An Empirical Analysis on Social Capital and Enterprise 2.0 Participation in a Research Institute

An Empirical Analysis on Social Capital and Enterprise 2.0 Participation in a Research Institute Ferron Michela, Frassoni Marco, Massa Paolo , Napolitano Maurizio, Setti Davide SoNet project - Fondazione Bruno Kessler ( FBK ) - Trento, Italy http://sonet.fbk.eu Sunbelt INSNA conference - Riva del Garda, Italy – July 2nd, 2010

Research question Any relation between (1) usage of internal web Enterprise2.0 platform and (2) individual social capital ?

Outline 1) Definitions and research setting: Enterprise2.0 platform (Taolin) and enterprise (FBK) 2) Social capital assessment methodology 3) Regression analysis results

Enterprise2.0 Web2.0 and Social Network Sites inside Organizations = Enterprise2.0 Companies started deploying Enterprise2.0 platforms. Are these successful in making employees collaborate, share knowledge, have fun? Lots of work on Web2.0 and SNSs but few empirical studies about Enterprise2.0 platforms

The Enterprise2.0 platform: taolin.fbk.eu Deployed at http://desktop.fbk.eu since June 2008. Social bar (left): profile view Widgets (center): news aggregator, a map of buildings and office locations, an internal chat, a bullettin board, lists of colleagues and new people joining FBK, etc... Open source, download at http://taolin.fbk.eu

FBK is research institute located in Trentino, northern part of Italy.
350+ researchers and ~200 other employees
Information Technology, Materials and Microsystems, Italo-Germanic studies, Religious Science
lots of research units, on different research fields --> need for knowledge sharing, collaboration and cross-fertilization
In 2009: 200 Champions (employees enabled) out of 676 The Enterprise: FBK

Picture under Creative Commons. By technicolorcavalry http://www.flickr.com/photos/technicolorcavalry/255236491/sizes/l/

Social Capital Social capital [7] refers to the set of resources embedded in a social network. Individual Social Capital ~ opportunities a specific individual may have simply by being part of a web of social ties. Bonding social capital generally refers to strong ties (relationships with family members, close friends, partners) Bridging social capital is built on a large number of weak ties (ability of going over a person's close group to reach other groups members ability)

Research question Any relation between (1) usage of internal web Enterprise2.0 platform and (2) individual social capital ? Steinfield et al. [3] studied the relationships between social capital of users of an internal SNS within IBM.

Data Collection Online web survey
1 4 statements about perceived social capital, most adapted from (Steinfield et al.)
(champions only) 10 additional items,about platform usage
response rate: 54% of all the sent invitations (33% were champions and 67% were not)
Demographic data
age, gender, number of years since the first contract with FBK was signed, and type of job
Platform usage data (from logs)
(champions only) number of days since the champion joined desktop.fbk.eu, logins in last 30 days, number of profile views and “ chat widget ” and “ Feeback provider widget ” usage
When? 1 st December 2009 Anonymized dataset released at http://sonetlab.fbk.eu/datasets/

Data Collection: Online web survey 1 4 statements, about perceived social capital
“ If I need an emergency loan of 300 Euros, there is someone at FBK I could ask to loan it to me” (1-5)
“ I feel part of the FBK family” (1-5)
“ I always have new people to talk to at FBK” (1-5)
(champions only) 10 additional items, about platform usage
“ I am proud to tell people I use desktop.fbk.eu”
“ I use desktop.fbk.eu to get to know people I would not otherwise not meet at FBK”
“ Using desktop.fbk.eu, I found out about interests of people I already knew”

Methodology
1) Factor analysis on social capital statements
2) Regression analysis: correlation between social capital measures and other measures

Factor analysis on social capital statement agreements Five factors of social capital emerged: item in factor if correlation coefficient > 0.45 (1) Bonding social capital Bridging social capital: (2) access to new people, (3) citizenship, (4) desire of networking, (5) knowledge of colleagues

Statements about social capital and explorative factor analysis. Bonding social capital Access to new people Citizen- ship Desire of net-working Know- ledge of colleagues If I need an emergency loan of 300 Euros there is someone at FBK I could ask to loan it to me 0.55 0.02 0.06 0 -0.01 When I feel lonely, there are several people at FBK I can talk to 0.59 0.41 -0.01 0.17 0.08 If I need to borrow money for the coffee machine, I know someone at FBK who would loan me a few Euros 0.62 0.01 0.11 -0.02 0.05 I know my work unit well on a personal level 0.46 0.08 0.04 0.03 0.19 When I have a problem at work, there are several people at FBK I know I can call on for help 0.69 0.25 0.2 0.05 -0.01 I always have new people to talk to at FBK 0.17 0.76 0.18 0.02 0.06 At FBK, I meet new people all the time 0.17 0.78 0.27 0.12 0.1 I am willing to spend time outside of my normal work responsibilities to contribute to FBK 0.07 0.22 0.8 0.1 0.01 I feel part of the FBK family * 0.23 0.22 0.59 0.25 0.09 I am willing to contribute some of my personal time to mentor new FBK employees 0.18 0.08 0.46 0.35 0.01 I am interested to know the personal interests of my colleagues * 0.07 0.01 0.16 0.65 0.06 If available, I would use an internal web tool where FBK colleagues can describe themselves and interact * -0.1 0.1 0.13 0.8 -0.02 I know what people do outside of my work unit * 0.18 0.14 0.05 0.05 0.97 If I need it, I can ask for expertise from someone outside of my FBK unit 0.43 0.27 0.24 -0.06 0.18

