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Transparency—the observability of activities, behaviors, and performance—is often treated as a panaceafor modern management. Yet there is a conundrum in the literature, with some studies suggesting thattransparency may benefit group creativity and others suggesting that privacy may do so. A similarconundrum exists regarding the effects of different social capital types—structural holes vs. networkcohesion—on group creativity. Enterprise social media (ESM) provide a unique opportunity to solve theseconundrums by allowing groups to be “transparent” (non-group members can observe and/or participatein group activities) or “private” (group members and activities are hidden from the community) andenabling groups to develop distinct social capital structures. Using data from 28,083 written interactionsproduced by 109 transparent and 106 private groups in an ESM of a multinational design firm, we foundstrong support for our contingency hypotheses that both transparent and private groups may produce highlevels of creative dialogues, yet in different forms. Specifically, expansion-focused creative dialogues—those focused on combining or expanding existing concepts—emerge in transparent groups, but onlywhen the group’s social capital is characterized by structural holes. Conversely, we found that reframingfocused dialogues—those focused on challenging and rethinking—emerge in private groups but onlywhen the group’s social capital is characterized by network cohesion. Theoretically, these findings canhelp to solve the conundrums in the literature on group creativity and shed light on the role of ESM usein this context. Practically, our findings offer a critical reflection o contemporary initiatives for increasingtransparency, whether through physical design or digital transformation.

 

This paper explores the adoption of a group-based Enterprise Social Media (ESM) tool (i.e., Microsoft Teams) in the context of a mid-sized undergraduate course in Information and Technology Management (ITM), thereby providing insights into the use and design of tools for group-based learning settings. The study used a mixed-methods approach—interviews, surveys, and server-side (i.e., objective) data—to investigate the effects of three core ESM affordances (i.e., editability, persistence, and visibility) on students’ perceptions of ESM functionality and efficiency, and in turn, on ESM-enabled perceived team productivity as well as the students’ level of system usage. Through leveraging a combination of qualitative and quantitative (both unobtrusive and self-reported) data, this paper aims to provide insights into the use of ESMs in group-based classrooms which is a theme of great importance given the need for high-quality online education experiences, especially during the current pandemic. 

Cherchiglia et al. Effects of ESM Use for Classroom Teams Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Pre-ICIS Workshop on HCI Research in MIS, Virtual Conference, December 12, 2020 1 An Exploration of the Effects of Enterprise Social Media Use for Classroom Teams Leticia Cherchiglia Michigan State University leticia@msu.edu Wietske Van Osch HEC Montreal & Michigan State University wietske.van-osch@hec.ca Yuyang Liang Michigan State University liangyuy@msu.edu Elisavet Averkiadi Michigan State University averkiad@msu.edu ABSTRACT This paper explores the adoption of Microsoft Teams, a group-based Enterprise Social Media (ESM) tool, in the context of a hybrid Information Technology Management undergraduate course from a large midwestern university. With the primary goal of providing insights into the use and design of tools for group-based educational settings, we constructed a model to reflect our expectations that core ESM affordances would enhance students’ perceptions of Microsoft Teams’ functionality and efficiency, which in turn would increase both students’ perceptions of group productivity and students’ actual usage of Microsoft Teams for communication purposes. In our model we used three core ESM affordances from Treem and Leonardi (2013), namely editability (i.e., information can be created and/or edited after creation, usually in a collaborative fashion), persistence (i.e., information is stored permanently), and visibility (i.e., information is visible to other users). Analysis of quantitative (surveys, server-side; N=62) and qualitative (interviews; N=7) data led to intriguing results. It seems that although students considered that editability, persistency, and visibility affordances within Microsoft Teams were convenient functions of this ESM, problems when working collaboratively (such as connectivity, formatting, and searching glitches) might have prevented considerations of this ESM as fast and user-friendly (i.e., efficient). Moreover, although perceived functionality and efficiency were positively connected to group productivity, hidden/non-intuitive communication features within this ESM might help explain the surprising negative connection between efficiency and usage of this ESM for the purpose of group communication. Another explanation is that, given the plethora of competing tools specifically designed to afford seamless/optimal team communication, students preferred to use more familiar tools or tools perceived as more efficient for group communication than Microsoft Teams, a finding consistent with findings in organizational settings (Van Osch, Steinfield, and Balogh, 2015). Beyond theoretical contributions related to the impact that ESM affordances have on users’ interaction perceptions, and the impact of users’ interaction perceptions on team and system outcomes, from a strategic and practical point of view, our findings revealed several challenges for the use of Microsoft Teams (and perhaps ESM at large) in educational settings: 1) As the demand for online education grows, collaborative tools such as Microsoft Teams should strive to provide seamless experiences for multiple-user access to files and messages; 2) Microsoft Teams should improve its visual design in order to increase ease of use, user familiarity, and intuitiveness; 3) Microsoft Teams appears to have a high-learning curve, partially related to the fact that some features are hidden or take extra steps/clicks to be accessed, thus undermining their use; 4) Team communication is a complex topic which should be further studied because, given the choice, students will fall upon familiar tools therefore undermining the full potential for team collaboration through the ESM. We expect that this paper can provide insights for educators faced with the choice for an ESM tool best-suited for group-based classroom settings, as well as designers interested in adapting ESMs to educational contexts, which is a promising avenue for market expansion. 

