Corporate trust via online conversation
Martin Dugage writes about a blogging executive, who has built social/trust capital via a weekly forum he has written for three years. Corporate Democracy in Action
Just had a conversation on corporate blogging with Eric Juin, my counterpart at Bouygues Construction. He told me about one of their senior execs who started a forum (a.k.a. blog) about three years ago. Every week from Monday to Thursday he collects comments and questions from any employee. On Friday his assistant hands him the most tricky ones and he fires some of those to the experts he knows, asking for immediate answer. On Sunday morning he answers all questions one by one from home in a personalized manner.
It may not be a purist's blog, but he appears to be speaking in a his own voice on a regular basis. And based on the remainder of Martin's article, the executive is building trust and drawing employees together.
This effect of honest conversation, whether online or in-person, is something everyone seems to understand (i.e. The Cluetrain Manifesto). However, it seems difficult to talk about in terms of what value these conversations add to the organization or to the person. I wonder if a missing factor is the notion of time. It takes time to build that trust and build a community of people who are curious / interested in your topics. Do people and organizations hesitate because of this unknown factor when starting a blog or joining an online community?
One of my students at Northwestern is looking into this question from the perspective of the person who might start blogging: what might prevent them from taking the step? Maybe this aspect of uncertainty will be a component of what she discovers.
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Has you student read "Naked Conversations : How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers" by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel? Although this isn't an academic work, it does contain many testable propositions that could be useful in the research design.
Earlier this week, I received David Gurteen's newsletter and it had a feature on conversations in corporate environments. Specifically, he has been a subscriber to the 50 Lessons initiative started by business thought leaders. Here's the lead in and the URL:
"So this month, given my passion for 'conversation', I have selected a lesson entitled "The Power of Good Conversation" by Professor Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School.
"Like most of the lessons it is 5 minutes long and not only does Lynda tell an interesting story about the importance of conversation in business but you will also start to appreciate how short video stories can be very powerful in communicating knowledge."
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Is your student going to apply the technology acceptance model or one of the other IT variations on Rodgers' diffusion model? So, in other words from these I would expect there to be the need for performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, etc. Anyway, I don't think it's been done yet fo blogs, but these models have been widely applied to internet and web technologies in lots of settings. Maybe refer them to Venkatesh et al (2003) MIS Quarterly. (gee, being back in school has had an impact!)