Does the participation in internal social media increase the connectedness of employees within multinational companies?

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FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS, RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN

Does the participation in internal

social media increase the

connectedness of employees within

multinational companies?

A case study on knowledge sharing, international

cooperation and learning within Shell

Sophie Paulides (S2077310)

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Acknowledgements

There are a number of individuals that have made it possible for me to write this thesis. I would like to take this opportunity to show my appreciation for these people.

First of all, I would like to thank Peter Kemper for the opportunity to assist with the analysis of Yammer and to obtain all of the relevant information for my thesis. I have greatly appreciated your knowledge, advice and support. Secondly, I would like to thank Griet Johansson for helping me organise the interviews for this thesis. Your continued feedback and helpfulness was highly valued. I would also like to thank Joris Groenendijk and Donna Hendrix, for their useful feedback and support.

I would like to thank Frouke de Poel for your encouragement, enthusiasm, knowledge and advice. I could not have had a better supervisor for my thesis.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my father for all of his feedback and support during all of my studies and particularly whilst I was writing this thesis.

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List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1: Research Model Figure 2: Methodology Plan Table 1: Descriptive Statistics

Table 2: Regression Analysis: Knowledge Sharing

Table 3: Regression Analysis: International Cooperation Table 4: Regression Analysis: Learning

Table 5: Experience and Learning Table 6: Summary In-‐depth Interviews

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Introduction

The growth in large multinational companies over the past half a century has resulted in teams of employees that are located across the globe. The Economist (2010) argues that “the rise of vast, globe-‐spanning corporate empires with hundreds of thousands of employees” has resulted in these employees often feeling isolated within their teams. This means that multinational companies are increasing their efforts to connect employees and teams with each other through social network initiatives. These initiatives allow the sharing of valuable information and cooperation regardless of an employee’s physical location (The Economist, 2010). Social media has therefore played an increasingly large role within multinational companies. In the digital world that has emerged the way people communicate and interact has drastically changed. Individuals and, more importantly, employees can now easily share and create content, ideas and opinions with other employees, whenever and wherever they are.

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they have employees scattered across the globe and therefore cannot physically share knowledge or cooperate with all of their co-‐workers (Kotlarsky and Oshri, 2005). Internal social media can in this case create a virtual hallway that allows employees to connect with each other regardless of where they are located (Baehr, IEEE Member and Alex-‐ Brown, 2010; Kotlarsky and Oshri, 2005).

The literature on internal social media is relatively new. The range of studies on this topic has largely focused on the use of internal social media within large, technical, multinational companies. This paper researches the relationship between the participation in internal social media tools and an increase and improvement in connectedness between the employees of Shell, a global energy and petrochemical company. This case study will add value to existing literature by looking at a large multinational company and its experience with internal social media, which can have important managerial implications. The international nature of Shell has resulted in teams whose members are not in the same location or country, therefore making the analysis of international connectedness very relevant. The case study on Shell can be compared to existing literature and their findings. More importantly, it may add to existing evidence that internal social media is beneficial for large multinational companies. More generally, the results of this paper will give international managers an indication of the benefits of internal social media for global companies. This study can show international managers what to focus on when implementing and actively encouraging international cooperation, learning and knowledge sharing between employees that are scattered across the globe.

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in the participation in internal social media within Shell depending on the experience an employee already had with internal social media tools. This has not yet been studied sufficiently in previous literature and can have important managerial implications. By looking at employees’ previous experience with other internal social media, international managers will be able to see whether this has an influence on how employees use the new internal social media tools introduced by a multinational company.

The approach that will be used for this paper will consist of the conduction of in-‐depth interviews and a quantitative analysis of the participation in internal social media at Shell. The paper will contain a detailed analysis of Yammer, an internal social media tool implemented by Shell in order to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing. This analysis will have direct influence on the decision of whether Yammer should be implemented as a long-‐term tool.

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In order to give this paper a more concrete focus and to answer the above stated problem statements, the following research questions are the focus of this study: Does the participation in internal social media by the employees of a firm facilitate better knowledge sharing, international cooperation and learning within an international workplace? And does experience influence the participation in internal social media tools within multinational companies? The first research question investigates whether internal social media tools can enable better connectedness between employees, especially across international borders. Seeing as Shell is a large multinational company with employees in many different countries, this is a particularly relevant case study. The second question analyses experience as a factor that could potentially influence the participation in internal social media within Shell. The importance of the implementation of these kinds of technologies to multinational companies is obvious, especially at Shell. This paper therefore provides an important analysis that will answer whether these technologies actually provide the results these companies are looking for.

