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This paper seeks to challenge how librarians conceive a number of relationships – between themselves, social media tools, and end‐users, and to argue that this determines the boundaries of service innovation.

The paper develops themes and ideas derived from research projects on deployment of social media by library and information professionals completed within the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University.

Librarians currently demonstrate more sophisticated use of social media for personal professional purposes than for services delivery; a number of challenges currently limit the extent to which librarians are able to exploit social media to full advantage; fuller exploitation of social media is possible when librarians transfer the good practice exhibited in personal professional use to applications for services delivery; service innovations are considered before tools; and end users are treated as collaborating clients rather than consuming customers.

The paper is of interest to those keen to take advantage of the opportunities offered by social media that extend beyond replicating existing service delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how to support small organizations to navigate the context of an accelerated Digital Transformation using Enterprise Social Media platforms, in response to external contingencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

A longitudinal action research study, supported by an exploratory analysis that follows a hybrid approach of deductive and inductive reasoning, has been conducted in the context of a small organization. Several data collection techniques were used for context understanding and problem-solving.

Findings suggest that value creation related to the use of Enterprise Social Media platforms supports small organizations in this accelerated context of Digital Transformation. Value perception is central in overcoming adoption barriers and achieving sustainable use of these platforms in daily basis activities, especially in remote working. External pressures, like those imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, play an important role in catalyzing digital initiatives.

As the main limitations to this paper, we highlight the study of a single organization in a specific context and the number of actors involved; hence, there is room to extend the study to other industries, organization sizes and contexts.

This paper provides managers with insights into how to conduct their Enterprise Social Media initiatives in a turbulent environment, highlighting their key success elements, and their potential to create value for their organizations and stakeholders. Furthermore, managers could explore the potential of Enterprise Social Media platforms to support organizations in the Digital Transformation journey.

Small organizations play an important role in generating wealth for nations around the world. However, governments encounter difficulties in supporting the Digital Transformation of this type of organization. This paper provides insights into how to use an affordable and intuitive technology to include this type of organization in the Digital Transformation journey.

A long-term study of Enterprise Social Media is recommended, but quite rare in the Information Systems literature. This study adopts a longitudinal investigation to analyze the use of Enterprise Social Media to support a small organization to adapt, in balance with their internal and external contingencies, providing a further contribution to the contingency theory. This research also adds contributions to the sociotechnical system perspective, analyzing the deep imbrication between social and technical subsystems in the required organizational change, supporting a small organization for coping with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study from which a framework for the purposeful building of knowledge communities by means of social media is formulated.

The approach first takes the form of a literature review. Based on a review of literature as well as on various data sets and surveys within the case study organisation, a social media tool is developed and implemented as a platform to build a knowledge community.

That there is a need for more information by means of practical experimentation in the current literature. In addition to this, eight steering points for constructing a framework of best practice in the purposeful creation of knowledge communities are submitted.

The above‐mentioned points are still undergoing field evaluation and further analytics is been undertaken.

The paper provides detail into a social media campaign. Further corporations will be able to build on the findings to construct a framework for the purposeful creation of communities facilitated by social media technologies.

This study aims to enhance understanding of using Web 2.0 technologies and social media in a global corporation.

A qualitative case study in a global corporation was conducted to illustrate the main uses of social media and to describe the related service portfolio.

The main uses of social media were identified and conceptualized based on the case company data. Internally, social media was used to for internal communication and knowledge transfer, to reach personnel and to conduct internal idea crowdsourcing. Externally, social media was used to enhance communications related to the company brand, to enable dialogue with customers, to build communities with various stakeholder groups and to engage external stakeholders in idea generation via a crowdsourcing platform. A categorization of social media uses for communication, collaboration and connecting vis‐à‐vis external and internal uses was created. Idea creation practices were further conceptualized as the main enactment of Web 2.0 social media technology.

This study is a single case study and thus the results cannot be generalized.

As Web 2.0 technologies and social media have become a topic of interest for many companies, it is essential to understand how social media can be used in a business context. The classification of social media uses is deployed to highlight the possible implications for company operations, and the human factor is emphasized in system adoption and use. Challenges related to social media implementation are described.

As of to date, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence on uses of social media. This research is based on a case study, allowing an in‐depth insight into the phenomenon and related issues.

