Employee blogging: personal or work-related?

Slide 1: Employee blogging: personal or work-related? Lilia Efimova Telematica Instituut iceberg.telin.nl blog.mathemagenic.com

Slide 2: As long as your company views your blogging as \"you chatting with your neighbors on your personal time\", you pose little risk. But the more that co-workers, CEOs, and so on are on-record as being cool with blogs, the more that blogs take on the timbre of being \"official\". The more \"official\" that blogs are, the more perceived risk the company takes on by allowing you to blog. And neither you nor your CEO is really keen to make things more complicated than they need to be. And this is why, IMO, you see most companies and employees today still dancing around the issue of employee blogs and seemingly settling on a \"don't ask, don't tell, and please for the love of God don't do anything stupid\" policy. Joshua Allen, 26 May 2003 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 3: What is missing? Employee weblogs Personal Business Missing boundary? 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 4: Approach Based on study of employee blogging at Microsoft • – 10 weeks, summer 2005 – 38 interviews++ – Lilia Efimova & Jonathan Grudin (2007). Crossing Boundaries: A Case Study of Employee Blogging . Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07) – More Ad-hoc feedback round via my weblog • – Dimensions of employee blogging – My weblog – Other bloggers 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 5: Weblog shape Personal Business Location Personal server Company-affiliated servers (e.g. Corporate funded, but not a part of a corporate servers (part of Public hosting platforms online presence) corporate official presence online) Blog uses Not related to work Mix of personal and work-related uses Only business- related (good for my company) or work-related (good for performing well at work) Content Primarily non-work Mix of work and non-work content Primarily work- focus matters related Content style Personal, subjective, Some degree of filtering or editing to fit [Business, confessional professional norms and business objective, requirements defined by corporate communication policy] 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 6: Decision-making Personal Business Initiative Decided myself Decided myself, but checked at work Was prescribed at work Decided myself given positive signals (that blogging is allowed and encouraged) at work Was convinced by others at work Micro-level Myself Myself, but I listen to others at work Defined by work decision needs Myself, but I have to get permissions making from others at work Defined by Who decides others at work Have to be negotiated with others at when and how work [Defined by to blog? What business logic Some moments are defined by work goes into a and exiting workflows (e.g. editorial processes of specific post? workflows in my product weblogs) company] Technology Control myself Technology is provided by the [Full control by control company, but I have control over some the company] Company doesn't parts of it (e.g. template customisation, Who controls influence it adding plug-ins, etc.) blogging tools? 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 7: Integration with work Personal Business Affiliation No Implicit – not immediately visible, but Yes, explicit with not hidden Explicitly hiding company Disclaimer Impact Impact myself as a Impact myself as an employee (e.g. by Impact my (attribution) person helping to do work better) company, but not me Impact both, myself and my company (e.g. an incident gets into media) Part of job No Not explicitly, but as an \"extra\" during Yes, my job description evaluation responsibilities explicitly include Blogging as one of possible ways to blogging get work done I can blog, but I don't have to Time No, never To some degree: not officially, as a Yes, only blogging way to do the job blogging at work time Content My copyright Both parties accept some rights of [Explicitly ownership another side copyrighted by the company] Nobody knows for sure since it's too complicated 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 8: Ad-hoc feedback 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 9: Ad-hoc feedback: 15 blogs Initiative to start Content ow nership Content decision making Time blogging Process decision making Part of job description Technology control Attribution to company Location Affiliation w ith company Blog uses Content style Content focus 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 10: Ad-hoc feedback: one blogger, two blogs Initiative to start Content ow nership Content decision making Time blogging Process decision making Part of job description Technology control Attribution to company Location Affiliation w ith company Blog uses Content style Content focus 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 11: Discussion Refining • – Dimensions – Systematic analysis of blog profiles Business application • – Extremes are not that interesting; the value is in the middle – Where does it make sense to draw the boundary? – How that would translate into actions? 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland

Slide 12: Follow-up? Permalink • http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/09/24.html#a1944 More on my research • – In progress: blog.mathemagenic.com – Published: iceberg.telin.nl – Contact: lilia.efimova@telin.nl 24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland