Enterprise Social Media:
A systematic literature review of ESM implementations in
organi-zations following a change management perspective
18th of January 2021
Jasper Boomgaarden
Student number: S2720051
Master Thesis
MSc Business Administration: Change Management University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business
Supervisors RUG
Supervisor: Dr. I. Maris-de Bresser Co-assessor: Dr. M.A.G. Van Offenbeek
Word count (excl. frontpage, references, and appendices):
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ABSTRACT
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INTRODUCTION
Social media have been around us for a long time and, besides attracting individual users, these technol-ogies have attracted many organizations as well (Treem et al., 2015). There are two ways in which organizations are using social media technologies (Leonardi et al., 2013). Firstly, to reach out to external parties, such as consumers, and secondly, to support and enable internal communication. Already in the year 2000, company interns of Microsoft were blogging for internal purposes (Efimova & Grudin, 2007). This was one of the first mentioned instances of an organization using social media for internal purposes.
Nowadays, many organizations have integrated social media technologies for internal purposes. These social media technologies differ from publicly known and externally used social media, as they contain a combination of different social media functions (Leonardi et al., 2013) and should, therefore, not be seen as multiple separate social media, but rather as a social media platform. These platforms are generally called ‘enterprise social media’ (hereafter, ESM). Most of these ESM technologies include social networking sites, blog platforms, micro-blogging tools, wikis, and social tagging tools, which are used for socialization and knowledge sharing within the organization (Leonardi & Vaast, 2017).
The first comprehensive definition of ESM was given by in 2013: “Web-based platforms that allow workers to (1) communicate messages with specific co-workers or broadcast messages to every-one in the organization; (2) explicitly indicate or implicitly reveal particular co-workers as communica-tion partners; (3) post, edit, and sort text and files linked to themselves or others; and (4) view the messages, connections, text, and files communicated, posted, edited and sorted by anyone else in the organization at any time of their choosing” (Leonardi et al., 2013, p. 2). Thus, ESM can provide different affordances. These affordances, which are perceptions of an object’s utility, were described and classi-fied by Treem & Leonardi (2012) as: visibility, editability, persistence, and association. In other words, any piece of information available on ESM can be seen and altered by any employee and can be traced back to its creator at any time.
Over the last two decades, ESM have been implemented by increasingly more organizations. This trend is a result of the general notion that ESM have positive effects on an organization. Many scholars have studied the effects of ESM and concluded that it can have a positive impact on knowledge sharing (Treem & Leonardi, 2012), social learning (Leonardi et al., 2013), innovation (Leonardi, 2014), socialization and power processes (Treem & Leonardi, 2012), and even task efficiency, and job satis-faction (Leonardi, 2018).
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should, therefore, be acknowledged that ESM can provide benefits, but also impose challenges and cau-tion is needed when organizacau-tions wish to implement it (Denyer et al., 2011).
There are many reasons why ESM implementation projects fail. The main reason for these fail-ures is the lack of employee participation (Bolisani et al., 2018; Caron-Fasan et al., 2020; Chin et al., 2015b; Rode, 2016). Without active engagement of employees, organizations will not be able to realize the potential benefits of ESM technology (Liu & Bakici, 2019). Other reasons are for example inade-quate training of employees (Sun et al., 2020)and employee resistance (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016). With many ESM implementations failing, it is important that more information is provided on the pro-cess of implementing ESM.
Even though the topic of ESM is relatively new within the research literature, a considerable amount of empirical research has been conducted on this topic. Many scholars have conducted research on the effects of ESM on organizations, such as the effects on employee engagement (Haddud et al., 2016), employee turnover (Yingjie et al., 2019), and work pressure (Bolisani et al., 2018). Also, the ESM implementation process has had some attention in previous research, such as how to manage em-ployee resistance (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016) and how to motivate emem-ployees (Aboelmaged, 2018). However, a complete and comprehensive description of the implementation process of ESM is still lack-ing. In 2012, a review on Web 2.0 implementations was conducted by Baxter & Connolly, however, the reliability of this review is limited as it lacks empirically supported findings. Moreover, this study was conducted before the widely adopted ESM definition by Leonardi et al. was established in 2013. Thus, there remains a need for a comprehensive overview of ESM implementations. For that reason, the re-search question of this thesis is: What do we know so far about implementing ESM in organizations and what are the challenges and benefits that come with these implementations?
The aim of this literature review is to describe and analyse the current literature on the imple-mentation process of ESM in organizations. In order to structure the whole process of impleimple-mentation, the ‘content, context, process framework of Pettigrew (1987) (hereafter, CCP framework) will be intro-duced. According to Pettigrew, organizational transformations could be best described in terms of “link-ages between the content of change and its context and process” (Pettigrew, 1987, p. 650). He elaborated that leadership behaviour is not everything, it is merely one ingredient to a complex story. To transform an organization one also needs to consider the content, what is being altered or implemented, and the context, which includes the company culture and the structure of the firm, and how all three components are intertwined (Pettigrew, 1987).
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This research has four objectives. First, it aims to provide an overview of the current literature regarding the content, context, and process of ESM implementations. Second, it aims to analyse the literature by describing the interplay between these pillars and what this means for organizations plan-ning to implement ESM in terms of the challenges and benefits they can encounter. Third, it aims to identify research gaps and provide suggestions for future research regarding the implementation of ESM. Fourth, it aims to provide practical implications for organizations planning to implement ESM.
The paper is structured as follows. First, the methodology section outlines the search and selec-tion process, including choosing the sources, search terms, search criteria, and analysis for these studies. Second, the findings section will present the details and results of the selected studies. These results will illustrate what has been found regarding the content, context, and process of ESM implementations. Subsequently, an analysis on the interplay between the pillars will be provided. Third, the discussion section will discuss and make conclusions based on the results. Also, suggestions for future research will be made, limitations of the current study will be explained, and practical implications will be pro-vided.
METHODS
To provide a comprehensive overview of ESM implementations, a systematic literature review is con-ducted. A systematic review is a “systematic, explicit, comprehensive, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners” (Okoli & Schabram, 2010, p. 1). In other words, systematic reviews use standardized and critical methods to obtain and present a complete overview of research on a specific topic. Since the aim of this research is to describe and analyse the current literature on the implementation of ESM in organizations from a change management point of view, adopting a specific research question and a critical search approach seems most suitable. Furthermore, due to the reproduc-ibility of this systematic review, future researchers will be able to replicate and continue this research.
In this study, relevant articles on the implementation of ESM will be provided and analysed following the CCP framework. To correctly conduct a systematic literature review, the guide proposed by Okoli & Schabram (2010) was followed. This framework consists of the following steps: describing the choice of information sources, selection of search terms, selection of search criteria, and analysis of the selected articles.