In recent years, social media have attracted considerable attention. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a critical literature review of social media research with the aim of developing a conceptual framework to explain how social media applications are supported by various social media tools and technologies and underpinned by a set of personal and social behavior theories or models.

This study adopted a two-stage approach. The first stage involves a critical literature review of academic journals in social media research, followed by the proposal of a conceptual framework that highlights the tools and technologies as well as theories and models that serve as the foundation of social media applications. The second stage involves the use of an actual case to demonstrate how the proposed framework facilitates the development of a social media application for a regional division of an international non-government organization.

The literature review indicated that social media have been applied in diverse business areas with the support of various social media tools and technologies and underpinned by a range of personal and social behavior theories and models. Based upon such findings, a conceptual social media application framework was devised and its usability illustrated via a real-life case study. Managerial implications are also discussed.

Social media covers a wide range of research topics and thus, the literature review presented in this study may not be exhaustive. Nevertheless, the proposed framework and case study can both serve as reference for future research and provide recommendations for practitioners in the design and development of their own social media applications.

This study not only explains the importance of applying social media in various business sectors, but also enhances the understanding of the infrastructure of social media applications. The study also provides insights for improving the efficiency of application solutions. Organizations are advised to adopt social media in their business based on the proposed conceptual framework.

With a literature review of social media research and a real-life case study, this study presents a conceptual framework using extant theories and models to form a foundation for social media applications. The framework extends existing knowledge on the design and development of information systems.

Leaders, consultants and researchers are increasingly focused on enhancing the adoption of social networking tools to increase knowledge sharing practices and the success rate of organizations. This study was conducted to explore the adoption of social networking applications in public and private sector universities. This paper aims to discover how social networking applications can foster knowledge sharing practices among employees of universities.

The study is based on an interpretivist, qualitative research design using grounded theory. Fifty-two semi-structured and non-directive interviews were undertaken with employees of public and private sector universities. Participants were selected using purposive sampling, and thematic analysis was performed using the NVivo 11-Plus.

The study highlights how social media networking applications can be used effectively and efficiently to foster knowledge sharing practices in the workplace. Five emerging themes are identified as follows. Social media networking tools can enhance new knowledge, increase employee skills, promote a knowledge sharing culture, foster effective communication and increase employee involvement in research activities.

Social networking applications have received attention because executives and researchers are increasingly focused on finding new ways to use social networking tools in business. The effective and efficient use of social networking tools helps organizations to foster knowledge amongst employees, and can address various critical issues such as knowledge hoarding, lowers levels of skills and knowledge, poor communication and employee involvement, the lack of desire to share knowledge, and resistance toward technology.

A brief systematic literature review on social media and knowledge sharing highlights that only 11 per cent of studies found that examined the link between social media and knowledge sharing practices across the world. The study therefore represents an effort to shed new light on the adoption of social networking tools in the context of knowledge sharing among universities employees. Social media applications have become popular across the world, and the speed of their uptake is evolving rapidly. However, their contribution toward organizational change is not yet known.

This paper aims to investigate the adoption of marketing techniques in academic libraries in Ghana, and how they are applied in the promotion of their services to patrons.

Adopting the qualitative research approach, a total of 21 professional and para-professional library staff from three private universities participated in the study. The main data collection instrument was the use of semi-structured interviews. Data gathered was analysed, discussed and presented thematically.

The findings revealed that the study's participants are fully aware of the benefits of inculcating marketing activities into their daily routines and were making efforts at making their users aware of their products and services with the use of various strategies including the deployment of social media tools. Some of the challenges that were discovered to hinder the success of marketing in the libraries were lack of funds, lack of knowledge of marketing techniques by staff and a lack of marketing policy to guide marketing in the libraries.

The findings of this study imply that, even though carried on a few academic libraries, the same can apply to most academic libraries as the characteristics are generally the same.

To boost marketing initiatives in the selected university libraries, the following recommendations informed by the findings of the study are made: creation of marketing policies, increase use of social networking sites for marketing, organization of seminars and workshops on marketing, diversifying sources of funding for libraries and conducting user surveys.

The implementation of the recommendations has the potential to increase the level of interactions between academic libraries and their patrons as well as impact positively on the information-seeking behaviour of library patrons.

