of six different types (see Table 2) which caused an overload of information (since people were sharing information not relevant to work via the same channels as official, work related


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information) with which employees were dissatisfied. It also confirmed a high demand for a uniting communication tool. Table 2. Tools for communication and information used in the Company

Type Mostly used for Email (Microsoft Outlook) Written communication (both formal and non-formal)

Skype Real-time communication between regional offices, with partners, clients; file exchange; quick talks

Internal website Database for birthdays and other Company events, financial results, etc.

Videoconference Internal communication and discussions among all three departments

Enterprise data warehouse Bigger file exchange (link sent via email) Internal newspaper (introduced after Yammer)

Sharing news, stories, interviews, information about important events

Source: authors.

Based on expert interviews, the training and the use of the ESN Yammer was voluntary and it was introduced on the principle that if “a person wants – participates in the group, does not want – does not participate, according to your mood – connects, disconnects” (translation, Expert C). This attitude relates to the Company’s policy: “in the Company, in principle, we try to somehow, especially such things as social, cultural, to have on a voluntary basis, because if you will force it… it is not clear, how it will work and whether it will work well. It is better for it not to work, than to have people doing something against their will” (translation, Expert A). Based on Rogers’s division of innovation decisions, this is an optional innovation-decision, as the choice to adopt or reject the ESN tool was left to every individual independently. According to the theory, the fact that decision is made freely and voluntary is important for the success of innovation adoption, but mainly only until the decision stage. As the situation shows, it is not critical to the final result because depending on the later effects of other variables, it may cause discontinuance in the stage of implementation. To ensure this, analysis of other variables is very important.

Further analysis of innovation decision processes showed that an internal meeting was organized and information about a new ESN tool was shared via emails among the employees. At first, 70% of employees registered to the system. Later on, trainings were organized and the continuous sharing of information via emails was ensured. In this stage (persuasion) it was recognized that only 8% of employees were Yammer users. Analysis of the experts’ comments shows the lack of employee understanding of relative advantage which is also closely related to observability: “Because, at the early beginning ... there was not even an example, that could be given. These examples emerged only a little later. So, when there passes a first try – no, a second try – no, then, after a number of month to say to someone: ‘Oh, look, we here are working with it, and it is great for us’ – this will not work on that person anymore” (translation, Expert C).

The replies of both experts and employees showed incompatibility – Yammer is not in line with the existing customary means used, as well as recognized difficulty in its use which relates to complexity. “One thing was that...still, it was not Facebook ... it was the design, the ergonomics… the buttons in different places, the design different, it looked – different”. Employees were heard saying that “[o]ne had to get used to it, had to work through it, it was more comfortable how it was before” (Expert A).

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At the matching stage, the experts note that they mostly relied on the fact that the Yammer environment is user friendly and easy to understand: they “were looking for a system which would be more acceptable, easier than others: not Google+, not Facebook, but something less known, perhaps not so popular.” “We did not want Facebook for several reasons: there is sometimes internal company information going around, and one would not like it to be shared or for it to go somewhere outside” (Expert A). Expert B: “We have chosen a more closed system”. Expert C: “For privacy, the next thing on the additional information flow”; “Yammer – due to its flexibility and functionality”. Conceptually it was a very successful choice; it showed a good match with organizational policy and security standards.

The experts’ interviews also give empirical evidence on the stage of re-defining/restructuring: there was no need to modify the organizational structure. The innovation was chosen and adapted to employee needs and its introduction was presented during several stages: official introduction meeting, and afterwards “there was just the user guide sent out, inviting everyone to join... Just, like a snowball effect of such. Some were slowly studying, others were assisted. And there was a group that emerged, who used it. It was not very actively communicated, inviting ten times, but... but it was reminded, thanked for those, who participated, there was quoting, showing how to use” (Expert B). The interviews also give evidence for the existence of a clarifying stage in which innovation is put into service in the organization and the basic idea of its importance becomes clear to a wide range of organization members.

