Organizational social media: A comprehensive framework and research agenda

Abstract

Social media refer to technology artefacts that support various actors in a multiplicity of communication activities for producing user-generated content, developing and maintaining connections and social relationships, or enabling other computer-mediated interactions and collaborations. Despite the growing proliferation of social media articles, the topic of Organization Social Media (OSM) has hitherto received little attention despite the fact that social media technologies are likely to have a tremendous effect on various organizational processes of communication and collaboration. To set the stage for future OSM research, we review the full set of existing literature on social media to date - 618 journal and conference articles - in general, as well as papers on OSM, in particular. We augment these with insights from general organization science and management literature that addresses collaboration in order to develop a comprehensive research framework, identify important research gaps and present crucial research topics to guide future OSM research. © 2012 IEEE.