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Theoretical Background

Theoretical Framework

Internal Social Media

Social media can be broadly defined as the creation of user-‐generated content and a facilitator of communication between individuals and groups (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Initially, the popularity of social media spread to companies in terms of “business-‐to-‐consumer” networking through Web tools such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (McKinsey, 2010). In recent years a new term has materialized: “Enterprise 2.0”. According to Levy (2009) Enterprise 2.0 can be seen as the implementation of social media by companies in order to connect employees with each other. According to McKinsey (2010) and Bughin (2008), the emergence of Enterprise 2.0 began with a sceptical attitude from managers, as this new technology could have easily been a fad or another Internet bubble. However, over the past four years, more and more multinational companies have realised the benefits that come with connecting “the internal efforts of employees” (McKinsey, 2010), especially across borders. Bughin (2008) explains that this trend is taking place globally and that many large companies are adopting social media technologies. Social media is relatively intangible, meaning that many multinational companies are unsure of what value it will add if they start using it. This has resulted in studies such as those by Fisher (2009), which try to find a method for calculating the return on investment of social media. However, what is more relevant for this paper are the case studies that have emerged on internal social media, such as the paper by Baehr, IEEE Member and Alex-‐Brown on Dell, by Brzozowski on Hewlett Packard and by Barker on Sun Microsystems. These make this paper on Shell particularly relevant, as this case study might be able to add to the evidence found in other case studies on multinational companies.

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Marfleet (2008) explains that the social software used within companies can include things such as wikis, instant messaging, blogs and online communities. Essentially, many companies that now use internal social media systems to share and create content have gone from a top-‐down, hierarchical communication structure to an increasingly bottom-‐ up one. (Grudin and Poole, 2010). This means that employees can easily share information and communicate with each other regardless of their position within the firm. Enterprise 2.0 has revolutionised the way employees within a firm interact with each other and has provided large, complex multinational companies with huge opportunities.

Knowledge Sharing

Baehr, IEEE Member and Alex-‐Brown (2010) explain that today knowledge might be the most important asset a company has in order to remain competitive and innovative. Internal social media tools can play an important role in retaining and sharing this information within the company (Baehr, IEEE Member and Alex-‐Brown, 2010). They also explain how information and communication are especially important within large global companies, where knowledge has to be transferred across “geographical distance, cultural differences and different time zones” (Baehr, IEEE Member and Alex-‐ Brown, 2010). This results in constraints such as distance and culture, and makes it more difficult for these employees to share information (Kotlarsky and Oshri, 2005).

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units and/or across different time zones, which meant that most of the time they could only interact online. The main conclusion of the paper is that social media encourages the sharing of knowledge between employees and provides people within the organisation with a sense of connection despite the fact that many teams are located in different places. The employees that were put into “virtual teams” found that the less collocated they were to their colleagues; the more they valued the ability to share knowledge online, as it would have been very difficult to do this without internal social media (Brzozowski, 2009). The author therefore suggests that the benefits from “WaterCooler”, and internal social media in general, will be greater for globally distributed firms, as their employees are more limited in the ways they are able to share knowledge.

Another example of previous literature is the study by Grudin and Poole (2010). These authors look at internal wiki use by several companies. A wiki, which can be appropriately defined by Wikipedia (2011), is “a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser”, for example a corporate intranet. This study presents a similar conclusion to Brzozowski (2009). The authors find that individual contributors drove the use of the wiki. These employees found that the wiki allowed them to search for information and saw it as a “place for knowledge that is usually shared informally, and not necessarily efficiently.” This means that before the wiki was available there was a vast amount of knowledge within the company that was never documented or was inaccessible because employees did not know where this knowledge was. With the implementation of the wiki, a large amount of this knowledge could be transferred to an online medium where people can search for it and save it, so that it can be passed on within the organisation (Grudin and Poole, 2010). This can create huge benefits for a multinational company, whose employees, and therefore their knowledge, are even more inaccessible because they are physically located far away.

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Finally, Baehr, IEEE Member and Alex-‐Brown (2010) study the use and value of corporate blogs at Dell using Social Capital Theory. They use both quantitative and qualitative methods to study vale of a corporate blog in terms of managing knowledge within the organisation. They find that an organisational blog can “help improve knowledge-‐sharing activities”. Both managers and employees within a team first of all felt a sense of duty to contribute to the blog in order to share information and knowledge. As they became more aware of the value of the blog, their contribution became more and more voluntary, and became part of an important way of communicating.

Out of all three studies, all three social media tools implemented bear similarities to the tool implemented by Shell (Yammer). The aim of all three tools was to share knowledge through the posting of information. Yammer is similar in this respect, which leads to the formulation of the first hypothesis:

H1: The participation in social media tools within Shell has a positive relationship with

knowledge sharing between employees.

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International Cooperation

Previous studies on internal social media mainly research knowledge sharing as an effect. However, Yammer also allows interaction between employees on levels other than knowledge sharing. This means it goes a step further than other internal social media tools have done and also facilitates international cooperation and learning between employees. It will therefore be interesting to see whether the results within Shell also differ from previous studies, which is why the next two hypotheses will be studied.

First of all the existing literature on international cooperation will be reviewed. With Yammer, not only can employees share knowledge, information and experiences with each other, they can also actively cooperate across borders. This means that employees can actually work with each other rather than just absorb information for their own use. Multinational companies have employees in many different locations. This can result in the globally distributed “virtual teams” that were mentioned earlier. In the case that a team is created where the members are located in different places, internal barriers to cooperation can be created due to geographical distance (Brzozowski, 2009). The Economist (2010) explains how companies are becoming increasingly interested in social media systems that operate behind the “corporate firewall” in order to improve collaboration between these employees. They give the example of Danone, which has employees in over 100 countries and is testing these types of networks to see if they can stimulate the working together of teams in different locations (The Economist, 2010). Shell is very much the same in this respect, as it is an extremely global company with teams located across the world. This means that Yammer, which is available to all employees, should be able to connect Shell’s “virtual teams” with each other.

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Microsystems, a multinational company from America that was acquired by Oracle in 2009 (CrunchBase, 2011). The study by Barker (2008) draws some interesting conclusions. It is argued that the company’s aim is to allow people to work from the “location that is most productive and convenient on a given day” (Barker, 2008). In order to make this flexible and remote work possible, whilst still being able to cooperate within a team, social media tools prove to be very useful. They essentially create a “virtual hallway”, which is important for knowledge retention, but also creates a medium where employees can interact with each other regardless of their physical location (Barker, 2008). If we compare this to Yammer, then it can be seen that Yammer also has the opportunity to improve cooperation with teams from remote places, as there are many employees for example in isolated locations, such as oil platforms.

Kotlarsky and Oshri (2005) argue that for globally distributed teams informal communications are particularly important for better cooperation. The authors explain that when communication is restricted due to “time, cultural and geographical distances”, it is important for effective communication and cooperation, to be open with each other (Kotlarsky and Oshri, 2005). This openness in turn depends largely on trust, which is stimulated with frequent personal contact and socialising between employees (Kotlarsky and Oshri, 2005). Allowing individuals within an organisation to more easily connect with each other in this way, where otherwise it would have been difficult, allows them to create a shared vision and better cooperate in the future (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998). Therefore, internal social media can be a facilitator of international cooperation between employees.

The discussion above leads to the second hypothesis of this paper:

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Based on the previous literature that has been studied, which finds that internal social media tools facilitate international cooperation, this hypothesis will examine whether this has also been the case at Shell.

Learning

Thus far, a distinction has been made between knowledge sharing and cooperation across borders. Another crucial part of social media is the ability to learn from other expertise within the company. This is similar to knowledge sharing in the sense that it allows employees to obtain valuable information. However, according to Senge (1990) and Wang and Ahmed (2003), organisational learning is more about the further adjustment and improvement of activities after this information has been obtained. This means that employees acquire information and then use this to improve something they are doing or use the information to solve a problem. This is also supported by Wang and Ahmed (2003), who argue that organisational learning is a very broad concept but includes the ability to solve problems. Therefore learning differs from just knowledge sharing because it goes a step further and also assists employees specifically in the resolving of problems. These employees are learning something from others’ experiences or mistakes. Hence, learning will be looked at separately.

