http://mediamatica.pbworks.com/f/challenges+opportunities+social+media.pdf

Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media

In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advantage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interorganizational competitive advantage: (1) relation-specific assets, (2) knowledge-sharing routines, (3) complementary resources/capabilities, and (4) effective governance. We examine each of these potential sources of rent in detail, identifying key subprocesses, and also discuss the isolating mechanisms that serve to preserve relational rents. Finally, we discuss how the relational view may offer normative prescriptions for firm-level strategies that contradict the prescriptions offered by those with a resource-based view or industry structure view.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259056.pdf

The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

This paper answers the question, "Why do organizations process information?" Uncertainty and equivocality are defined as two forces that influence information processing in organizations. Organization structure and internal systems determine both the amount and richness of information provided to managers. Models are proposed that show how organizations can be designed to meet the information needs of technology, interdepartmental relations, and the environment. One implication for managers is that a major problem is lack of clarity, not lack of data. The models indicate how organizations can be designed to provide information mechanisms to both reduce uncertainty and resolve equivocality.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2631846.pdf

Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design

This paper differs from previous examinations of organizational learning in that it is broader in scope and more evaluative of the literatures. Four constructs related to organizational learning knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, and organizational memory are articulated, and the literatures related to each are described and critiqued.

The literature on knowledge acquisition is voluminous and multi-faceted, and so the knowledge acquisition construct is portrayed here as consisting of five subconstructs or subprocesses: 1 drawing on knowledge available at the organization's birth, 2 learning from experience, 3 learning by observing other organizations, 4 grafting on to itself components that possess knowledge needed but not possessed by the organization, and 5 noticing or searching for information about the organization's environment and performance. Examination of the related literatures indicates that much has been learned about learning from experience, but also that there is a lack of cumulative work and a lack of integration of work from different research groups. Similarly, much has been learned about organizational search, but there is a lack of conceptual work, and there is a lack of both cumulative work and syntheses with which to create a more mature literature. Congenital learning, vicarious learning, and grafting are information acquisition subprocesses about which relatively little has been learned.

The literature concerning information distribution is rich and mature, but an aspect of information distribution that is central to an organization's benefitting from its learning, namely how units that possess information and units that need this information can find each other quickly and with a high likelihood, is unexplored. Information interpretation, as an organizational process, rather than an individual process, requires empirical work for further advancement. Organizational memory is much in need of systematic investigation, particularly by those whose special concerns are improving organizational learning and decision making.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2634941.pdf

Organizational Learning: The Contributing Processes and the Literatures

The purpose of this study is to provide conceptual order and a tool for the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and computer conferencing in supporting an educational experience. Central to the study introduced here is a model of community inquiry that constitutes three elements essential to an educational transaction—cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. Indicators (key words/phrases) for each of the three elements emerged from the analysis of computer-conferencing transcripts. The indicators described represent a template or tool for researchers to analyze written transcripts, as well as a guide to educators for the optimal use of computer conferencing as a medium to facilitate an educational transaction. This research would suggest that computer conferencing has considerable potential to create a community of inquiry for educational purposes.

/pdf/critical-inquiry-in-a-text-based-environment-computer-3f0amd5n1t.pdf

Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA128980.pdf

Information Richness. A New Approach to Managerial Behavior and Organization Design

A field study of middle- and upper-level managers was undertaken to explain managers' selection of communication media. The findings indicate that media vary in their capacity to convey information cues. Managers prefer rich media for ambiguous communications and less rich media for unequivocal communications. The data suggest that high performing managers are more sensitive to the relationship between message ambiguity and media richness than low performing managers. Implications for managers' use of information systems and electronic media are discussed.

Message equivocality, media selection and manager performance: implications for information systems

Symbolic interactionism is presented as a theoretical approach for understanding media choice processes during managerial communications. In an exploratory study, 65 managers from 11 organizations were interviewed about communication incidents involving face-to-face, telephone, electronic mail, and written media. Managers were asked the reasons they chose the particular medium. A content analysis of the reasons suggests that three factors influenced managers' media choices: (a) ambiguity of the message content and richness of the communication medium, (b) symbolic cues provided by the medium, and (c) situational determinants such as time and distance. The findings also indicated the diversity of media use in management communications, with face-to-face selected primarily for content and symbolic reasons, whereas telephone and electronic mail typically were chosen because of situational constraints.

Robert H. Lengel

Papers

Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design

Information Richness. A New Approach to Managerial Behavior and Organization Design

Message equivocality, media selection and manager performance: implications for information systems

Media Symbolism, Media Richness, and Media Choice in Organizations A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

The Selection of Communication Media as an Executive Skill