Antonio Thonis

This is the fourth part of my thesis serie of blogposts. In this part the internal and external approach to the electronic business environment is studied and applied to approach social media. We also take a look at the possible uses of social media based on existing literature. In the end I will make a pdf available of all the blogposts and possibly an updated summery based on the feedback.  So please share your views in the comments!

Internal and external business approach to the electronic environment

The strategic alignment model states that strategy must be addressed in an Internal and external domain. The research that follows on electronic strategies and business types also indicate organizations can have an internal or external focus. [...]

Last week I was approached by a Dutch student to answer some questions on Social Media for his thesis. This student did his research well. On twitter we discovered many of the people working in social media got the same email.

We answered the questions and collected them in a blogpost to compare our answers. Here follows my contribution. The whole article can be found on bijgespijkerd (in Dutch). International readers could try to make sense of this google translate link. [...]

In this third part of my bachelor thesis we take a look at IT and business strategy theories. First I’ll explain why internal and social media (and IT) strategy should be formulated in an internal and external domain. And why these need to be aligned together and with the business strategy of the organization. Further I argue why Value Disciplines should be used to form a social media strategy. Please share your views again!

Aligning business and IT strategy

Now that we have definitions of web 2.0 and social media and the importance of them for organizations we continue the research on how organizations can approach these and align them with their organization strategy.

Organizations can adopt an internal or external focus, for their business strategy as well as their IT strategy. This chapter will present evidence [...]

Here is the second part of a serie of blogposts where I present the research and findings of my Social Media & Business thesis. Again I hope you comment and share your views. In the end I will make a pdf available and we might even have updated sections based on the comments!

Internal enterprise use of social media.

The social aspects of social media that allow the collecting and sharing of collective intelligence among the social media platforms users can be used by organizations to internally collect, retain and share information. The web 2.0 structure and technologies can also be used for easier communication and collaboration in organizations.

Brzozowski et al. (2009) write about the internal use of social media at Hewlett-Packard (HP). Social media provides a free broadcast platform that allows authors to circumvent traditional organizational hierarchies and reach organizationally distant readers. [...]

In August I finished my bachelor thesis called “The alignment of web 2.0 and social media with business strategy”. I wrote it as part of my Business Administration study with the Information Management department. In this research I focused on using IT and organization literature to fill the academic gaps on social media literature. I researched the definitions of social media and web 2.0 and how these can be used by organizations. The main focus was to find an answer to how organizations can align their use of social media (or social software) with their business strategy. To in the end realize more effective investments.

Here is the first part of a serie of blogposts where I present the the research and findings of my Social Media & Business thesis. I hope you’ll comment and share your views on the material. In the end I will make a pdf available and we might even have updated sections based on comments/discussions! [...]

Another overview of study material which I had to read, this time for the Knowledge Management (KM) course. KM covers many subjects as knowledge sharing, social networks, social capital and communities of practice. More about these subjects and my views on them in later blogposts!

The book from Hislop offers an good overview of the KM field, it’s developments and a critical view on KM. Knowledge Management in Organizations: a critical introduction, Hislop D. (2005), Oxford University Press

The list of  Knowledge Management academic papers:

• Keeping the Wheels Turning: The Dynamics of Managing Networks of Practice, Marlous Agterberg et al., Journal of Management Studies 2009
• Supporting Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Social Networks, Rob Cross et al., Organizational Dynamics Vol. 30  2001 [...]