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variety of places they are located at. The “’always-‐on’ nature of social media tools” allows employees to work from remote places and means they can easily locate others within the company that have the expertise to help them get work done faster (Barker, 2008). They are able to look up information and learn from employees that are located elsewhere and may have encountered the same problem or project. This should therefore also be the case with Yammer.

The discussion above leads to the third hypothesis of this paper:

learning from other employees.

Based on the previous literature that has been studied, which finds that internal social media tools facilitate learning, this hypothesis will examine whether this has also been the case at Shell.

Experience

So far the three direct relations between internal social media and its benefits have been described, namely the sharing of knowledge, international cooperation and learning. When analysing the participation in internal social media by multinational companies, a lot of the literature raises the issue of motivation (Brzozowski, Sandholm and Hogg, 2009). The creation of online communities or other social media platforms within a firm will only be beneficial if employees are motivated to participate in them. Therefore, in order to realise these benefits companies need one crucial element; that employees actually use the tools provided. One motivation for using internal social media tools that is described in previous literature is the experience employees already have with social media (DiMicco, et al., 2008). This factor may be indirectly linked to internal social media. Therefore this factor will be looked at separately as an indirect influencer on the relationship between internal social media and its benefits.

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DiMicco, et al. (2008) argue that the previous experience of an employee with social media can motivate them to use the internal social media tools provided by their company. They explain that because social networking has become so popular in people’s private lives, it is expected “that employees will use a company-‐sponsored tool” (DiMicco, et al., 2008). This means that if individuals are used to using social media sites in their daily lives at home, they will be more likely to also try the social media within their enterprise. Jue, Marr and Kassotakis (2010) also explain how people are becoming more and more used to using social media tools in their daily lives. As they become increasingly comfortable with this, they will start to actually expect companies to provide the ability to communicate, connect and collaborate via social media at work (Jue, Marr and Kassotakis, 2010). Consequently, it can be argued that the higher an individual’s experience with social media in general, the more likely they will be to participate with the internal social media of a company.

The literature on experience and internal social media is relatively limited, as it has not been studied much before. Comparable literature has been written on age as a factor that influences the motivation to use internal social media. Efimova and Grudin (2007) argue that the early adopters of new technology, such as social media, are almost always people in their late teens or early twenties. Therefore, these younger people who become employees of a firm will probably be more open to using internal social media tools provided by the company, whereas older employees might be a little more sceptical (Efimova and Grudin, 2007). Because of strict privacy regulations at Shell, age was not available as information to use for this thesis. Therefore experience will be the focus of this part of the analysis.

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more likely to use the social media introduced in a corporate environment. Therefore, the final hypothesis is:

H4: The amount of experience with (internal) social media networks influences the

relationship between the participation in internal social media tools within Shell and connectedness (the perception of knowledge sharing, international cooperation and learning).

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Research Model

Figure 1 gives an overview of the relationships and hypothesis that were stated in the previous section. This model is therefore based on previous literature and the idea that the participation in internal social media can facilitate better international cooperation, knowledge sharing and learning. These three elements are represented by the umbrella term “connectedness”, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Research Model

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Research Design

As this paper examines one company, it takes the form of a case-‐study approach. This means the study conducts an intensive analysis of one unit and can be used for both theory building and theory testing (Thomas, 2004; Eisenhardt, 1989). In this paper, a single case is used to test the theory and findings presented by previous literature.

Case Introduction: Shell

Company Background

Shell is a multinational energy and petrochemical company. Since Peter Voser became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the company’s aim has been to become the most innovative and competitive oil and gas company (Shell, 2011).

Case Study Selection

Shell has over 93,000 employees in over 90 different countries, making it a particularly relevant case study for studying connectedness across borders (Shell, 2011). The fact that so many employees are located in different places makes it even more important to enable these employees to virtually connect with each other and share their knowledge and experiences. Furthermore, as Shell is a large multinational company, this case study will be able to tell managers important information on whether the participation in internal social media can be beneficial to multinational companies, and what factors might influence the participation by employees in these internal social media tools.