Choosing sources of information
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such as language, year, and type of article filters combined with multiple search-term options. The da-tabases of Google Scholar, Business Source Premier, and Web of Science were also consulted, however, Google Scholar lacked some important search and filter options and Business Source Premier and Web of Science yielded merely duplicates and these were therefore neglected.
Secondly, a forward snowballing search was conducted in the database of Google Scholar. A forward snowballing search implies searching through all articles that have cited a specific article. Google Scholar was chosen, as this provided a simple and effective tool for the forward snowballing search. SmartCat, Web of Science, and Business Source Premier were also consulted; however, SmartCat lacked the tool needed to conduct a forward snowballing search and Web of Science and Business Source Premier yielded merely a fraction of the articles that were found using Google Scholar. The snowballing search was exercised using the article of Leonardi et al. (2013) ‘Enterprise Social Me-dia: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies in Organizations’. This article was the first to provide a clear definition of ESM and, with close to a thousand citations since, this article can be considered one of the key articles in ESM research. For that reason, it was set as the foundation for the snowballing search.
Choosing search terms
After having chosen the sources of information, the search terms needed to be established. This is an important step as ESM is not the only term used in the literature to describe internal social media tech-nologies. Besides ESM, articles contain terms such as Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, or Enterprise Social Software. It is, therefore, important to determine which other terms describe the same type of technology and need to be included to find as many relevant articles as possible in these databases. The same holds for the process of implementing such technologies, which needed similar examination.
For the first article search, the following search terms were found to provide eligible articles: “enterprise social media”, “enterprise social network”, and “enterprise social software” in combination with “implementation” and “adoption”. These search terms were selected by looking at the keywords in articles that were found using the search combination “enterprise social media” and “implementation”, which are the standard terms used in this paper. Each of these six combinations, which can be found in Table 1, was used as ‘keyword’ and ‘topic’ search and provided additional articles on the topic. A total of 233 articles was found, which can be seen in Figure 1.
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Choosing selection criteria
After the formulation of the search terms, the selection criteria needed to be established. For this re-search, the following selection criteria were employed: (1) the articles need to be written in English, (2) the articles need to be published in academic journals, (3) the articles need to be published between 2013 and 2020, (4) the articles need to be either a journal-article or conference proceeding, and (5) the articles need to have ESM implementation as a topic.
Selection criteria 1 and 5 were employed to assess the relevance of the articles. Only articles that are written in English and on ESM implementations are relevant to examine, as the aim of this study is to review the ESM implementation process. Selection criteria 2 and 4 were employed to assess the quality of the articles. Journal-articles and conference proceedings are known to be peer-reviewed, which entails that the articles have been assessed by multiple scholars and will, therefore, be of sufficient quality. Selection criterium 3 was employed with the key article of Leonardi et al. (2013) in mind. This article has constituted the ESM research field and for that reason only articles from 2013 onwards were selected.
The first search for articles was conducted in September 2020. As can be seen in Figure 1, the search terms yielded a total of 233 articles. After this searching process, these articles were filtered using search criteria 1-3: language, publication type, and period, which resulted in a remainder of 136 articles. Then, two screening rounds were conducted following search criteria 4 and 5, which left a total of 36 articles. The first round of screening consisted of reviewing the title and abstract. The second round of screening was more thorough, as the introduction and conclusion were also examined. Out of the 36 articles, one article could not be procured through institutional credentials. A request to provide the full article was sent to the authors, however, no response came within the timeframe of this study. Conse-quently, this article was excluded, and the final set came down to 35 articles.
The second article search, which was the forward snowballing search, was conducted to increase the number of articles in the sample. The snowballing search yielded 969 results, which was narrowed down to 524 articles by using the combination of search terms described earlier. Again, these articles were screened in two separate rounds and this left an additional 21 articles, which yielded a total of 56 articles. All articles included in the sample can be found in Appendix A.
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Analysis of the selected articles
The aim of this study is to provide a review on and analyse the current literature on ESM implementa-tions, using the CCP framework of Pettigrew (1987) depicted in Figure 2. According to Pettigrew (1987), organizations need to take the content, context, and process into account when planning to drive change, as these are interconnected and can affect one another. Therefore, it is important to establish a clear description of each pillar to be able to understand what strategic change involves.
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The content refers to “the particular areas of transformation under examination” (Pettigrew, 1987, p. 657). In other words, the content indicates the subject of change. The context can be divided into inner and outer context. The inner context involves “the structure, corporate culture, and political context within the firm through which ideas for change have to proceed” (Pettigrew, 1987, p. 657) and the outer context involves “the social, economic, political, and competitive environment in which the firm operates” (Pettigrew, 1987, p. 657). The process refers to “the actions, reactions, and interactions from the various interested parties as they seek to move the firm from its present to its future state” (Pettigrew, 1987, p. 657). In other words, the process indicates the combination of activities of groups and individuals with the aim to enact the desired change.
After having selected the sample of articles for the literature review, this sample was analysed based on the CCP framework. Following this framework, each article was examined individually to see what it describes about the content, context, and process of ESM implementations and this information was structures through a process of coding. By establishing content, context, and process as categories, relevant concepts in the literature could be coded and attributed to these pillars. After completing the overviews on these three pillars, the articles were reviewed once more. Again, a process of coding was conducted with the interplays between the pillars as categories in order to determine what aspects of ESM implementations could be attributed to the interplays. The results of these two processes can be found in the following sections and the codebooks can be found in Appendix B and C.
FINDINGS
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General characteristics of the included studies
In this section, the general characteristics of the included studies are provided, including an overview on the articles published per year and on the types of research conducted in the articles.
An overview of the number of articles published per year can be found in Figure 3. Since the article of Leonardi et al. (2013) was set as a foundation for research on ESM, the timespan of 2013-2020 was chosen for this review. This figure shows that the sample includes no publications in 2013, which is in line with the fact that the article of Leonardi et al. (2013) was published late-2013. In 2014, only a few articles on the topic were published. However, from 2015 onwards the topic of ESM implementa-tions has been of great interest, which resulted in many publicaimplementa-tions each year.
Figure 4 provides an overview of the types of research conducted in the sample of articles. It shows that a relatively large amount of research has been empirical, namely a total of 47 articles. The remaining seven articles applied a mixed methods approach. So, where the literature review of Baxter & Connolly (2012) lacked empirically supported findings on the implementation of ESM, this research is to a large extent comprised of empirical studies. Of these articles, 28 studies included a quantitative approach and 19 included a qualitative approach. A total of 9 articles included a mixed methods research approach.
Insights from the selected articles
In this section, the information on the pillars content, context, and process regarding ESM implementa-tions are explained.