Teamwork is at the heart of most organizations today. Given increased pressures for organizations to be flexible, and adaptable, teams are organizing in novel ways, using novel technologies to be increasingly agile. One of these technologies that are increasingly used by distributed teams is Enterprise Social Media (ESM): web-based applications utilized by organizations for enabling communication and collaboration between distributed employees. ESM feature unique affordances that facilitate collaboration, including interactions that are generative: group conversations that entail the creation of innovative concepts and resolutions. These types of interactions are an important attraction for companies deciding to implement ESM. There is a unique opportunity offered for researchers in the field of HCI to study such generative interactions, as all contributions to an ESM platform are made visible, and therefore are available for analysis. Our goal in this preliminary study is to understand the nature of group generative interactions through their linguistic indicators. In this study, we utilize data from an ESM platform used by a multinational organization. Using a 1% sub sample of all logged group interactions, we apply machine-learning to classify text as generative or non-generative and extract the linguistic antecedents for the classified generative content. Our results show a promising method for investigating the linguistic indicators of generative content and provide a proof of concept for investigating group interactions in unobtrusive ways. Additionally, our results would also be able to provide an analytics tool for managers to measure the extent to which text-based tools, such as ESM, effectively nudge employees towards generative behaviors. 

Companies hold particular interest in group generative interactions - the conception of novel ideas and solutions through group exchanges. They are a root-cause of innovation and thus are important to companies’ survival. Enterprise Social Media (ESM) offer a unique opportunity to study generative group interactions, due to the transparent nature of activities on these platforms. In this research-in-progress paper, we conduct a preliminary analysis to develop a method that could identify the instances of ESM-based generative group interactions, where we focus on distinguishing generative versus non-generative group interactions. To do this, we used the text from all group interactions from an ESM platform of a multinational organization. We implemented machine learning models to learn and classify the text as generative or non-generative. As a result, we produced the top important term features from the best performing model. These features will help us understand the nature of discussions that occur in these interactions in future studies. 

ESM have created new opportunities for groups of individuals to create networks of connections, including previously unknown others inside the same organization. The formation of social capital in the context of ESM is inherently affected by the visibility affordance of these tools, resulting in either visible or invisible groups. As such, ESM offered a unique opportunity to assess the effects of visibility on group processes, specifically in the context of social capital formation. Given that past research has had a strong positivity bias with respect to the role of visibility on organizational processes, we developed and validated a framework that incorporated both visibility and invisibility and suggested that social capital formation can emerge within both visible and invisible groups, yet, that the exact form of social capital—i.e., bonding or bridging—are shaped by the visibility settings of the group and the level of discussions ongoing in the group. Therefore, as researchers of ESM technologies, we must be cautious in generalizing about the unequivocal effects of visibility and instead must be sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of visible versus invisible groups and their emergent network structures. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.