Yammer

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introduced as a collaborative and knowledge sharing platform for employees within Shell. The idea behind Yammer is to combine elements from both Twitter and Facebook to allow employees to post ideas, questions and experiences, and to connect with each other. It was introduced initially as a pilot project to be tested and observed over a period of time. This would allow Shell to make a decision on whether the tool has added value and whether it should be implemented in the long run (Application Portfolio Manager, Learning, Organizational Effectiveness and Diversity & Inclusiveness, Shell, 2011).

Yammer Survey

To help with this decision and the analysis of Yammer a survey was launched by the department within Shell called Learning, Organizational Effectiveness and Diversity & Inclusiveness. This survey was first launched in March 2011, asking a series of questions about the employee’s usage of Yammer and specifically about knowledge sharing, connectedness and how employees viewed manager support of the tool. This survey was sent round again in June 2011, which would allow a comparative analysis to be done to see how the attitude towards Yammer has changed over time. The respondents’ personal information remained anonymous due to strict privacy regulations within Shell. The full list of questions asked in this survey can be found in Appendix A.

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Data Collection

This paper largely focuses on this one particular internal social media tool within Shell: Yammer. A large part of the data collected by Shell through the two survey rounds was extremely useful for this thesis. In return for using this data, some research questions were analysed for Shell. This project was run separately to this thesis and produced a summary document about the main findings on knowledge sharing, connectedness, leadership support and the effects of the working environment. The conclusion of this project can be found in Appendix B. The summary document produced was sent to Shell and was used in their decision of whether to keep Yammer as a long run tool. The data used for the regression analysis in this paper was taken from the survey on Yammer that was sent round by Shell. As will be explained in the next section, the rest of the data for this thesis was collected through a number of interviews conducted by myself.

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Research Method

This study consists of a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Using qualitative methods in the form of interviews, the paper initially focuses more generally on internal social media within Shell, in order to get an idea of how Shell uses internal social media and what their view is towards it. The paper then focuses on Yammer using both quantitative and qualitative techniques to test the hypotheses that were set out. Yammer is effectively used as a case study to answer the paper’s research questions and the results of this paper provided valuable insights into the potential benefits or drawbacks of internal social media tools. Figure 2 shows the phases of the methodology, which will then be explained in more detail.

Figure 2: Methodology Plan

Qualitative Analysis I: Initial Interviews

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learning. They are also based on the research questions and hypotheses that were constructed. The full list of interview questions can be found in Appendix C.

There are many factors to be considered when constructing and conducting interviews. One of the most important limitations of interviewing is interviewer bias and their ability to influence the answers of the respondent (Thomas, 2004). Also, both the questioner and the respondent must understand what is meant by the question. Another important consideration is whether open or closed questions should be asked, although usually a combination of both is used. Finally, Thomas (2004) explains how all questions asked should be relevant and non-‐biased. Therefore, the structure of the interview and the questions asked should be carefully chosen in order to obtain reliable and valid information.

In total, three in-‐depth interviews will be conducted for this part of the analysis. The first will be with the Vice-‐President Web Communications, the second will be with a Global Social Media Advisor, and the final interview will be with the Application Portfolio Manager, Learning, Organizational Effectiveness and Diversity & Inclusiveness. Unfortunately, more information about these respondents, such as age and gender, cannot be stated in this paper due to very strict privacy regulations within Shell.

Quantitative Analysis: Regression Analysis

The quantitative part of the analysis uses data from the survey that was constructed and sent round by Shell. There are several variables that could be taken from the second round of survey data that were important in terms of how they are related to each other. Most of the survey questions are answered by choosing a number from 1-‐5 representing how much the respondent agreed with a statement. For one question, a number from 1-‐6 has to be chosen instead of from 1-‐5.

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1. Participation in Yammer (independent variable)

• I participate in online discussions using Yammer (scale of 1-‐6, 6 being the highest).

2. Knowledge sharing (dependent variable)

• Yammer facilitates the sharing of knowledge (scale of 1-‐5, 5 being the highest).

3. International Cooperation (dependent variable)

• Yammer allows cooperation across organisational boundaries (scale of 1-‐5, 5 being the highest).

Only employees within Shell use Yammer, so “organisational boundaries” can be interpreted as the organisational borders within Shell. Shell is a large multinational company therefore this also entails the international borders within Shell, as there are many employees and teams located in other countries. This variable therefore represents international cooperation by employees.