Content
This section describes the content, or the ‘what’, of ESM implementations. As described by Pettigrew (1987), the content refers to the subject of change. In this case, the subject of change are the organiza-tional technologies for communication, collaboration, and knowledge management. Furthermore, the
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Journal Articles Conference Proceedings
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Empirical: Quantitative Empirical: Qualitative Mixed Methods
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way of operating, including communicating, collaborating, and sharing knowledge, is also being altered by the implementation of ESM. For that reason, the content-related aspects that are described in this section are the ESM technologies being implemented and what changes this new technology can offer, which can be found in Table 2.
Throughout the literature, many terms are being used to describe ESM technologies. In Figure 5, the different names for the social media technologies are depicted. The terms used mostly in the sample are ‘enterprise social media’ and ‘enterprise social networks’. Next to ESM and ESN, many other terms have been used. This is most likely due to the fact that there is a wide variety in the platforms and tools that are being used.
0 5 10 15 20
Enterprise Social Media Enterprise Social Networks Internal Social Media Social Media Enterprise Social Software Knowledge Management Systems Enterprise Collaboration Systems Social Technologies Social Networking Sites Organizational Social Media
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Since there is such variety in terms, platforms, and tools and features, it is important to know what types of ESM are studied in the sample. In Figures 6 and 7, the information provided in the articles on the type and features of ESM is depicted. Figure 6 shows that 29 out of 56 studies described the implementation of a specific ESM technology such as Yammer (Meske et al., 2019; Qi & Chau, 2018), Jive (Dittes & Smolnik, 2019; Van Osch & Steinfield, 2016), Circle (Chen et al., 2019), Dingtalk (Sun et al., 2020a), or Google+ (Laitinen & Sivunen, 2020). As some organizations used a combination of systems (Bolisani et al., 2018; Zhao et al., 2020) and some scholars studied multiple firms (Kalra & Baral, 2019; Steinhueser et al., 2015), seven of these studies captured the implementation of multiple ESM technologies.
Whereas some articles described specific technologies being implemented, others merely pro-vided information of the types of features and tools that were implemented (Kügler et al., 2015; Razmerita et al., 2016). Figure 7 shows information on the features of 14 of the 27 remaining studies. According to Treem & Leonardi (2012), social networking sites, social tagging, microblogs, blogs, and wikis are the key tools of ESM and, therefore, these five tools are depicted. Figure 7 shows that social networking sites were most often included, followed by blogs and wikis.
Finally, a total of 13 articles provided no specific information on the type of technology imple-mented nor on the features of this technology . These articles merely provided the notion that an ESM technology had been implemented (Gode et al., 2019; Högberg & Olsson, 2019) or was being used (Haddud et al., 2016; Men et al., 2020).
Benefits.
The reason that so many organizations are implementing ESM is because of the many benefits the content can provide. These benefits can be divided into direct and indirect benefits. The direct benefits are an increase in communication, collaboration, and knowledge. The indirect benefits, which can result from the direct benefits, are improvements in productivity and innovation, and, conse-quently, performance. 0 5 10 15 Yammer Multiple systems Jive Google+ Dingtalk Circle 0 2 4 6 8 10 SNS Wikis Blogs Social Tagging Microblogs12
Communication. When implementing ESM, organizations can experience an increase in
inter-nal communication (Chin et al., 2015b; Fu et al., 2019a). The interinter-nal communication can be influenced by both the affordances of ESM and the tools of ESM. As a result of the affordances of ESM online activities within the organization are becoming visible, which can reduce social barriers between em-ployees and can boost internal communication (Haugsbakken, 2018). Geographical barriers can also be overcome through ESM, as online communication with co-workers becomes easier (Gibbs et al., 2015; Meske et al., 2019). According to Chen et al. (2019), ESM helps to overcome communicational barriers and increases both horizontal and vertical communication in organizations. By reducing the barriers between individuals, departments, and locations, the affordances of ESM can increase internal commu-nication (Bala et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2019; Gibbs et al., 2015).
Next to the affordances, the ESM tools can also help stimulate internal communication (Chen et al., 2019). The tools of ESM allow employees to send messages to anyone in the organization, which makes it easier to communicate internally (Bala et al., 2015; Haugsbakken, 2018; Laitinen & Sivunen, 2020). Also, these tools help to form and maintain professional contacts within organizations (Fu et al., 2019; Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2014, 2016). Furthermore, the networking tools of ESM are capable of supporting effective communication processes (Caron-Fasan et al., 2020; Chin et al., 2015b; Fu et al., 2019) as communicating through ESM is easier and takes less time than, for example, sending out emails (Haugsbakken, 2018). So, both the affordances and the tools of ESM can help increase and improve communication within organizations.
Collaboration. Another benefit that can come from implementing ESM is an increase in
collab-oration (Caron-Fasan et al., 2020; Laitinen & Sivunen, 2020). Collabcollab-oration refers to an “interactive process during which several people work together on a particular task” (Dittes & Smolnik, 2019, p. 1223). The increase in collaboration can also result from the tools and the affordances of ESM. First of all, ESM provides the opportunity to co-create documents and solutions (Bala et al., 2015). By providing employees the option to upload information in for example wikis and by allowing co-workers to see and edit these, ESM leads to more internal collaboration (Bala et al., 2015). Secondly, ESM provides em-ployees the ability to create relational networks that will improve collaboration (Kalra & Baral, 2019). By allowing employees to network more easily (Chin et al., 2015b; Dittes & Smolnik, 2019) and allow-ing them to engage in discussions with fellow employees more easily (Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2014), internal collaboration is being accommodated. Thus, not only can ESM positively affect internal com-munication, but it can also increase collaboration in an organization.
Knowledge. Besides the increases in communication and collaboration, the implementation of
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“knowledge about who knows what and who knows whom within the organization” (Leonardi, 2014, p. 797) and instrumental knowledge is knowledge about how to do something (Leonardi, 2014).
Metaknowledge can help in locating expert knowledge (Chen et al., 2019). According to Jarrahi & Sawyer (2015), the process of locating experts and expertise will become common practice with the help of social technologies, because they enable employees to acquire metaknowledge more easily. Due to the visibility affordance of ESM, once invisible communication between others becomes visible and metaknowledge can be acquired (Leonardi, 2014).
Instrumental knowledge helps employees in knowing how to do something, which can increase as a result of social learning. Social learning is the process of learning by observing others (Chen et al., 2019). As all information on ESM is consistently visible and available, the amount of people, networks, and messages from which employees can learn gets expanded (Leonardi, 2014). As a result, ESM allows employees to increase their instrumental knowledge through social learning (Chen et al., 2019).