Apart from the application of works of other scholars, which have been duly cited and acknowledged, the entirety of this study or research output is the result of the handiworks of the researchers. Again, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work has not been a production of existing research nor is earlier published in any journal.

Prior research on business analytics has advanced substantially our understanding of how social media analytics affect business performance. However, the specific value of social media analytics to product innovation has not been fully explored and appreciated. To address this important issue, the present study draws on the resource-based view and the knowledge-based view to examine (1) whether the use of social media analytics strengthens radical product innovation to a greater extent than it does incremental product innovation and (2) how knowledge-exploration competence and knowledge-exploitation competence mediate the influence of social media analytics on radical and incremental product innovation.

This study tested the proposed model using data collected from 205 manufacturing firms. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the research hypotheses using LISREL 8.80 software program.

The statistical findings provide compelling evidence that the use of social media analytics is more likely to lead to radical product innovation than to incremental product innovation. In addition, knowledge-exploration competence only partially mediates the relationship between social media analytics and radical product innovation. Knowledge-exploitation competence not only partially mediates such a relationship, but also fully mediates the link between social media analytics and incremental product innovation.

This study contributes to the social media analytics and innovation literature by offering novel theoretical and empirical insights into how firms can leverage the value of social media analytics to create superior product innovation.

This paper aims to investigate the perceptions of Omani citizens toward the use of social media by the government for participatory and interactive relationships. More precisely, the descriptive nature of the study resides in its ability to explain how social media users regard the current status and levels of presence, transparency, engagement, responsiveness and trust about the current use of social media by the Omani Government.

A quantitative approach was used to collect data. This was done via a self-administered questionnaire from a return sample of 1,769 citizens drawn from different places in Oman. These citizens were considered as well-informed and regular active users of social media. The reviewed literature provided a basis for the construct of the questionnaire.

The overall results indicated modest levels of agreement in all of the investigated factors. The neutral findings suggest that there is a level of uncertainty among the respondents regarding how the government is determining the potential of social media for participatory and interactive relationships. Findings in this study advocate the outcomes of the recent Arab Social Media Report, plus the few relevant studies included in the literature, which nearly stated that although there is a growing use of social media among citizens, governments are failing to take full advantage of social media. Governments are also failing to engage citizens to design and deliver more efficient and collaborative services, per this study’s findings.

The findings call for the importance of strategically framing the use of participatory social media by the government. In a broader sense, the findings of this study are beneficial to all contexts that share similar political and socio-economic philosophy, especially the Arab states and most of the developing countries. The findings provide insights for governments in need of developing social media strategies to promote more collaborative and interactive governance.

The study aids in understanding the views of citizens who are the current major players in a highly technology-driven environment. This environment is found to be transforming the relationship between citizens and governments. The study adds knowledge to the currently scarce body of literature dealing with issues pertaining to citizen–government relationships in social media in the Arab states, and similar contexts in developing countries. Its findings may provide valuable insights for policy makers to leverage collaborative relationships between governments and citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of social media on employees’ work performance, as well as the underlying mechanism for how they create value at work.

Based on media synchronicity and social capital theories, the authors propose that social media can foster employees’ social capital and subsequently facilitate knowledge transfer. Both social capital and knowledge transfer help promote work performance. Specifically, the authors adopt shared vision, network ties and trust to represent, respectively, the cognitive, structural and relational dimensions of social capital. The research model is tested using data collected from 379 Chinese working professionals.

The empirical results reveal that social media can promote the formation of employees’ social capital indicated by network ties, shared vision and trust, which, in turn, can facilitate knowledge transfer. Shared vision and knowledge transfer positively influence work performance. Although network ties and trust do not have a direct impact on work performance, the influence is partially mediated by knowledge transfer.

For organizations that wish to build knowledge networks in the workplace, connecting experts with various social media can effectively complement other knowledge management technology. Further, managers should encourage employees to consciously exploit the byproducts created via social media, e.g., social capital, to promote knowledge exchange.

The integration of media synchronicity and social capital theories offers a new theoretical lens and reasonable explanations for investigating communication performance. The research offers empirical evidence regarding how the influence of social media on work performance is transmitted through social capital and knowledge transfer. The authors quantify social media’s benefits for organizations, providing managers an impetus to deploy them in the workplace with optimistic expectation.