You: What generation Y thinks about corporate social networking applications?

Abstract

Organizations increasingly rely on corporate social networks and online communities, under what is called today Enterprise 2.0, to enhance socialization and favor information/knowledge sharing, collaboration and value creation among coworkers. This paper presents and analyzes results from a qualitative exploratory study conducted recently with a focus group of 24 graduate management students from a French business school. It contributes to a better understanding of how generation Y perceives the use of social networking (SN) applications inside businesses. In somewhat, the results go up a gap between what they stated in this study and stereotypes commonly relayed on them in the academic and managerial literature. This study was carried out in a particular context, further exploration in other settings and cultural contexts will be required to investigate more deeply the validity / generalization of these results. © 2014 IEEE.