Another way in which ESM can increase employee knowledge is through increased knowledge sharing (Laitinen & Sivunen, 2020; Razmerita et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2020a). Knowledge sharing can be defined as the transmission of knowledge in an organization, along with the sublimation from indi-vidual knowledge into collective knowledge (Zhao et al., 2020). According to Sun et al. (2020), knowledge sharing can be strongly increased by the affordances of ESM. As mentioned earlier, these affordances can improve the way that employees are communicating, which helps to stimulate knowledge flows within the organization (Sun et al., 2020). According to Qi & Chau (2018), knowledge sharing is stimulated by the creation of informal networks between users, as these networks allow em-ployees to share information with co-workers. These interpersonal networks can even help overcome time and space boundaries (Zhao et al., 2020). Furthermore, it has been found that the networking tech-nologies of ESM also allow for more effective knowledge sharing processes (Caron-Fasan et al., 2020; Chin et al., 2015b; Scarso & Bolisani, 2020) Hence, next to communication and collaboration, an in-crease in employee knowledge can be a direct benefit of ESM. Overall, the literature found that, with the successful implementation of ESM, an organization has the potential to increase its internal commu-nication, collaboration, and knowledge.
Productivity. When implementing ESM, the productivity of an organization can be stimulated
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and quicker (Gibbs et al., 2015). Overall, ESM enables employees to increase productivity through in-creased metaknowledge and more expertise sharing (Aboelmaged, 2018).
Another way in which knowledge can help increase productivity is by reducing knowledge du-plication (Leonardi, 2014). According to Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta (2019), implementing ESM can lead to the creation of a knowledge base. When employees are actively posting knowledge on ESM, by for example writing wikis or blogs, it will become a source of knowledge. Since this knowledgebase will be visible and available to employees, the existing knowledge can be reused and knowledge dupli-cation can be avoided (Leonardi, 2014). As employees will be wasting less time duplicating knowledge their productivity will increase (Leonardi, 2014).
Not only knowledge and communication, but also increased collaboration can contribute to an increase in productivity. According to Dittes & Smolnik (2019), collaboration is essential when ees are dealing with complex problems. With the communicative tools and affordances of ESM employ-ees can more easily discuss and solve problems together. When employemploy-ees are facing complex problems, they can combine their strengths and expertise to solve the problem, thereby solving problems more quickly and increasing their productivity (Dittes & Smolnik, 2019). Bala et al. (2015) and Rode (2016) also found that, next to exchanging knowledge and expertise, more collaboration can lead to an increase in productivity. So, increased communication, collaboration, and employee knowledge can lead to an increase in productivity which, according to Aboelmaged (2018), will lead to increased organizational performance as well.
Innovation. When implementing ESM, the increases in communication, collaboration, and
knowledge can also lead to increased innovative performance. Innovative performance refers to “the intentional generation, promotion, and realization of new ideas within the organization” (Chen et al., 2019, p. 366). According to Gibbs et al. (2015), communication and collaboration across boundaries are critical sources for innovation as innovation is driven by diverse and unique knowledge. By allowing employees to set up new ties with other employees, their innovative performance is stimulated (Chen et al., 2019). He & Wang (2016) and Sun et al. (2020a) also found that the affordances and tools of ESM stimulate innovative processes through communication and collaboration. By improving the innovative processes, organizations will be able to increase the creation of innovative knowledge (Chen et al., 2019; Gibbs et al., 2015; He & Wang, 2016).
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services” (Leonardi, 2014, p. 809). Metaknowledge allows employees to know what knowledge exists in the organization, thereby allowing for an increase in recombinant innovation (Aboelmaged, 2018; Leonardi, 2014; Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta, 2019). Secondly, when ESM transforms into a source of knowledge and employees engage less in knowledge duplication, more time will be available to develop creative ideas (Leonardi, 2014). So, also innovation can be increased as an indirect effect of ESM. Fur-thermore, according to Giampaoli et al. (2017), a firm’s ability to create and implement innovative ideas will help improve the overall performance of an organization.
Context
This section describes the context, or the ‘why’, of ESM implementations. The context of change refers to the environmental drivers of the organization to implement ESM, which can be divided into the inner and outer context. In this case, the inner context refers to the organizations implementing ESM and the outer context refers to the environment in which these organizations operate. So, this section will de-scribe the types of organizations that are implementing ESM and what context-related factors have driven them to implementing ESM.
Types of organizations.
When examining the current literature on ESM implementations, it becomes evident that ESM platforms are being implemented by different types of organizations and across a broad range of industries. The information on the industries of these organizations can be seen in Table 3. It shows that the sample of articles has researched ESM implementations in at least 12 in-dustries. Furthermore, it shows that these industries differ to a great extent, which indicates that ESM implementations are broadly occurring.Inner context drivers.
In the sample of articles, a variety of internal implementation drivers have been mentioned, which can be seen in Table 3. The table shows that the main internal drivers of ESM implementation in the sample were the need for more communication, knowledge sharing, and efficiency. This is in line with the findings on the benefits of implementing ESM. Some other factors, such as more transparency, gaining insights in employee activities or changing to a digital workplace, were only mentioned once and should, therefore, not be seen as common drivers of implementation.16
pressure represents pressure that is put on the organization when organizations with similar norms and values are implementing ESM (Bharati et al., 2014). The final driver of adoption was coercive pressure. Coercive pressure is pressure that is put on the organization by another party upon which they are de-pendent, such as a government or a powerful client (Bharati et al., 2014). Even though there were articles in the sample that mentioned these external pressures, these were only a fraction of the whole sample.
Process
This section describes the process, or the ‘how’, of ESM implementations. The process of change refers to the combination of activities of groups and individuals involved with the aim to enact the desired change. In this section, the information on implementation activities in the sample will be provided.
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According to Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta (2019), the complete process of implementing ESM can be divided into seven phases. Their framework provides an extensive view of ESM-like implementation processes and will, therefore, be used to structure the information on ESM implementation processes. The literature, however, does not describe all aspects and all phases mentioned in the framework. For that reason, only five of the seven implementation phases will be described, following the information provided in the sample. Table 4 provides a complete overview of the phases and the aspects described.
Draft phase.
The first phase of the framework is the draft phase. According to Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta (2019), this phase involves the awareness and need assessment for ESM. In this phase, organizations become aware of the benefits that ESM can bring and, after becoming aware of the poten-tial of ESM, organizations can start to consider what ESM can do for them (Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta, 2019). An important step is to see how an ESM system will fit into the organization.Furthermore, the draft phase involves assessing the need for ESM within the organization (Caron-Fasan et al., 2020; Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta, 2019). According to Bala et al. (2015), ESM platforms are very different from other systems that organizations might use. It is, therefore, important that organizations understand what the role of ESM in the organization will be and what effects it will have on the organization (Bala et al., 2015). Moreover, organizations will need to assess the need for ESM, for example in the daily activities of the employees. If there is no need for the implementation of an ESM system, then the system will not be used after implementation (Scarso & Bolisani, 2020).
Planning phase.
