Abstract—Social media are information-based technologies that facilitate collaboration and communication across an organization. In particular, a company’s internal social media facilitate business-related communication and support its operations. However, while social media have proven to be highly beneficial to organizations, Taiwanese firms are yet to embrace such networks. Because multiple social constructs (e.g., social transactions and social capital) are executed on these networks, they can be used to create organizational values. We believe this may be a distinct finding with regard to a company’s internal social media usage in work context. Thus, we conduct an exploratory study investigating how internal social media affect the social constructs and organizational values in Taiwanese firms. Two case studies are presented, based on face-to-face interviews with employees of the relevant firms. The findings suggest that social constructs are linked to creating organizational values in terms of work productivity and organizational acculturation. In addition, we confirm that a company’s internal social media seem to be a strong platform for social constructs. Thus, we conclude that further empirical research is required to verify these findings.

Index Terms—Social media, social transaction, social capital, organizational value.

The authors are with Department of Information Management, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, No. 1, Nan-Tai St, Yung-Kang City, Tainan County 71005, Taiwan R.O.C. (email: shiang@stust.edu.tw).

Cite: Mei-Hsiang Wang, Tarng-Yao Yang, Shu-Ya Hu, "An Exploration of Company’s Internal Social Media on Social Constructs and Organizational Values," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 212-218, 2017.