4. Learning (dependant variable)

• Yammer helps in learning from the best practice of others (scale of 1-‐5, 5 being the highest).

5. Perceived Value of Yammer

• I do see business value in Yammer (scale of 1-‐5, 5 being the highest).

This variable was added solely for the descriptive statistics. It would be interesting to see what the average perceived value of Yammer was. This variable was not used for the regression analysis (scale of 1-‐5, 5 being the highest).

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6. Experience

• How much experience the respondent has with social media within Shell (scale of 1-‐3, 3 being the highest).

Experience is added to create dummy variables. The data for the dummy variables is taken from the information collected by Shell about the respondents. Experience is divided into three categories: respondents who had already been using ITGN (a social network within Shell that already existed before Yammer), those that had not been using ITGN but answered the Yammer survey in both the first and second round and those that only answered in the second round of the Yammer survey. The ones that had been using ITGN are considered as the most experienced and the ones that only answered in the second round are considered as the least experienced. These three categories create two dummy variables, which are then also used to create interaction variables. These are generated by multiplying each dummy variable with the participation variable for each respondent. These interaction variables can then be used in the regression analysis to see whether experience in combination with the participation in Yammer has an influence on the dependant variables.

The first step of the quantitative analysis is to generate the descriptive statistics for all the variables. ISPSS generates the default set of descriptive statistics for each variable. Secondly, the correlation between all the variables is tested. This measures whether there is a one-‐on-‐one correlation between two variables and whether this correlation is positive or negative. Finally, a multiple regression analysis is used to test these relationships further.

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variable. The dependant variables are the sharing of knowledge, international cooperation and learning. The regression analysis shows how much the dependent variables change as a result of the independent variable.

Qualitative Analysis II: In-‐depth Interviews Yammer Users

Following the first round of interviews and the quantitative analysis, it is useful when going into the analysis of Yammer, to interview several users of the tool. This provides some qualitative and in-‐depth information on how these interviewees have experienced internal social media. It also provides an insight into some of the most common things that motivate people to use internal social media tools and whether they believe they improve knowledge sharing, international cooperation and learning. The questions asked in these interviews can be found in Appendix D.

The people to be interviewed are chosen based on two very simple criteria; they have been using Yammer and they are willing to participate in an in-‐depth interview. Their personal information, such as age and gender, will remain anonymous, as there are strict privacy rules with regard to the employees within Shell. The people that are interviewed are from a range of different lines of business and different locations around the world. They include the following positions within Shell: Contracts Engineer of Major Projects, Reservoir Engineer, Manager Drilling Mechanics Technologies, Global Retrofit Manager and a MED Marketing Manager. The interviewees therefore include a range of different managerial and other positions plus there is a mix of different departments, making the sample more representative of Shell as a whole.

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Results

Initial Interviews Results

Knowledge Sharing

The first round of interviews provides some initial support for the hypotheses set out. First of all, two interviewees mentioned that one of the main aims of internal social media is to share and retain knowledge within the organisation, which highly supports the first hypothesis; the participation in social media tools within Shell has a positive influence on knowledge sharing between employees. The third respondent did not comment on this. According to the other two “it is important to obtain knowledge from the people that are the experts today, so that this can be distributed to other people. Furthermore, knowledge sharing will allow Shell to obtain value through the prevention of problems. Internal social media is the enabler of knowledge sharing and connectedness between employees.”

One respondent mentioned that the communication between an employee in one line of business and an employee in another line of business is not yet happening to the same degree as employees’ cooperation within the same line of business, which to some extent contradicts the second hypothesis; the participation in social media tools within Shell has a positive influence on cooperation across organisational borders. The other two respondents did not comment on international cooperation.

Learning

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able to learn from the mistakes and problems of others, for example in remote places such as oil platforms. On top of this, it was mentioned by two respondents that internal social media provides a two-‐way feedback system, where not only employees can learn from other employees, but managers and executives can also obtain valuable bottom-‐ up feedback.

Experience

Finally there were several comments relating to the fourth hypothesis; the amount of experience with social media networks has an influence on the participation in internal social media tools within Shell and connectedness. All three respondents mentioned that ages can influence the participation in social media, however it does not fully account for it. There will still be some senior managers who might be much more open to social media than younger people. Therefore, it is much more important to see whether someone already uses social media actively as an individual, as it will give an indication of whether they understand the significance and opportunities of internal social media within the workplace.