The second phase mentioned by Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta (2019) is the planning phase. This phase involves gaining support for and choosing the system. According to Bala et al. (2015), it is important to gain support from management and from the core areas in the organization. If the implementation is not supported by these parties then ESM will not get the attention necessary to18
become successful (Bala et al., 2015). This notion was confirmed by Caron-Fasan et al. (2020), who found that support of the organizational partners is paramount when implementing ESM in an organi-zation. According to Choudrie & Zamani (2016), top-level support is needed to reduce barriers for the implementation and development of ESM. Furthermore, during the process leadership skills and organ-izational knowledge are required, which stresses the importance of top management support and partic-ipation (He & Wang, 2016).
Another aspect of the planning phase is the selection of the ESM technology (Chin, 2015b; Steinhueser et al., 2015). When organizations fail to select a high quality platform then this might result in low usage levels (Fu et al., 2019). Also Chin et al. (2015a) found that the quality of the system is a critical success factor and Bala et al. (2015) stated that the selection of the system can determine the ultimate success of the implementation.
Design phase.
The third phase of the process is the design phase, which involves designing the system and choosing what tools and features to include (Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta, 2019). With regard to the design, Fu et al. (2019) stated that organizations should make sure that the ESM platform has a clear design and structure and that it should be easy for users to access. According to Kalra & Baral (2019), it is key to implement a platform that is easy to navigate. Also, they found that organiza-tions need to be able to integrate the system in the routine of the users (Kalra & Baral, 2019). Overall, organizations should invest time and resources to design their ESM platform (Men et al., 2020).Another aspect of the design phase is establishing what tools or features need to be included. According to Caron-Fasan et al. (2020), it is important to make the system suit the organization well, because the compatibility of the ESM platform affects the adoption level. This finding is confirmed by Zhao et al. (2020), who claim that the features of ESM influence the amount of knowledge sharing. Organizations should ensure that the design, features, and tools help employees to achieve maximal benefits from the ESM system (Kalra & Baral, 2019).
Implementation phase.
Another important part of the process is the implementation phase, which involves convincing the employees, providing guidelines for usage, and adjusting ESM if neces-sary (Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta, 2019). According to Bala et al. (2015), ESM platforms are fundamentally different from other organizational systems, as they are not directly part of the core business processes of an organization. Therefore, it is important that organizations think about how they are going to convince employees to start using ESM (Bala et al., 2015). According to Dittes & Smolnik (2019), an important step in getting employees to use ESM is shutting down the old tools. Employees tend to continue using the old tools and shutting these tools down will prevent this from happening (Dittes & Smolnik, 2019).19
guide employees in how to use ESM (Greeven & Williams, 2017), encourage employees to use ESM (Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2016; Razmerita et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2020), and foster more acceptance regarding ESM amongst employees (Heymann et al., 2020). When guidelines on using ESM lack, em-ployees may be more uncertain about using it (Laitinen & Sivunen, 2020). However, when emem-ployees know what should or should not be posted on ESM they will feel more enthusiastic about using it (Chin et al., 2015b). Furthermore, establishing guidelines can also help to make ESM usage more effective as employees know how to use it and the possibility of any distraction will be reduced (Bolisani et al., 2018).
The process of adjusting the system can also be important. According to Bala et al. (2015), employees can experience system errors when the technology is not managed after implementation. The literature does, however, not provide further information on how the adjustment process should be han-dled by organizations.
Control phase.
The final phase in the framework is the control phase, which involves moni-toring the usage and evaluating the success of the implementation (Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta, 2019). According to Haddud et al. (2016) tracking internal ESM usage is helpful to gain insights on employee engagement to ESM. Organizations should, therefore, create an active monitoring plan for the lifecycle of ESM use (Chin et al., 2019).Furthermore, according to Van Osch & Steinfield (2016), managers should also actively assess the activities of employees on ESM to see if there is a match or mismatch between the platform activities and activities that are strategically important for the organization. The literature did, however, not pro-vide further in-depth information on how to monitor ESM use and how to assess the success of the implementation.
Content-context interplay
According to Pettigrew (1987), organizational transformations can best be described by the interplay between the content, context, and process of change. This means that these three pillars not only have to be described individually, but also in relation to each other. The following sections will provide anal-yses on the information regarding the interplays between the pillars. However, no separate information on the interplay between the content and process will be given, since the sample provided little concrete information on this.
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fit, there are some technological characteristics that can also affect the success of the implementation. The following section explains the technological fit and technological characteristics and elaborates on the negative effects that can arise when these are not taken into account.
Organization-technology fit.
When planning to implement ESM in an organization, one of the first things to consider is the organization-technology fit. The organization-technology fit describes the extent to which the ESM technology suits the organization implementing it. This organization-tech-nology fit involves two main drivers which are the organizational culture and the organizational struc-ture.Organization culture. The organizational culture reflects the patterns of assumptions, shared
values, and beliefs (Engelbrecht et al., 2017). In order for an ESM system to be adopted by employees the organizational culture needs to be open to sharing knowledge and information (Bala et al., 2015; Dittes & Smolnik, 2019; Smith et al., 2017). This is because ESM platforms require users to post and upload content themselves (Leonardi et al., 2013). In more competitive organizational cultures for ex-ample, employees exhibit less altruism and are less likely to help each other by contributing knowledge (Engler & Alpar, 2017, 2018). In such cultures ESM is unlikely to reach its potential, since the norms and practice of the organization may discourage open communication (Gibbs et al., 2015). Furthermore, the negativity of a culture can also negatively affect employee participation in ESM (Gode et al., 2019). When employees are anticipating critical reactions from others they will less likely to engage in ESM (Gode et al., 2019). According to Heymann et al. (2020), employees should feel free to publish infor-mation and organizations should, therefore, adopt an open feedback culture. The stronger the culture is focused on knowledge sharing, the greater the usage of ESM will be (Chin et al., 2015b). Rode (2016) advised managers to establish collaborative organizational norms that encourages knowledge sharing and reciprocal behaviour.
Organizational structure. The way in which an organization is structured is another
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establish both an open culture and suitable structures to make sure that employees will actively use ESM.
Task-technology fit.
Next to the organization-technology fit, organizations will also have to take the task-technology fit into account. Task-technology fit refers to “the matching capabilities of the technology to the requirements of the work, that is, the degree to which a technology enables an indi-vidual to perform a portfolio of tasks” (Fu et al., 2019a, p. 3). According to Chin et al. (2015a), the better ESM fits the characteristics of the tasks, the more ESM will be used. Hence, a good fit between the tasks and ESM will positively affect usage, whereas a lack of fit will negatively affect ESM usage (Fu et al., 2019a). The aspects of task-technology fit that are mainly mentioned in the sample are task complexity, technological complexity, time constraints, and employee characteristics.Task complexity. Task complexity refers to the complexity of the combination of activities that
employees perform in their daily work. According to Bala et al. (2015), ESM can increase task com-plexity when employees do not know what the relevance of the tools is or what the role of ESM in the organization is. According to Bolisani et al. (2018), ESM can also bring about more complexity in the workplace because it increases the opportunities of interaction. Furthermore, when the work practices of employees are not connected to the capabilities of ESM, then employees can perceive using ESM as an additional burden in their daily work making it more complex (Greeven & Williams, 2016). Accord-ing to Greeven & Williams (2017), organizations need to establish processes that incorporate ESM in the daily work of employees, making sure ESM will help diminish task complexity rather than enhanc-ing it.
