Acceso al problema de asignación de flotas

Interviewees at Transportation Corporation perceive social media as a change of culture concerning the attitude of the management to open up the possibilities and to implement social media in the daily business. They perceive it as a testimony of trust from management to allow them to use social media in a self-responsible way as a communication manager explained it:

We went through a huge change during the last couple of years. On one hand about the possibilities but also about the culture and the general attitude of the management. We opened social media platforms about three to four years ago. Which means in our

organization everyone has now the possibility to use Facebook or Twitter at the working place. This was a decision that came along with a lot of dispute up to the board. However, at the end we found an agreement where we said the organization has to guide the employees to use these platforms in a self-responsible way. Since we became much more active on external social media platforms, we implemented them internally as well.

The interviewees described different social media tools they use daily as well as the ones they prefer at the most. Prominent tools mentioned are instant messengers, community platforms for project management, wikis for user groups, information exchange and collaboration platforms. In addition, the Intranet to consume and exchange information by using integrated comment functions. A project manager and a software developer explained their experience as follows:

We use communities based on PMtoGo for project management and VMtoGo for VMWares. I participate in both communities. We also meet several times a year for exchange. In addition, we also use a platform called Confluence to collect important information relevant for the end users. You can contribute if you wish. This makes really sense for people from the project management. I personally use Skype and Email. We also use a wiki called Confluence we use for project planning and project definition, which will start in the following year I am responsible. We call it project profile, which we jointly create and publish in Confluence. I also use eSpace, our SharePoint solution, to upload and jointly edit documents.

Most of the interviewees mentioned the availability status and the communication possibilities with instant messengers as a benefit that allows instant and direct communication in different situations. For instance, during meetings and while working on other things. Benefits are also located in the area of jointly working on content; involve several people on the same platform to share ideas and opinions as a software developer put it:

I think mainly in the area of collectively working on content. Jointly editing content became much easier, because today I can prepare documents and document structures and simultaneously let the people work on the content. In the past, I had to compound a document by myself by receiving the content in chunks, which I had to merge afterwards.

When asked about disadvantages and risks of social media the interviewees mentioned frequently the permanent availability, disturbing and annoying requests from instant messengers, losing focus in endless online discussions. Furthermore, misunderstandings during the virtual dialog and losing control of

the corporate communication process. In other words, the original purpose of the messages sent out to the employees for instance to inform about a management decision could get out of control. This means, if an opinion making process enters online debates with a high number of followers. This could according to interviewees become a new challenge management is confronted with. For instance, if an opinion maker in online discussions is able to convince the employees not to accept management decisions. According to the interviewees, this is also a matter of cultural change allowing the employees to make their own opinion. However, if the direction turns into the negative management should trust the collective to turn it back into the positive by social self-regulation according to the interviewees. Main perceived risks are wasting time, which means the concern that employees spend too much time in discussions while using social media according to the answers of a product manager, a software engineer and a communication expert:

It is a real-time hole. It can eat up a lot of time because it multiplies the coffee talk or the water-cooler meeting. If people are social, they enjoy talking and spending hours with chatting and sometimes not even about business relevant topics. You can connect with huge number of people you not even know. Therefore, I think this is a huge risk concerning wasting time. This needs a lot maturity to cope with it.

Yes, things changed. Sometimes this is very disturbing because people reaching out for you on many more different channels even if you are on the phone or in front of the computer. You are disturbed much more often. As soon as people see my status turns green, they immediately try to contact me on Skype. Sometimes you really need to decide to go offline.

In order to keep discussions and this creativity under control on social media platforms seems to me challenging. I think this is a disadvantage because people might lose the focus on the main topic. This is much easier in a workshop with a moderator who can tell the participants they lost the main discussion topic and get them back. In social media, this seems to be quite difficult, especially when the participants can communicate almost at the same time.

Interviewees explained that social media initiates a changing process of personal and organizational behaviour concerning how employees communicate and collaborate. Many discussions about organizational topics among the employees took place outside the company after work hours. Therefore, the outcome stayed in a small group not shared with the rest of the employees. Today employees more often express their thoughts on the Intranet, which leads in their view to more openness and transparency in the organization about what employees care about or what disturbs them. In

addition, how people interact with each other changed in areas of engaging in discussions and exchange information. For instance, instant messengers accelerated the process of approaching each other and decreased the usage of email as a communication manager and product manager described it:

The environment of our organization became much more dynamic. Internal communication became much easier, as did listening to feedback from employees. What people discussed in the past in the pub they hopefully discuss or express also with comments in the Intranet. Of course, these comments are sometimes criticising but this is ok. We prefer this much more than conversion taking place only in the pub. This leads to much more transparency in the organization.

Social media changed the way to interact with other people. Today I ask if someone could spare some time with me to discuss a topic using Skype before I call. This is a kind of a preliminary clarification, which is much faster. Therefore, I am writing fewer emails. In the past, if you did not reach a person, you had to wait but today, if the status is red I can ask if the person could call me back as soon as possible. This is a shift of behaviour, which makes it much easier to approach others.

4.2.7 Social Media Integration in the collective Decision-Making