Platform Usage Factors Statements about platform usage (champions only) grouped into 3 dimensions: 1) Intensity of site use 2) Use site to connect with new people 3) Use site to connect with existing contacts

Measures of site usage by desktop.fbk.eu champions. Intensity of site use (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.851) Mean Standard Deviation I am proud to tell people I use desktop.fbk.eu 2.83 1.24 desktop.fbk.eu has become part of my workday routine 2.15 0.9 I feel out of touch when I haven’t logged into desktop.fbk.eu in a while 1.68 0.82 I would be sorry if desktop.fbk.eu were shut down 3.48 1.16 I feel part of the desktop.fbk.eu community 2.35 1.17 Use site to connect with new people (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.753) Mean Standard Deviation I use desktop.fbk.eu to get to know people I would otherwise not meet at FBK 2.21 1.14 I use desktop.fbk.eu to find people who know something about a particular topic 2.03 1.07 I use desktop.fbk.eu to find people with similar interests to me 1.97 0.97 Use site to connect with existing contacts (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.688) Mean Standard Deviation Using desktop.fbk.eu I found out about interests of people I already knew * 2.19 1.14 I use desktop.fbk.eu to communicate with colleagues in my work unit 1.5 0.8

Regression analysis Correlations between Independent variable: 5 social capital factors Dependent variables: * (champions) self-reported platform usage (from survey) * (champions) real platform usage (from logs) * demographic data (age, ...)

Analysis and Results “ being a champion” positively correlated with 4 social capital dimensions. desire of networking and access to new people (p<.001) bonding social capital and citizenship (p<.05) This analysis was not present in (Steinfield et al.) because the survey was sent only to users who were using the SNS system deployed in IBM) [* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001, **** p < .0001]

Analysis and Results For all 3 measures, some correlations with social capital dimensions. This confirms (Steinfeild et al.) Intensity of site use correlates positively with all social capital measures, and in particular with desire of networking Use of site for new and existing contacts also have similar patterns of positive correlation with social capital dimensions. [* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001, **** p < .0001]

Analysis and Results Not significantly correlated with social capital but for amount of logins. Surprisingly, amount of logins is negatively correlated with knowledge of colleagues . Might indicate desktop.fbk.eu is successful in letting employees get a picture of how many people are there in FBK (a first step?) [* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001, **** p < .0001]

Analysis and Results Age , years at FBK and having a long term contract correlate negatively with desire of networking. Having replied to the survey in English correlates positively with desire of networking Being part of the administrative staff correlates positively with citizenship . Being female correlates positively with knowledge of colleagues (slightly confirms (Steinfeld et al.) [* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001, **** p < .0001]

Conclusions Empirical analysis of Enterprise2.0 platform usage in FBK (670 employees) confirms (Steinfield et al., 2009):
Positive relationships between social capital and participation in internal SNSs
Additionally we found:
higher social capital for users (champions) than non-users
Real usage not correlated with social capital
heavy users exhibiting a smaller knowledge of colleagues
Possible to make your intranet as fun as Facebook? Few empirical studies up to now. Taolin.fbk.eu is open source, deploy and test it in your organization! Well, … more work is needed! ;)

Thanks! Any questions? An Empirical Analysis on Social Capital and Enterprise 2.0 Participation in a Research Institute Ferron Michela, Frassoni Marco, Massa Paolo , Napolitano Maurizio, Setti Davide SoNet project - Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) - Trento, Italy http://sonet.fbk.eu

References
[1] boyd, d., & Ellison, N. B. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 2007
[2] Mc Afee, A. P. “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration”. MIT Sloan Management Review, 2006.
[3] Steinfield, C., Di Micco, J. M., Ellison, N. B., and Lampe, C. “Bowling online: social networking and social capital within the organization”. In Proceedings of the Fourth international Conference on Communities and Technologies (University Park, PA, USA, June 25 - 27, 2009). C&T '09. ACM, New York, NY, 245-254.
[4] Ferron, M., Massa, P. and Odella, F. “Analyzing collaborative networks emerging in Enterprise 2.0: the Taolin Platform”. 5th UK Social Networks Conference, Greenwich, London. - July 2009
[5] Di Micco, J. M., Geyer, W., Millen, D. R., Dugan, C., and Brownholtz, B. “People Sensemaking and Relationship Building on an Enterprise Social Network Site”. In Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii international Conference on System Sciences (January 05 - 08, 2009). HICSS. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 1-10.
[6] Brzozowski, M. J. Water Cooler: exploring an organization through enterprise social media. In Proceedings of the ACM 2009 international Conference on Supporting Group Work (Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, 10 - 13, 2009). GROUP '09. ACM, New York, NY, 219-228, 2009.
[7] Coleman, J. S. The American Journal of Sociology 1988, 94, S95-S120.

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An Empirical Analysis on Social Capital and Enterprise 2.0 Participation in a Research Institute

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