Local Villages in a Globally Connected Structure: a Case Study of Social Enterprise Media in the Multinational Workplace

Abstract

The study presented in this paper is the first to explore the relationship between knowledge professionals' offline interaction practices with their interaction practices in their social enterprise media platform in their multinational workplace. The article points to findings from a comprehensive, mixed methods and longitudinal (2010-- 2013) case study of a knowledge intensive multinational organization with entities in over 20 countries in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The findings reveal a consistent pattern that offline practices are expanded online, and that the company's social enterprise media has facilitated few new acquaintances for employees. This provides important insights to the field of social media and our society because enterprise media are typically introduced in organizations to establish connections or relationships among employees that do not already know each other, or that work at the same geographical place or context. The study shows that organizations' online enterprise media spaces cannot be understood without reference to the social context in which they occur. This is explained in the framework of Giddens' structuration theory and his later work on modernity, which surprisingly few scholars have employed.