Introduction to the Special Issue—Social Media and Business Transformation: A Framework for Research

Abstract

Social media are fundamentally changing the way we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create. They represent one of the most transformative impacts of information technology on business, both within and outside firm boundaries. This special issue was designed to stimulate innovative investigations of the relationship between social media and business transformation. In this paper we outline a broad research agenda for understanding the relationships among social media, business, and society. We place the papers comprising the special issue within this research framework and identify areas where further research is needed. We hope that the flexible framework we outline will help guide future research and develop a cumulative research tradition in this area.

A conceptual stages-of-growth model for managing a social media business profile

“…Typical activities at this stage involve creating a basic SMBP on one or two social media platforms, announcing the organisation's arrival in the social media space, posting a number of comments, images and videos, and providing some product/ service information (Forrester, 2012;McKinsey, 2007). The experimentation and learning stage may initially be departmental/function driven or the work of a single individual in the marketing or PR team (Aral et al, 2013;Jacobs and Nakata, 2010), or it may be outsourced (Aral et al, 2013).…”

“…Social media has become a very important research topic in both personal and corporate contexts (Aral et al, 2013;Levina and Yavetz, 2013). However, to date, very little research has been conducted on organisational use and management of social media (Parveen, 2012).…”

“…Aguenza and Mat Som (2012: 49-50) warn of the 'embarrassment' and 'damage' to reputation by staff misuse of social media. Thus, all stakeholders must learn to use social media to meet their respective objectives (Aral et al, 2013).…”

“…Thus, organisations are increasingly deploying social media internally to enhance their knowledge management and intra-firm collaboration efforts (Benbya and Van Alstyne, 2010;Zeiller and Schauer, 2011) and to transform the relationship and norms of behaviour among organisations, staff and consumers (Aral et al, 2013). This environment represents a shift that requires the development of new strategies and tactics (Godes et al, 2005).…”

“…This is a concern as it appears that organisational adoption of social media has failed to progress beyond basic use, and there is little evidence of the 'growing importance of social media as a strategic tool among organisations', as suggested by Parveen (2012: 3). Thus, it appears, as suggested by Aral et al (2013), that organisations are still barely scratching the surface of the true capabilities of social media.…”