Technological complexity. Technological complexity refers to the extent to which a system is
difficult to use or understand, which can negatively affect the adoption behaviour (Martins et al., 2016). According to Bolisani et al. (2018), one of the drivers of system complexity is a feature overload. This form of overload can occur, when an ESM platform contains so many features that it has become too complex for given tasks (Bolisani et al., 2018). Technological complexity can also occur due to an over-load in content (Chin et al., 2015b). According to Chin et al. (2015b), it is difficult for employees to get value from ESM when there is too much content and noise on the platform. Difficult retrieval of infor-mation can undermine ESM usage (Scarso & Bolisani, 2020).
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as a barrier to collaborate with others (Bala et al., 2015). Poor usability or a lack of understanding may create a barrier towards using and contributing to ESM (Razmerita et al., 2016).
Time constraints. Time is another variable that affects the task-technology fit (Bala et al., 2015).
According to Engler & Alpar (2017), employees are often not using ESM because of time constraints. In their study, employees did not know how to integrate ESM into their current tasks, and they experi-enced ESM usage as an additional task which would take up their time. Chin et al. (2015a, 2015b) also found time constraints to be an inhibitor of ESM adoption. Even though employees were aware of the benefits, they were still unable to realize these benefits due to time constraints (Chin et al., 2015b). In the study of Gode et al. (2019), most employees even stated that time constraints was the main reason for not using ESM. When employees are preoccupied with other activities, especially when these activ-ities are under pressure of time, then the barrier for engaging in ESM is simply too high (Gode et al., 2019).
Employee characteristics.The individual characteristics and personal traits of employees influ-ence ESM usage (Engler & Alpar, 2017). The employee characteristics that are mainly mentioned in the sample revolve around skills and age. When employees lack the skills to effectively use ESM, they will be reluctant to use the platform (Chin et al., 2015b; Gode et al., 2019) or they will waste time trying (Bolisani et al., 2018). In the study of Bala et al. (2015), the organization that implemented ESM em-ployed mostly workers without social media competency. These employees were unable to use ESM for producing, extracting and sharing information and as a result the platform was used much less than was intended by the organization (Bala et al., 2015). When employees have more experience with using social media, the behavioural intention to use ESM will be higher (Engler & Alpar, 2017).
Also the age of employees has also been found to influence the adoption of ESM (Fu et al., 2019). According to Gibbs et al. (2015), the age of employees determines how receptive employees are to using ESM in their job. According to Treem et al. (2015), young employees are generally more scep-tical about the usefulness of ESM, whereas older employees perceive ESM to be highly useful in their work and are more willing to participate. However, Caron-Fasan et al. (2020) found that older employ-ees generally have more difficulties with understanding how to integrate ESM in their tasks, which undermines their usage. According to Chin et al. (2015b), organizations should try to address the digital divide between young and old employees.
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System quality. When implementing ESM, organizations should choose a system of sufficient
quality (Chin et al., 2015). If a new ESM system does not work properly employees will get a bad impression of the platform, which can lead to resistance or unuse (Bala et al., 2015). According to Chin et al. (2015), system quality comprises integration, accessibility, usability, and functionality. When there is a lack of integration between ESM and other used systems, the perceived value of the ESM platform can decrease (Chin et al., 2015b). This finding was confirmed by Scarso & Bolisani (2020), who found that scarce compatibility with other business systems can significantly reduce the use of ESM. Further-more, managers should make sure that the ESM platform is easily accessible for all devices (Chin et al., 2015), because limited access can have strong undermining effects on ESM usage (Scarso & Bolisani, 2020). Also, ESM platforms need to be user-friendly. According to Chin et al. (2015), user-friendly capabilities will help employees to navigate and search for people and content more easily. When it is difficult to retrieve information, employees will make less use of ESM (Scarso & Bolisani, 2020). Steinhueser et al. (2015) also stated that usability is of great importance in making employees use the platform. Moreover, the ESM platform needs to have relevant and sufficient functionalities. According to Chin et al. (2015), having limited functions available in the ESM can negatively influence ESM usage. Chin et al (2015b) also found that limitations in platform features will negatively influence employees’ perceived value of ESM. Organizations should, therefore, ensure that the design, features, and tools of ESM enable employees to achieve maximal practical benefits (Kalra & Baral, 2019).
System security. When the system is of sufficient quality but not secure to use, employees can
also decide not to use it. System security refers to “the subjective probability with which users believe their sensitive information (business or private) will not be viewed, stored, and manipulated during work sessions by unauthorized parties in a manner consistent with their confident expectations” (Caron-Fasan et al., 2020, p. 8). According to Chin et al. (2015b), information leakage concerns are one of the key factors influencing the perceived value of ESM. Risk beliefs directly influence an employee’s willing-ness to share information on ESM (Engelbrecht et al., 2017). Greeven & Williams (2016) also found that employees may be unwilling to contribute and share content due to a perceived lack of protection. Hence, in order for the system to be well perceived, it does not only require quality, but it should also be secure to use (Van Osch & Steinfield, 2016). Therefore, when the implementation of ESM is expected to intensify information sharing, managers should consider establishing privacy management principles (Laitinen & Sivunen, 2020). These security configurations need to be tailored to the organization as they are contingent to the size, site, and industry of the organization (Steinhueser et al., 2015).
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Negative employee perceptions. Employee perceptions are of high importance when it comes
to ESM adoption, as they can affect both the behavioural intention and actual behaviour of employees (Engler & Alpar, 2018; Wamba et al., 2017). The employee perceptions that are mainly discussed in the sample are perceptions of usefulness, or performance expectancy, and perceptions of ease of use, or effort expectancy. Performance expectancy is defined as “the degree to which an individual believes that using the technology will help him or her to attain gains in job performance” and effort expectancy refers to “the degree of ease associated with the use of the technology” (Chin et al., 2019, p. 4). Accord-ing to Engler & Alpar (2018), the intention of employees to use ESM is determined by performance expectancy and effort expectancy. Kalra & Baral (2019) also found that both expectancies have an effect on employees’ behavioural intention to use ESM.
Not only the intention to use ESM, but also actual use is influenced by performance and effort expectations (Chin et al., 2015b). Chin et al. (2019) found performance expectancy and effort expec-tancy to affect the consumptive use of employees on ESM. Both forms of expecexpec-tancy also influence the ESM adoption behaviour of employees (Antonius et al., 2015; Caron-Fasan et al., 2020; Wamba et al., 2017). Sun et al. (2020) also found that employees are more likely to use ESM when they believe it is beneficial to their work.
