Dr Eoin Whelan, from the Agile & Open Innovation research cluster, presented this seminar entitled "The Darkside of Enterprise Social Media" as part of the Whitaker Institute's Ideas Forum seminar series on 8th February 2017.

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Dr. EoinWhelan
Business Information Systems Group
National University of Ireland, Galway
eoin.whelan@nuigalway.ie
The Darkside of Enterprise Social
Media
Technology is neither good nor bad

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Enterprise Social Software
• $5.6 billion will be spent by corporates on social media platforms in
2016 (Forrester Research 2016)
• 64% of Irish businesses used ESM (Eurostat 2016)

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…the watercooler conversation,now lives somewhere
between your instant messaging network,email discussion
treads,and the public blogosphere”(Brown 2007).

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The Bright Side
— Studies report ESM use is positively associated with:
— Employee innovation (Gray et al. 2011)
— Community relations (Kane et al. 2009)
— Worker performance (Wu 2013)
— Social capital (Moser et al. 2013)
— Employee engagement (Koch et al. 2012)
— …even the equity value of firms (Luo et al. 2013)
Unintended Consequences

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Information Overload

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Information Overload
— Linked to
— Stress (Tarafdar, et al.
2007)
— Low morale (Ayyagari, et
al, 2011)
— Poor decision-making
(Pennington &Tuttle,
2007)
— Decreased productivity
(O'Reilly 1980)
French Law
Le droit de la
déconnexion

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Communication Overload
— Communication overload is the undesirable condition
arising when communication demands from ICT
channels, such as social media, exceed users’ processing
capacities (Cho et al. 2011).
— Knowledge workers seek information while communication is
initiated by a third party
— IRC project
— Communication diversity
— Forced multitasking
— Cognitive skills
Social Media and Overload

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Technostress
Technostress
— One’s inability to cope or deal with ICTs in a healthy
manner.
— Causes
— Information overload
— IS invasion of personal life
— Inability to deal with uncertainty and complexity of IS
— A sense of insecurity due to rapid advances in IS.
— Technostress may significantly reduce job satisfaction,
commitment, innovation, and productivity.

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Work related stress
— According to theAmerican Psychological Association,
chronic stress is linked to the six leading causes of death:
heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis
of the liver, and suicide.
— More than 75 percent of all visits to the doctor are for
stress-related complaints.

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We don’t know we are stressed
Riedl, R. et al., 2012.Technostress from a
neurobiological perspective: System
breakdown increases the stress hormone
cortisol in computer users. Business and
Information Systems Engineering, 4(2), pp.61–
69.
Media Multitasking

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Multitasking
— Studies show that people check their mobile devices up
to 150 times a day
— The typical office employee gets distracted every 15
minutes

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Our own study
— 130 NUIG students
— Multitasking computer self-efficacy weakens the effect of
information overload, and reinforces the effect of
communication overload on social network fatigue

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Innovation
Studies in Progress

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Cognitive disfluency
A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.The bat
costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much
does the ball cost?
Future study – cognitive disfluency
A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more
than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
— Fluent state - students averaged 1.9 correct answers out of three
— Disfluent state – students averaged 2.45 correct answers out of
three
— http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/Alteretal.pdf

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2 x 2 Design
High Cognitive
Disfluency
High Multitasking
No Cognitive
Disfluency
High Multitasking
High Cognitive
Disfluency
No Multitasking
No Cognitive
Disfluency
No Multitasking
(Control Group)
Information
Retention
In progress

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