OD 2.0: Shifting from disruptive to innovative technology

Reference: Iverson, K., and Vukotich, G. (2009). OD 2.0: Shifting from disruptive to innovative technology. OD Practitioner, 4:2, 43-49.

Although OD Practitioner is a peer reviewed publication, the referenced work is not strictly a research article.  It poses no research questions and develops no new theory.  This article was meant instead to provide a framework for OD practitioners to view Web 2.0 technology and social media as tools for their practice.  For social media researchers, however, I think it provides some insights about how to think about the usage and implementation of social media in organizations. The key insights are provided in three figures. 

Figure 1 maps Web 2.0 tools to OD practices.   The mapping is based on the authors' expertise rather than a formal methodology, but it is useful as a starting point for research examining the impact of Web 2.0 technologies on the creation and maintenance of formal and informal structural relationships in an organization.

Figure 2 places Web 2.0 tools on a 2x2 grid whose dimensions are user involvement and transparency (public domain).  I don't know why these dimensions are particularly useful when looking at the impact of social media on OD practice nor do I fully agree with the authors' decisions about where to place some of the tools.  I suppose that transparency is a particular problem when dealing with intellectual property, but analogs of the tools listed as highly transparent exist for use behind the firewall and can be employed there without concern for the risks of intellectual property loss.

Figure 3 provides a Web 2.0 implementation framework that I think is rather good.  Once again, there's no validation given for this framework, but it might be worth studying in a formal research project.  The framework is cyclical, with four components: Strategy --> Web 2.0 applications --> Policy --> Process --> Strategy.  Strategy ensures that web 2.0 initiatives are aligned with organizational goals.  Web 2.0 applications consist of common applications and platforms that allow implementation across the organization. Policies provide structure and program oversight.  Process addresses the foundation for creating, sharing, and accessing web 2.0 content.

The intersection of users’ personality and social media use

Reference: Correa, T., Hinsley, A.W., de Zúñiga, H.G. (2010). Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26:2, 247-253.

This research examines the relationship between social media use and three personality factors -- extroversion, openness to new experiences, and emotional stability.  Earlier research had found that web use was more common among introverted people.  But, the authors hypothesized and the data confirmed that extroversion is positively related to the use of social media and is the one personality factor that best explains social media use.  The authors believe that this result is due to the difference in anonymity between early web applications and social network applications.  The anonymity of the early Internet afforded introverts, who were often not comfortable with themselves and were often lonely, a way to interact with individuals they didn't know and who didn't know them.  But, social network applications are typically used to interact with people you already know.  Personal profiles remove the cloak of anonymity.  So, it seems reasonable that extroverts would be more likely to use these applications than introverts.  This finding was most pronounced among younger adults (ages 18 to 29) than older adults (age 30+).

Over the entire sample, all three tested aspects of personality affected social media usage.  Extroversion and openness to new experiences were positively related.  Emotional stability was negatively related.  Anxious and worried people tend to use social media more frequently than others.  Three control variables, race, age, and life satisfaction, were also significant.  Interestingly, the control variables explained more of the variance in social media usage (12.5%) than personality traits (3.2%).  But, this was not so for young adults.  For them, the control variables explained only 6.9% of the variance while the personality variables, of which extroversion was the only significant one, explained 11.5% of the variance.  In a number of ways, this makes sense.  For example, these young adults grew up with the internet, and so variables such as openness to new ideas, income, and education are less relevant.

This research also explored differences between the sexes in their use of social media.  For men, demographic factors and life satisfaction explain 25.6% of social media use vs. 3.4% for personality factors.  Among the personality factors, extroversion and openness to new ideas were significant.  For women, demographic factors and life satisfaction explain only 7.8% of the variance vs. 4.3% for personality factors.  Among the personality factors, only extroversion was significant.

The authors are silent on the significance of this research for practitioners, and I find it hard, myself, to see any direct application.  But, the findings are interesting, although unsurprising.  What might be more interesting is to determine differences in use by purpose (professional vs. social) and the impact of professional use on professional outcomes.

Designing social media for rural life

Reference: Gilbert, E., Karahalios, K., Sandvig, C. (2010). The network in the garden: Designing social media for rural life. The American Behavioral Scientist, 53:9, 1367-1388.

Based on cultural differences between people living in rural and urban areas of the United States, it is reasonable to suppose that rural and urban Americans might differ in the way they use online social media.  Indeed, the authors of this paper found that compared to urban users, rural users have far fewer friends, that a larger percentage of users are female, that rural users will set higher levels of privacy for their online profiles, and that their friends will live much closer to them than the friends of urban users.  The implications of these findings for business, in my opinion, is that it is probably harder to draw rural US users into the types of communities that many companies want to create to support brand loyalty, test new ideas, etc.  The authors put the blame for this difference on the binary friend-or-not model of most social networks.  Rural people, they argue, would like to reach beyond their geographic isolation using social media, but they have trouble establishing trust with distant people. They propose that a model based on incremental trust would increase the likelihood of rural users expanding their social networks.  They liken such a model to the social model of dating, where initially each party knows very little about the other, but over a period of time, trust is built and deep friendships develop.  Allowing for gradations of friendship in social networks should allow more online friendships to actually originate online.  This would be beneficial as well for non-rural users.