In this paper, we examine the relation between social media use and the absorptive capacity of organisations. Over the past 10 years, many organisations have systematically adopted social media. Trade press and consulting companies often claim that the systematic use of social media increases the performance of organisations. However, such claims are typically neither empirically grounded nor theoretically examined. In this paper, based on key informant interviews at 20 organisations, we examine these claims empirically and theoretically. Firstly, we examine the ways in which social media are used by organisations. We identify five different social media use types that support different organisational purposes (broadcast, dialogue, collaboration, knowledge management and sociability). Secondly, we analyse how these five social media use types relate to organisations’ absorptive capacity. We find that particular social media use types (e.g., dialogue) support organisations’ absorptive capacity and, ultimately, their performance although others (e.g., sociability) do not.
How and why organisations use social media: five use types and their relation to absorptive capacity
Published 2017 in Journal of Information and Technology
ABSTRACT
PUBLICATION RECORD
- Publication year
2017
- Venue
Journal of Information and Technology
- Publication date
2017-05-30
- Fields of study
Business, Computer Science
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar
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