As employee perceptions can have significant effects on ESM usage, negative perceptions can be a major challenge for organizations implementing ESM. These perceptions can be influenced by the technological fit and the technological characteristics of ESM and, therefore, it is important for organi-zations to take the content-context interplay into account (Antonius et al., 2015).
Employee stressors. Employee stressors are stimuli that can arise from using ESM and that can
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Context-process interplay
The following section provides an analysis on the context-process interplay. When implementing ESM, the employees in the organizational context react on the change process and in turn the change managers are ought to adjust the implementation process accordingly. The interplay between the context and the process of change can, therefore, be seen as a perpetual process in which organizational management and employees are responding to one another.
When looking at the literature, it shows that the interplay between the context and the process of change is moderated by information provision. The extent to which an organization is informed about the change process can have a major effect on the success of the implementation (Chin et al., 2015b; Van Osch et al., 2015). The aspects that require sufficient information provision are the organizational goals and employee purpose for implementing ESM. This section provides an explanation on both as-pects. Furthermore, it will elaborate on the challenges that can arise when change agents fail to take the context-process interplay into account.
Organizational goals.
When planning to implement ESM it is important to establish an im-plementation strategy including the goals and purposes of ESM (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016). According to Martins et al. (2016), organizations should establish an implementation plan that aligns with the strat-egy of the organization. They stated that there need to be linkages between the objectives of ESM and the objectives of the organization (Martins et al., 2016). Similarly, Greeven & Williams (2016, 2017) noted that organizations need to align their project goals to the goals of the organization. When change agents fail to integrate the use of ESM in the objectives and activities of employees, then these employ-ees can become resistant to using ESM (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016). Furthermore, it seems that organi-zations often treat ESM usage as an end-goal instead of a means to fulfil organizational goals (Chin et al., 2015b). Organizations, however, need to define clear goals for implementing and using ESM, oth-erwise employees will be unaware of why they are compelled to use it (Chin et al., 2015b). Defining specific project goals will give employees the impression that using ESM could lead to fulfilling organ-izational goals, which can enhance employees’ usage motivation (Greeven & Williams, 2016, 2017).26
et al. (2020) also found that employees are more likely to use ESM when it is beneficial to their personal work. Therefore, it is important that the purpose of ESM for employees is clearly communicated (Van Osch et al., 2015). Furthermore, organizations could integrate platform usage in the performance man-agement of employees. By integrating ESM into routines and tasks, managers allow employees to use ESM while maintaining their workflow process (Chin et al., 2019).
Potential challenges of the context-process interplay.
The challenges that can come from the context-process interplay are employee resistance and, consequently, a lack of usage of ESM. The behaviour of employees is of high importance when it comes to introducing change. According to Theory X of Douglas McGregor, employees generally resist to organizational change (McGregor, 1960). Therefore, when an organization implements ESM its employees can become resistant to ESM (Dittes & Smolnik, 2019). So, despite the advantages of ESM, the adoption process can be challenging due to employee resistance (Caron-Fasan et al., 2020; Greeven & Williams, 2016, 2017).When change agents fail to take the process of informing the organization about the goals and purpose of ESM, this can lead to situations in which employees become even more resistant (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016). In that case, using ESM is not seen as essential to completing tasks and activities and employees will be unwilling to spend time using it (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016). A lack of alignment between the key performance indicators for employees and ESM usage also diminishes ESM usage (Chin et al., 2015b). Employees will assume that ESM does not provide them any benefits and using it will only take up valuable time (Chin et al., 2015b). Furthermore, employees might only see ESM as a socializing medium rather than a performance-related platform, which will also make them opt out of using the platform (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016). This employee resistance will have a negative impact on the success of the implementation and, therefore, it is important to make sure that employees will start using ESM.
Content-context-process interplay
In the previous sections, the implementation of ESM has been described according to the content, con-text, and process pillars and the interplay between these pillars. When change agents fail to take these interplays into account, there are several challenges that can surface. These challenges can vary, though the outcome is often the same. Whether they are negative employee perceptions, stress, or resistance, the main problem that organizations face during the implementation of ESM is that employees are not using the platform.
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include activities such as continuous initiation of awareness activities, alignment of ESM use with per-formance, and providing employees with training and education (Chin et al., 2019). According to Chin et al. (2019), it is important that organizations create facilitating conditions for the realization of the value of ESM use. Facilitating conditions can have significant positive effects on employees’ acceptance of and participation in ESM (Engler & Alpar, 2018).
These actions that are found to overcome ESM underuse can be classified as guiding employees and motivating employees. Both forms of action embody a process, which can be included in the imple-mentation process, and have the sole purpose of increasing employees’ engagement in ESM. Hence, these actions form a link between all three pillars and they are, therefore, attributed to the content-con-text-process interplay.
Employee guidance.
When an organization has implemented ESM and experiences that em-ployees are not using it, there are several measures that can be taken. One of these measures is to focus on guiding and supporting employees by providing training and top management support.Training. One way to guide employees in using ESM is by providing them with training on
how to use ESM will also help increase ESM usage (Greeven & Williams, 2017; Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta, 2019; Razmerita et al., 2016; Scarso & Bolisani, 2020; Sun et al., 2020). According to Chen et al. (2019), explicit training can improve employee knowledge on the affordances of ESM. Training will also make sure employees know about all ESM capabilities (Haddud et al., 2016). Furthermore, providing training can help to address the digital divide between different employee groups (Chin et al., 2015b). Moreover, training employees could help overcome barriers to using ESM (Van Osch et al., 2015). Providing training is required to address questions and problems that employees have with using ESM (Chin et al., 2019). Furthermore, Rode (2016) stated that trainings can help increase employee appreciation and Heymann et al. (2020) found that training can increase employee acceptance of ESM. Also, providing training can counteract wrong usage behaviour (Dittes & Smolnik, 2019).
Top management support. Top management support, involvement, and participation will also
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also stated that managers should lead by example and should become active ESM participants. The more support of top management, the greater the perceived value of using ESM will be (Chin et al., 2015a).
Employee motivation.
Another measure that can be taken to stimulate the usage of ESM is to focus on motivating employees through intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Although there is some discrepancy in the literature, the general notion is that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can stim-ulate employees’ usage of ESM.Intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivations can positively affect employees’ behavioural
inten-tion (He & Wang, 2016) and the actual usage behaviour of ESM (Razmerita et al., 2016; Rode, 2016). Intrinsic motivation refers to the drive of doing activities for one’s own sake or satisfaction rather than for external pressures or rewards (He & Wang, 2016; Razmerita et al., 2016; Rode, 2016). It can be driven by for example altruism, enjoyment, or the opportunity to increase ones capabilities or network (He & Wang, 2016; Razmerita et al., 2016; Rode, 2016).
