Stuff IBMers Say: Microblogs as an Expression of Organizational Culture

Abstract

In globally distributed enterprises, face-to-face communication of the norms and values underlying organizational culture may not be feasible. As a result, enterprises have turned to social media as a potential resource for acculturation, the process in which employees make sense of organizational culture. In this paper, we explore the emergence of a Twitter hashtag (#stuffibmerssay) to characterize user participation and content of the tagged tweets, and describe the motivation of active contributors. Our analysis reveals that participants tended to share often humorous observations of everyday work practices indicative of a highly technical global workforce and interviews with participants suggested that the resulting tweets help reinforce a shared sense of group identity with other members of the organization. We conclude by discussing the implications of emergent social media as expressions of organizational culture, particularly when it occurs outside of the intranet.