Another interesting point that was mentioned by all three employees interviewed is that they all see social media within Shell as relatively young. All three also believe that there will be expansion of internal social media tools in the future and that the Yammer pilot project can play a role in this development.

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Regression Results

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the variables studied. These include the means, standard deviations and the correlations.

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics

Mean (M), Standard Deviation (SD) and correlations matrix for all variables

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Participation in Yammer 1.76 1.07 -‐ 2. Knowledge Sharing 3.05 1.08 0.46** -‐ 3. International Cooperation 3.41 0.85 0.40** 0.62** -‐ 4. Learning 3.40 0.88 0.39** 0.65** 0.74** -‐ 5. Perceived Value 3.30 1.00 0.46** 0.73** 0.62** 0.70** -‐ 6. Experience -‐ -‐ -‐0.04 -‐0.01 0.01 -‐0.04 -‐0.02 -‐ ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

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respondents were in category 3, meaning they had the most experience with internal social media tools.

There is a significant and positive correlation of 0.46** (p < 0.01) between the participation in Yammer and knowledge sharing, as shown in Table 1, which provides some initial support for the first hypothesis; the participation in social media tools within Shell has a positive influence on knowledge sharing between employees. There is also a significant and positive correlation of 0.40** (p < 0.01) between the participation in Yammer and international cooperation, which is supporting of the second hypothesis; the participation in social media tools within Shell has a positive influence on cooperation across organisational borders. Finally, Table 1 presents a significant and positive correlation of 0.39** (p < 0.01) between the participation in Yammer and learning, which provides initial support for the third hypothesis; the participation in social media tools within Shell has a positive influence on learning from other employees. Because the experience variable’s data is ordinal, this means nonparametric statistics (i.e. Spearman’s correlation), had to be applied to this variable (Field, 2009). Table 1 shows that there are no significant correlations between experience and the other variables. The next step of this study was the regression analysis.

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Knowledge Sharing

Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis on knowledge sharing. Table 2: Regression Analysis: Knowledge Sharing

Results of the three steps regression analysis

Knowledge Sharing

Variable Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

(b) (b) (b) Participation in Yammer 0.46** 0.47** 0.44** Dummy 1 0.004 -‐0.03 Dummy 2 0.03 -‐0.04 Interaction Variable 1 0.02 Interaction Variable 2 0.04 R2 0.21** 0.21** 0.21** ΔR2 0.21 0.00 0.00 ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05, ~ p < 0.10

Table 2 shows strong support for Hypothesis 1, as a significant and positive relationship can be observed between the participation in Yammer and knowledge sharing (b = 0.44, p < 0.01). This means that the participation in Yammer has a significant influence on knowledge sharing; the regression results suggest that an increase of 1 in the participation in Yammer results in an increase of 0.44 in knowledge sharing between employees. The value of R2 _{shows
that
the
participation
in
Yammer
can
account
for
21%} of the variation in knowledge sharing. This does not change when the dummy variables are added, meaning that this variation is only due to the participation in Yammer.

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Table 3 shows the results of the regression analysis on international cooperation. Table 3: Regression Analysis: International Cooperation

Results of the three steps regression analysis

Variable Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

(b) (b) (b) Participation in Yammer 0.32** 0.31** 0.33** Dummy 1 (Experience) 0.02 0.08 Dummy 2 (Experience) -‐0.02 -‐0.02 Interaction Variable 1 -‐0.03 Interaction Variable 2 0.001 R2 0.16** 0.16** 0.16** ΔR2 0.16 0.00 0.00 ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05, ~ p < 0.10

The regression results presented in Table 3 provide strong support for Hypothesis 2. They show that the participation in Yammer has a significant and positive influence on international cooperation (b = 0.33, p < 0.01). This means that respondents of the survey felt that the more they participate in Yammer, the more they were able to cooperate across organisational boundaries. The value of R2 shows that the participation in Yammer can account for 16% of the variation in international cooperation. This does not change when the dummy variables are added, meaning that this variation is only due to the participation in Yammer.

Does the participation in internal social media increase the connectedness of employees within multinational companies?