From this point the number of users had to increase for successful implementation; however, it had only declined with time. Thus the proper speed of implementation was not set. Moreover, when the decrease was noticed no actions were taken to solve it. Failure at the stage of clarifying led to unfinished innovation process at the end. After nine month the ESN did not become part of routine (no routinizing stage). There were positive examples of adoption to daily routines. Expert A: “mailbox had actually become emptier, suddenly it has disappeared from the mail, all those things, desirable by some, undesirable by others. It moved out to Yammer. A group of enthusiasts had formed, six, seven, eight people – not more, who actively used. Both from work and from home – which is very interesting, that they were connecting from home: posting information about some kind of an interesting article they had read or something else. At the beginning this information was not put in certain groups, but for the whole collective, and little by little, groups began to form”. Expert A provided examples of a well-managed environment for communication: “Well, it was the way here to tell individualized ratio of the whole thing, because a person can feel free to do what he cares about, or what thoughts are …” and evidences of responsible persons’ routinizing actions taken (“several working groups were created… part of participation was of course easily forced, for them to be created”). Later on “one of the ways to encourage was by casting sort of like a hook, by writing an email to everyone, for example after a concert, that there are photos and video available, and add a link to Yammer” (Expert C). As the experts themselves noticed, one of the main missing points in the process was support and encouragement from the top management to use this new platform. The decision to adopt and the development of the tool was left optional and this might partially not fit with the existing organizational culture.

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Yammer users can also be mentioned. The nature of innovation decision making shows that when an organization is highly decentralized and liberal in atmosphere, another variable – formality – is missing. Additional research on organizational environment and functions is needed to clarify the situation. According to Rogers (2003), “…in decentralized organization, centralization encourages the implementation of innovations once a decision is made to adopt”. As this organization appears to be decentralized and both the decision and the adoption of this type of innovations were optional, this variable appears to be rather neutral or even a barrier.

The specifics of the innovation show that the organization was complex enough to adopt the innovation, the chosen tool was user friendly, and the users were sufficiently skilled to use the ESN tool. It is shows evidence for IT education level as a variable. The variable of interconnectedness needs a deeper analysis from the point of view of different stakeholders: initiating team, implementing team, managing team, employees (everyday users). The variable of organizational climate is only partially expressed in the empirical data available thus far. It is known from theory (Tannenbaum, Dupuree-Bruno, 1994) that the organizational climate can affect the innovation process at the generating ideas and presentational stages. A climate which encourages risk and tolerates failures, which recognizes and rewards for new ideas, and so on, promotes a higher level of innovativeness. Experts noted that there were attempts to emphasize those who do use Yammer in order to congratulate them. However, there is no further evidence about other aspects of the climate as well as the view of other stakeholders toward the mentioned actions. If those actions are not implemented in the processes of innovation in that organization, the process needs to be revised. Organizational size and internationality became one of the stimuli to seek for this innovation. Conclusions

Scientific research proves the input of social media platforms to the sustainability of organizational management and security of communication. However, as with any other phenomenon, it has risks and dangers. To maximize the advantages of social media, secure and user-friendly enterprise social networking tools have been created. Among the success stories of adoption of these tools there still appear cases of rejection. This encourages having an in-depth analysis based on different theoretical frameworks. Choosing a classical innovation diffusion theory shows both the advantages and disadvantages. The models generated by Rogers and applied by thousands of researchers worldwide prove that the elements are relevant in present-day situations. Some of the elements (for example, the list of variables) need revision and adaptation to information technology and social media research. This leads to the conclusion that further research in organizations not only needs to be combined with qualitative research but also has to be based on technology acceptance or similar IT-related models. The methods currently applied give an understanding from the perspective of the managerial team and clarify the existence of certain important elements of successful change and innovation implementation: innovation champion or change agent, optional innovation decision, fluent processes and all stages implemented in theoretically “right” actions.

This leaves an open question: whatreason or combination of reasons lead to the discontinuance of ESN tool usage in this organization? The typical reasons (decision type, centralization, formalization) are not applicable to this organization. On the contrary, the optional nature of the innovation decision, decentralization, openness policy and little formalization still led to the rejection of the innovation which employees had chosen themselves. The combination of organizational context analysis, internal company documents and results from two previous employees’ inquiries analysis together with the


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interviews with experts (process participants) contributes to revealing the main steps, actions, situation and organizational context. However, critical points leading to the failure have not been fully discovered as the other side of innovation relation – the employees – partially remain unquestioned.

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