The growing popularity of Web 2.0 and social media will have profound implications for the ways in which people get work done. Whether through driving innovation and productivity, or harnessing the knowledge of the wise and the wisdom of crowds, the goal of our Enterprise Social Computing theme is to deliver the benefits of lifestyle social computing to the workplace.
Projects
Twinkle: Connecting People at Work
Social software promises a "grass roots" approach to creating and exploiting knowledge within enterprises. It will also become crucial in supporting and strengthening collaboration and communication within and between businesses. A major growth opportunity for both new and existing social networking sites and applications is inside the workplace. However, the success of web social applications has not yet been replicated in the enterprise. In this project, we are exploring social roles in the enterprise and the impact of personal networks to redesign enterprise social software. Our goal is to enable users to discover the right information by leveraging the knowledge of many, share content and expertise, connect to the right people, help users to manage business information more efficiently, and improve productivity.
http://twinkle (Microsoft corporation network access only)
Primary Contact: Chen Zhao
People: Chen Zhao, Dongzhing Xia, Qiufeng Yin
Team social networks and performance
There has been a lot of interest in the relationship between network structure of a team and that team's performance, but many of the current studies focus on classical social network analysis. In this project we are focusing on understanding both the characteristics of social networks within enterprises, including social support networks and social discussion networks, and the effects of social network structure on information transmission speed. We are also looking at the effects of social network structure on team performance, and the effect of community structure on personal performance within a team.
Primary Contact: Chen Zhao
People: Chen Zhao, Haifeng Du (Xi’An Jiao Tong University), Baozhong Liu (MSRA intern), Yang Zhang (MSRA intern), Zhichun Wang (MSRA intern)
Cross Culture Behavior Patterns of Social Networking
Social software tools, which leverage the power of one’s social network for connecting and communicating, have transformed communication and knowledge sharing through the Internet. In order to harness the benefits of this social software, companies need to build tools which meet the needs and requirements of their global workforce. Yet cultural differences between employees can create adoption and integration issues. Relatively little research has been done, from a cross-cultural perspective, to understand the differences in use and acceptance of these tools. In this project, we are investigating how culture differences expressed in terms of individualism vs. collectivism and high vs. low context affects users’ social networking patterns. We are also looking into how the notions of self-identify, self-exposure, and communication style can be used to describe the resulting differences in social network behavior, leading to the identification of implications for the design of future social software.
Primary Contact: Chen Zhao
People: Chen Zhao, Pamela Hints (Stanford University), Ge Gao