One specific form of intrinsic motivation is utilitarian motivation. A utilitarian system provides instrumental value to its users and it can drive employees to use ESM (Chin et al., 2015a). Kalra & Baral (2019) also found that utilitarian motivations foster knowledge sharing practices in an organization. Moreover, utilitarian use of ESM can help reduce employee turnover (Yingjie et al., 2019). So, managers will be well served when utilitarian motivation is linked to performance measures of ESM (Aboelmaged, 2018).
Another form of intrinsic motivation is hedonic motivation. Hedonic motivation refers to the drives to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend and is related to positive emotions employees can experience using ESM (Meske et al., 2019). Hedonic motivations are associated with feelings of pleas-ure, fun, and joy and can have a significant effect on ESM usage (Aboelmaged, 2018). Using ESM can foster hedonic experiences for employees, such as developing interpersonal relations with co-workers (Chin et al., 2015a). Experiencing hedonic benefits can drive behavioural intentions of employees to use ESM (Kalra & Baral, 2019; Wamba et al., 2017).
Extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivations can also positively affect employees’ ESM
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One specific form of external motivation is normative motivations. In 2019, Meske et al. came to the conclusion that the behaviour of employees can be affected by the behaviour of important others. This so-called normative motivation has close resemblance to social influence. Social influence refers to “the degree to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should use the new technology” (Chin et al., 2019, p. 5). According to Bala et al. (2015), recognizing that important co-workers are not participating will keep employees from engaging in ESM. For that reason, it can be valuable to identify influential employees and recruit them as ESM ambassadors, making them respon-sible for boosting engagement of other employees (Chin et al., 2015, 2015b).
Next to influential people, managers can also make use of a critical mass (Kalra & Baral, 2019). The perception of critical mass refers to the extent to which employees believe that a majority of em-ployees is using ESM (Chin et al., 2015b). When emem-ployees experience that a critical mass is using ESM, then this will increase the perceived value of the platform (Chin et al., 2015a, 2015b). Therefore, when managers aim to increase social connectedness, they should create the impression that a critical mass is using ESM (Kügler et al., 2015). The larger the critical mass, the higher the perceived value of ESM will be (Chin et al., 2015, 2015a).
DISCUSSION
The aim of this study was to describe and analyse the current literature on ESM implementations in organizations. Since so many organizations are failing to implement ESM successfully, and yet no com-prehensive review on ESM implementation processes had been conducted, there was a need for an over-view of the current knowledge on ESM implementations from a change management perspective. For that reason, the research question of this study was: what do we know so far about implementing ESM in organizations and what are the challenges and benefits that come with these implementations?
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indeed been found to be the main challenge of implementing ESM and it is the main reason why ESM implementations are failing (Bolisani et al., 2018; Rode, 2016).
Aside from explaining the current knowledge on the benefits and challenges of implementing ESM, the aim of this study was also to provide a complete overview of the process of implementing ESM. However, where the sample of articles provided a great deal of information on the benefits and challenges of ESM, there were many facets of the implementation process that gained only little atten-tion. As a result, many aspects of ESM implementations could only be described to a limited extent.
Firstly, information on the types of ESM technologies was lacking partially. Whereas 22 articles specifically described what technology was implemented and 14 articles at least mentioned what type of tools and features were included in their ESM system, a total of 13 articles provided no information on the technology that was implemented. This not only makes for an incomplete description of the im-plemented ESM technologies, but it also makes it difficult to compare the success of the different tech-nologies.
Secondly, regarding the process of implementing ESM, most articles lacked a description of how the ESM technology was implemented in the organization. In order to structure the information on the process of implementing ESM in an organization, the framework of Orenga-Roglá & Chalmeta (2019) was adopted. This framework depicts the complete process of implementing an ESM technology and divides it into seven phases. However, since many articles in the sample provided little to no infor-mation on how ESM was implemented, not all phases could be explained, and the overall description of the ESM implementation process has been limited. Still, this study has shown that it is very important for managers to know how to implement ESM and how to manage this process. Managers should, for example, make sure that their organizational culture (Bala et al., 2015; Dittes & Smolnik, 2019; Smith et al., 2017) and organizational structure (Bolisani et al., 2018; Giampaoli et al., 2017; Greeven & Williams, 2016) suits the use of an ESM platform. If this is not the case then this may undermine em-ployees’ participation in ESM (Chin et al., 2015b; Engler & Alpar, 2017, 2018). Furthermore, it has been shown that when change managers and top management establish an active attitude by providing training (Razmerita et al., 2016; Scarso & Bolisani, 2020; Sun et al., 2020) and support (Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2016; Men et al., 2020; Rode, 2016) that this can help stimulate employees’ engagement in ESM. So, since the role of management in the implementation process is so important, it is crucial that articles contain information on the process of implementation and the concrete steps that management could and should take to support this process.
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With regard to structure of this study, the CCP framework of Pettigrew (1987) was introduced in order to create structure in the overload of information that was provided by the sample. This frame-work has been a helpful tool, as it required specification of what the content, context, and process of ESM implementations involves, which made the ESM implementation processes easier to comprehend and it provided a solid foundation to examine how these aspects affect each other. This allowed for insights, such as the importance of the fit between the ESM technology and the organizational and task-related context, that might not have been gained otherwise.
However, there have also been some downsides to incorporating the CCP framework. Since Pettigrew (1987) provides no concrete guidelines on when and when not to attribute aspects to the in-terplay between pillars, the process of defining this inin-terplay can be arbitrary. Especially when infor-mation in the sample is unclear, there is room for discussion. For example, Heymann et al. (2020) de-scribed that employees often experience stress as a result of the implementation of ESM. Furthermore, they explained that this stress is generally moderated by the organizational culture and the mindset of employees. However, where these stressors originate from remains unexplained. In this study, these employee stressors have been assigned to a reaction of the context on the content, so the employees’ response on the new ESM platform. However, one could also argue that this stress is merely a product of poor process management and information provision, or even a combination of the two. Hence, where the CCP framework has served as a foundation and provided structure to the information on ESM im-plementations, it has also led to a certain degree of ambiguity.
Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research
Firstly, while systematic literature reviews are ought to be conducted by multiple researchers, this re-search was conducted by a single person. As a result, the re-search for literature has not been as extensive as expected of systematic reviews. The process of searching and the filtering process might have ex-cluded articles that were relevant to this research. Furthermore, more snowballing searches might also provide more relevant research, however, due to time constraints the choice was made to only use the snowballing technique for the key article of Leonardi et al. (2013). Future research could, therefore, focus on a more extensive search for articles in order to make sure that no relevant information is ne-glected.
