CORPORATE SOCIAL NETWORKS: BALANCING PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE

Abstract

The new virtual social networking platforms (social network sites - SNS) provide new social practices inside (corporate) and outside (open) work. Since 2007 more than 1/3 of the largest U.S. organizations were already implementing actions in Web 2.0, including social networking business. This paper presents a qualitative exploratory study with two instrumental case studies, aiming to identify convergences and divergences between open and corporate social networks. At IBM, in addition to reviewing a published case, interviews were conducted with employees who designed the company’s SNS. At CESAR, an innovation institute, beyond documentary and observational research made, semi structured interviews were conducted with five people involved in the development and institutionalization of the SNS tool. The interviews were processed with content analysis. It was clear that these companies are beginning to realize that the corporate SNS are a bridge to the reality of open SNS. It was noticed that executives are also users of the SNS, which decreases the number of organizational levels and breaks barriers. As a tool for the creation and sharing of personal and professional information, a corporate SNS enables the storage and retrieval of information quickly and context-sensitively, but always taking into account the profile set by the user, such as in open networks. These convergences show that people want to be closer to their friends, and the SNS are a way to strengthen ties without breaking the limits that users want to establish with respect to the information that is being shared. Even if people come to use these SNS as a form of career climbing or a way to get support to approve their projects, a corporate SNS tends to be a tool as common as open ones.