Abstract
‘The power of social software is undeniable in the free, anarchic world of the global internet. But what happens when you bring these tools into the constrained, policy-driven, risk-averse world of the corporate intranet where the user population is small, where expressing oneself as an individual and on a personal level can feel threatening, and where management is watching your every move’ [15]. This conceptual paper takes a social capital perspective in order to explain the benefits and challenges of social software inside the firewall of organisations. Corporate social software is considered to hold great benefits for the management and the efficient use of knowledge within organisations which is regarded to become an increasingly important capability for companies in changing and challenging business environments in which adaptation, change and innovation arc required to stay ahead. However, the extent to which the benefits of corporate social software will be realised by organisations depends on the way that social technologies arc actually used inside the firewall. While external social technologies such as Face-book and Twitter have quickly established themselves in the daily usage patterns of a large majority of people, the usage of similar technologies within the firewall of organisations is characterised by distinct differences which will be discussed in this paper.
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Heppke, C. (2010). Unleash the CSS-Factor. In: Memon, N., Alhajj, R. (eds) From Sociology to Computing in Social Networks. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0294-7_19
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