Riemer K, Overfeld P, Scifleet P and Richter A (2012): Eliciting the anatomy of technology Appropriation Processes: A Case Study in enterprise social media, 20th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Barcelona. 1 ELICITING THE ANATOMY OF TECHNOLOGY APPROPRIATION PROCESSES: A CASE STUDY IN ENTERPRISE SOCIAL MEDIA Riemer, Kai, The University of Sydney Business School, Discipline of Business Information Systems, Darlington, NSW 2006, Australia, kai.riemer@sydney.edu.au Overfeld, Philipp, The University of M��nster, Department of Information Systems, D-48149 M��nster, Germany, poverfeld@uni-muenster.de Scifleet, Paul, Charles Sturt University, School of Information Studies, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia, pscifleet@csu.edu.au Richter, Alexander, Bundeswehr University Munich, Software Technology Institute, Depart- ment of Informatics, D-85577 Neubiberg, Germany, alexander.richter@unibw.de Abstract The investigation of IT adoption and diffusion in organisations is a core topic of the IS discipline. However, orthodox theories take a mostly rationalist view that treats adoption as a decision situation. In this paper, we aim to show that it is necessary to appreciate the process nature of taking new tech- nology into organisational contexts, and the open-ended nature of this process in terms of social sense-making about the new technology. At the same time, as more and more organisations let social media be part of work and communication practices, understanding what happens when individuals begin to experiment with and participate in these new mediums is increasingly important. Against this backdrop, we present the findings of an in-depth data analysis of enterprise-based short message communications shared across the Yammer enterprise social network at international service consul- tancy Capgemini. We focus on appropriation-related communication in the first nine months of up- take. By undertaking a time-trend analysis we identify the essential phases in which sense-making and appropriation take place as Yammer is enrolled into Capgemini practices. Our study makes an im- portant contribution toward understanding the processes of technology appropriation in general and sense-making in social media in particular. Keywords: IT Appropriation, IT Adoption and Diffusion, Social Media, Enterprise Social Networking

Riemer K, Overfeld P, Scifleet P and Richter A (2012): Eliciting the anatomy of technology Appropriation Processes: A Case Study in enterprise social media, 20th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Barcelona. 2 1 Introduction Since its inception, the IS discipline has been in the business of investigating the adoption and use of (new) technologies in various organisational contexts (Keen, 1980). The orthodox position is to con- ceive of IT adoption as a decision whereby an individual or organisation adopts a given IT artefact (e.g. Davis, 1989 Venkatesh et al., 2003). This position is challenged by a large body of work which views technology as socially (co)constructed (Leonardi and Barley, 2010), thereby stressing a process of enrolling a new artefact into an organisational practice by way of sense making and appropriation, in which technology and practice co-evolve (Richter and Riemer, 2009). The latter position is in par- ticular applicable in the context of social media, a relatively new class of technologies that has emerged from the public Internet and made fast inroads to organisations. Social media have been char- acterised as simple, open and emergent technologies (McAfee, 2009), whose potentials only manifest in context when people make sense of the technology (Riemer et al, 2009). While the social nature of enrolling new technologies into organisational practice has been exposed, the anatomy of the actual sense-making process that unfolds when technologies are introduced to or- ganisations is not well understood, as primary data is typically hard to come by. Similarly, while the bottom-up nature of technology diffusion of social media in organisations has been recognised, re- search has yet to investigate what exactly happens during this process. Against this backdrop, we in- vestigate the following research question: What happens during organisational adoption of social me- dia technologies, i.e. how do people come to make sense of and appropriate social media into the workplace? We undertake a case study investigating the appropriation of the enterprise social networking service Yammer at the global consultancy, Capgemini. Due to the particular nature of social media technolo- gies the conversations thematising Yammer adoption, use, and diffusion are captured on the Yammer platform itself and provide a unique research opportunity for analysing the ���adoption-related��� user conversations that took place during the first few months of Yammer use at Capgemini. Consequently, we are able to carry out a content analysis of what was actually said, rather than having to rely on post-hoc accounts. We find a set of conversation types that expose the kinds of communication and sense-making users engage in as they make Yammer part of their work practices. Moreover, an analysis of the distribution of these conversations over time allows us to identify phases in the appropriation of Yammer. With this paper we hope to contribute to a better understanding of how social media, as open technologies, become part of work practices by way of exposing what we term the anatomy of appropriation: 1) the types of appropriation-related communication and 2) distinct phases that characterise the appropriation process. Given that technology appropriation is a core phenomenon at the heart of the IS discipline (Riemer and Johnston, 2011), our findings are important as a first step to developing a more refined, theoretical understanding of IT appropriation in general. 2 Research Background 2.1 Research on Technology Adoption Studying the adoption and use of IT in organisations has always been a core topic of the IS discipline (Keen, 1980). In doing so, the orthodox tradition in our field tends to view adoption as a decision, where either organisations plan administrative and strategic choices carefully to introduce a new tech- nology or, at the micro-level, individuals act intentionally to adopt a specific innovation with utilitari- an outcomes in mind. Various studies imply that these determinations can be evaluated in terms of yes-no decision-making about a bounded artefact. Theoretical frameworks and methodologies such as the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 Davis, 1989) and the unified the- ory of acceptance and technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al., 2003) have been applied to explore a