IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/binfse/v57y2015i3p197-212.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From Top to Bottom

Author

Listed:
  • Kai Riemer
  • Stefan Stieglitz
  • Christian Meske

Abstract

Social media, such as social networking platforms, are increasingly gaining importance in enterprise contexts. Enterprise social networking (ESN) is often associated with improved communication, information-sharing and problem-solving. At the same time, ESN has been argued to diminish the role of formal influence in that users increasingly derive authority from their contributions to the network rather than from their position in the organizational hierarchy. Others argue that ESN will diminish influence considerably by producing more democratic and inclusive communication structures. Yet, these assertions have so far remained largely unexplored empirically. Against this background, we explore what influence both a user’s position in the organization’s hierarchy and a user’s contributions on the network have on the the ability to elicit responses from other ESN users. We draw on a unique data set of more than 110,000 messages collected from the ESN platform used at Deloitte Australia. While we find evidence for both kinds of influence, our data also reveals that informal influence has a stronger effect and that, as the ESN community matures over time, communication structures become indeed more inclusive and balanced across hierarchical levels. We contribute a set of propositions that theorize the ways in which influence and communication pattern are shaped during the process of ESN emergence. Our results further underline the potentials of ESN to improve organic, user-driven communication and knowledge sharing within firms. Copyright Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Kai Riemer & Stefan Stieglitz & Christian Meske, 2015. "From Top to Bottom," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 57(3), pages 197-212, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:binfse:v:57:y:2015:i:3:p:197-212
    DOI: 10.1007/s12599-015-0375-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s12599-015-0375-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12599-015-0375-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    2. Guimera, R. & Danon, L. & Diaz-Guilera, A. & Giralt, F. & Arenas, A., 2006. "The real communication network behind the formal chart: Community structure in organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 653-667, December.
    3. Guido Friebel & Michael Raith, 2004. "Abuse of Authority and Hierarchical Communication," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(2), pages 224-244, Summer.
    4. Rank, Olaf N., 2008. "Formal structures and informal networks: Structural analysis in organizations," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 145-161, June.
    5. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Laurie J. Kirsch & Dong-Gil Ko & Mark H. Haney, 2010. "Investigating the Antecedents of Team-Based Clan Control: Adding Social Capital as a Predictor," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(2), pages 469-489, April.
    7. Maurice Kügler & Sven Dittes & Stefan Smolnik & Alexander Richter, 2015. "Connect Me! Antecedents and Impact of Social Connectedness in Enterprise Social Software," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 57(3), pages 181-196, June.
    8. Samer Faraj & Steven L. Johnson, 2011. "Network Exchange Patterns in Online Communities," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(6), pages 1464-1480, December.
    9. Mark Thompson, 2005. "Structural and Epistemic Parameters in Communities of Practice," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 151-164, April.
    10. Stefan Stieglitz & Linh Dang-Xuan & Axel Bruns & Christoph Neuberger, 2014. "Social Media Analytics," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 6(2), pages 89-96, April.
    11. Daniel Richter & Kai Riemer & Jan vom Brocke, 2011. "Internet Social Networking," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 3(2), pages 89-101, April.
    12. Oberg, Achim & Walgenbach, Peter, 2008. "Hierarchical structures of communication in a network organization," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 183-198, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janine Hacker & Kai Riemer, 2021. "Identification of User Roles in Enterprise Social Networks: Method Development and Application," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 63(4), pages 367-387, August.
    2. Maurice Kügler & Sven Dittes & Stefan Smolnik & Alexander Richter, 2015. "Connect Me! Antecedents and Impact of Social Connectedness in Enterprise Social Software," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 57(3), pages 181-196, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcel Maurer & Norbert Bach & Simon Oertel, 2023. "Changes in formal structure towards self-managing organization and their effects on the intra-organizational communication network," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 12(3), pages 83-98, September.
    2. Lindbeck, Assar & Weibull, Jörgen, 2020. "Delegation of investment decisions, and optimal remuneration of agents," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    3. Jingchuan Pu & Yang Liu & Yuan Chen & Liangfei Qiu & Hsing Kenneth Cheng, 2022. "What Questions Are You Inclined to Answer? Effects of Hierarchy in Corporate Q&A Communities," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 244-264, March.
    4. Canice Prendergast, 2002. "Consumers and Agency Problems," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 34-51, March.
    5. Guido Friebel & Sergei Guriev, 2004. "Earnings Manipilation and Incentives in Firms," Working Papers w0055, New Economic School (NES), revised Oct 2005.
    6. Friebel, Guido & Raith, Michael, 2016. "Managers, Training, and Internal Labor Markets," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145666, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Wagner, Alexander F., 2011. "Relational contracts when the agent's productivity inside the relationship is correlated with outside opportunities," CEPR Discussion Papers 8378, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Kim, Doyoung & Lawarree, Jacques & Shin, Dongsoo, 2004. "Exit option in hierarchical agency," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(8-9), pages 1265-1287, November.
    9. Wang, Peng, 2020. "Superior firm performance under conditional communication between top hierarchy and the subordinates," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 516-526.
    10. Canice J. Prendergast, 2001. "Consumers and Agency Problems," NBER Working Papers 8445, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Mehmet Bac, 2009. "An economic rationale for firing whistleblowers," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 233-256, June.
    12. Bing Wu & Shan Jiang & Hsinchun Chen, 2015. "The impact of individual attributes on knowledge diffusion in web forums," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 49(6), pages 2221-2236, November.
    13. Sengupta, Sarbajit, 2004. "Delegating recruitment under asymmetric information," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(8-9), pages 1327-1347, November.
    14. Samer Faraj & Georg von Krogh & Eric Monteiro & Karim R. Lakhani, 2016. "Special Section Introduction—Online Community as Space for Knowledge Flows," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 668-684, December.
    15. Boyer, Marcel & Robert, Jacques, 2006. "Organizational inertia and dynamic incentives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 324-348, March.
    16. Elizabeth Beasley & Elise Huillery, 2017. "Willing but Unable? Short-term Experimental Evidence on Parent Empowerment and School Quality," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 531-552.
    17. Michael Kaethler, 2019. "Curating creative communities of practice: the role of ambiguity," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17, December.
    18. Peter-J. Jost, 2023. "Auditing versus monitoring and the role of commitment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 463-496, June.
    19. Daron Acemoglu & Philippe Aghion & Claire Lelarge & John Van Reenen & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2007. "Technology, Information, and the Decentralization of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1759-1799.
    20. Sonja Daltung & Vittoria Cerasi, 2006. "Financial structure, managerial compensation and monitoring," FMG Discussion Papers dp576, Financial Markets Group.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:binfse:v:57:y:2015:i:3:p:197-212. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.