Hang on a minute: a Bourdieusian perspective on enterprise 2.0

Abstract

Enterprise 2.0 refers to the use of networked social software in organizational practice. Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and many other kinds of community-oriented computer applications, accessed primarily via the Web, are heavily promoted by software vendors and industry insiders, and are being implemented in organizations around the world. Enterprise 2.0 promoters make broad claims for benefits to be realized from uses of such tools—improvements in communication, collaboration, productivity, and worker satisfaction, for instance—but seldom offer evidence to support their claims. Such unsubstantiated claims suggest simplistic assumptions about the complex, contingent environments in which the tools are used. This thesis uses a mixed method approach to explore the influences of these tools on social and organizational behaviors and outcomes, and vice versa.

The research question to be addressed is, “What shapes the uptake, uses, and effects of Enterprise 2.0 in everyday practice?” It applies social theoretics to explain how and why social media practices develop, primarily through the use of Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, and habitus. Planned research contributions are: empirical evidence of Enterprise 2.0 effects from everyday uses; the analysis and evaluation of Enterprise 2.0’s impacts on differing organizational structures; understanding of the Web’s contributions to organizational communication via Enterprise 2.0; and deeper understanding of the social processes at the interplay of individuals, organizations, and social media.

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ORCID for Wendy Hall: orcid.org/0000-0003-4327-7811

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