Abstract:
Organisations have increasingly turned to new technologies to facilitate
discussion, aid decision-making, increase participation and engagement, and
to share information and views. Recently, collaborative web-based
technologies, known as Enterprise2.0 or social media, have been deployed
into the workplace, and some organisations have moved beyond simple
experimentation. Considered an extension as the consumer-led Web2.0
phenomena, Enterprise2.0 placed great emphasis on social interaction, ease
of use and network effects. Whilst practitioners have actively discussed the
issues associated with Enterprise2.0, little academic work has explored the
use of these technologies to aid participation and engagement or enquired
into how Enterprise2.0 is experienced by those in the organisation. This study
took an interpretivist case study approach to investigate a rare and revelatory
example of large scale organisational adoption of Enterprise2.0, and used the
academic lens of organisational democracy, and the associated fields of
organisational politics and power to help explain the case. Three embedded
units of analysis were considered, each of which had varying levels of both
employee engagement and Enterprise2.0 adoption. The study sought to
understand to what degree the technology allowed more conversation
between leaders and workers, and considered the experience of the different
actors within the organisation regarding the drivers, uses, benefits or barriers
they perceived. The study found that the use of technology resulted in a
largely one-way conversation, that both leaders and workers politicised the
interventions, and used power and control to restrict or inhibit discussion and
debate. The findings suggested the interventions shared parallels with
studies into organisational democracy, and were affected by similar contextual
factors. These aspects are described, and the study proposes a model for
overcoming the tensions that were found to exist, calling upon wider literature
to explain the underlying mechanisms that might be at play, and resulting in a
proposed agenda for future research.
