The Impact Of Social Technology On The Workplace

I was also directed from Google.co.uk to a number of personal and private blogs and forums that satisfied my search criteria. All these Web 2.0 tools greatly assisted me in completing my task and equipping me with the knowledge to do these again in future. “Web 2.0” is a term coined by Tim O’Reilly in 1999 to describe non – written script web pages. They allow me to improve my knowledge base and develop working understanding of IT systems through the use of Blogs, podcasts and Videos.

Social media will change the options and availability of the company to post and publish company information to its public. According to the fundamentals of organizational communication, organizational change is the “alterations in the organization whether planned or unplanned” (Shockley-Zalabak, 2014) and organizational innovation is, “development of ideas, practices, products, and processes which

Understanding the nature, role, importance, and value of tacit knowledge at individual or group level, is imprudent to formulating a KM strategy You must also formulate decisions about the organizations cultural change, picking the appropriate tools and finding a suitable measurement system. Without awareness of tacit knowledge any KM program is unlikely to maintain perspective and balance. In contrast to the views held by the tacit knowledge approach, the explicit knowledge approach shows that knowledge is something that can be explained by individuals. The explicit knowledge takes some effort and assistance may be required to obtain the desired knowledge. As a result, the explicit knowledge approach assumes that the useful tacit knowledge of individuals in organizations can be articulated and made explicit. The explicit knowledge approach also shows that explicit knowledge assets can then be dispersed within an organization through documents, drawings, standard operating procedures, manuals of best practice, and the like.

The use of social media leads to improved productivity within a workplace as a result of its knowledge sharing capabilities in conjunction with the development of a culture of a community work environment, willingness to share and cooperate.

media and social computing tools into their enterprises. The hope is that new social tools

(a) Introduced in 2004 by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty, Web 2.0 is the second generation of the development of the World Wide Web comparing to its first generation Web 1.0. As a platform of the network, Web 2.0 creates a dynamic web environment that promotes user participation and interaction, information sharing and social networking (O’Reilly 2009). Web 2.0 users are encouraged to better use the resource and create contents. While in the Web 1.0 world, websites are static and the internet users only can read the content and have no opportunity to interact with other users (Cormode and Krishnamurthy 2008). The following characteristics of Web 2.0 make it different from Web 1.0.

Online document services such as Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live Workspace allow documents to be created, edited, and stored online for collaboration by multiple people in multiple locations. Web 2.0 innovations including social networks and wikis are being utilized to support this interaction. Employees no longer have to be chained to a desk in an office building from the hours of nine to five (Bughin, Chui, and Miller; Robbins, and Coulter 196-197).

| Reinvested in the company or paid out to shareholders as dividends based on their share.

Knowledge is defined as “an understanding and one that gains knowledge through experience, reasoning, intuition and learning” (Cong, & Pandya, 2003, p. 2). Individuals can inflate their knowledge when they share their knowledge with others, and when knowledge is combined with other people’s knowledge they will begin to build new knowledge. It is also considered as a mixture of values, experience, background information, grounded intuition and authority insight that offers a framework and environment for integrating and gauging new information and experiences. It “is applied in the minds of knowers and in organizations, where it is often embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices and norms” (Cong, & Pandya, 2003, p. 2).

Web 2.0 is a term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term became notable after the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end- users utilize the Web. Basically, the term encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of

Social networking sites – or social media – is defined in the text as “online community for expanding users’ business or social contacts by making connections through their mutual business or personal connections.” (Laudon, & Laudon, 2010) In more practical terms I define social networking as usage of web tools to share gather and use knowledge about both your business and yourself. The intent of this paper is to identify areas where both business and business professions could best leverage social media for the advantage of the company.

In recent years the world has witnessed the rapid acceleration of a new class of information technologies, commonly known as social media. Social media supports interpersonal communication and collaboration through the use of internet-based platforms. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram are some of the well-known sites that are used by hundreds of millions of people. Although only 18 percent of managers believe that social media is important for their business today, more than 63 percent assert that they will be important for business within three years (Kiron et al. 2012). The economic impact of social media on business could exceed $1 trillion, most of which is gained from more efficient communication and collaboration within and across organizations (Chui et al. 2012). Many managerial challenges associated with applications of social media are consistent with those long recognized by the IS discipline (Kane et al. 2010). These new tools also provide users, managers, and developers with capabilities that allow them to act and interact with each other in ways that were difficult or were impossible to do in earlier online or offline settings. These novel capabilities may undermine or violate the assumptions of established theory, potentially requiring researchers to adapt theories for application to social media settings or possibly develop new ones (Majchrzak 2009).

Even though the original intention and many conservative business people still see social media as only intended for connecting friends, it has grown to be an important tool in management of both business and customer information as well as a marketing tool. As a result, social media has been one of the best business innovations in transforming the way business is transacted. Regardless of the conservative lot mentioned above, majority of business leaders have taken up social media as a tool in management of employees, marketing and communication.

Social media is becoming an increasingly common feature of
the world of work and this trend looks set to continue. This application of communication technology or computer mediated tools have developed rapidly in our lives. Survey such as that conducted by CIPD (2013) have shown that while only a quarter of UK employees use it in their professional lives, this increases to 42% among employees aged 18–24. The innovative operation mode of social media has not only successfully drawn the attention of industry and academia, but has also boosted user growth, especially in the younger generation.

Numerous case studies have indicated the important of the social media toward the organization. Social media allows organization to engage directly with stakeholder. This is the major characteristic why social media is popular in the 21 century. Two widely used means of online image construction and relationship building are blog and microblogging service. Those blog and web logs usually allow reader comments, and often use tags to permit topical searching. Social