AN ENTERPRISE SOCIAL MEDIA MATURITY MODEL FOR SMEs

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are most affected by turbulent environments as they usually face cost restrains and difficulties in accessing qualified experts. Pushed by the COVID-19 outbreak, governments implemented a complete or partial “lockdown” in many countries. This situation disrupted the business environment, touching more dramatically SMEs. To cope with these challenges, working and collaborating remotely has become the new normal, and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) a necessity, accelerating the process of Digital Transformation. Enterprise Social Media (ESM) describes ICT tools with the potential to affect the organizational context and structure, as they encompass all distinct capabilities of social media, adapted for the working environment, supporting communication, collaboration, innovation, and efficiency. To benefit from the ESM use imposed by the pandemic context, SMEs need guidance and parameters to evaluate and develop their ESM initiatives. Literature suggests that maturity models are relevant for supporting organizations in these types of challenges. However, maturity models focusing on the socio-technical characteristics of this transformation and the internal and external contingencies of SMEs are rare. By performing a systematic literature review about the existing maturity models for general-purpose social media through the lens of the contingency theory and considering the social-technical perspective of this phenomenon, the objective of this paper is to reduce this gap, by proposing a maturity model adapted to the context of Digital Transformation and SMEs. Copyright © 2021 by Naudé Scribante. Permission granted to IAMOT to publish and use.

Conducting an enterprise social media initiative in the digital transformation context

In the present globalized and digital business environment, an organization's capacity to accurately manage its knowledge has the potential to generate superior efficiency and higher innovation performance. Even if they are aware of this, some organizations, driven by short-term strategies and profits, resist in breaking the Digital transformation inertia. However, internal and external factors, like the COVID-19 pandemic, involuntary accelerate the digitalization of organizational knowledge, and that requires a structured deployment process for maximizing its benefits. In this context, the use of Enterprise Social Media emerges as a suitable and intuitive manner to digitalize organizational knowledge and to create business value. Using data collected during a longitudinal action research study, this paper proposes a detailed 8- steps roadmap and an online comprehensive diagnostic tool to identify and overcome barriers related to: Culture, hierarchy, technical and organizational aspects, and employees' resistance to change. This structured process aims at guiding practitioners to implement an Enterprise social media initiative in the Digital Transformation context, besides providing insights for future academic research in the area. © 2020 Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All rights reserved.