The article represents a study which examined the expectations that workers have regarding enterprise social media (ESM) in one the largest financial service companies in the United States, American Financial. American Financial decided to adopt an ESM platform called A-Life, because they wanted to encourage their employees to interaction and professional networking. The sample was limited to workers within a particular leadership program, which consisted of young social media oriented employees working in different teams, who had worked only a short period of time for the company (born between 1980 and 1990). That way they were thought not to be influenced too strongly by the organizational culture.
The data was collected through interviews of 58 employees in the leadership program in American Financial. The first interviews followed a semi structured interview protocol regarding each employee’s use and perceptions of various technologies. The second part of the interviews resembled a free-response questioning and its aim was to find out what impressions the participants had of a number of different publicly available social media technologies and platforms and also other digital communication technologies used in the workplace. At the final part of the interview, employees were presented with a hypothetical scenario about an American Financial sponsored social media technology and they were asked about their anticipated use of this hypothetical technology.
The data was first analyzed using the constant comparative technique, where three authors coded the interviews until a broad structure of themes emerged. Two of the authors also engaged in open line-by-line coding. They also coded for individual attributes and further on did classification. Later on they used axial coding grouping the raw text segments into similar responses. Finally, the researchers used also selective coding in the process, which was done blind to the attributes.
The researchers used several qualitative methods when analyzing the data, which was very benefitting considering the amount of the material they had. They explained the process thoroughly and justified their decisions. One of the limitations in the methods however, could be the semi-structured interview protocol, which can imperceptibly include a hidden agenda of the researchers because of its unstructured nature.
I would also have to criticize the demographic features of the respondents, since they were a very homogeneous group. In addition, they were all also from the same company, so it would have been perhaps benefitting to examine the same expectations in other companies as well.
Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
Case study research is a way of studying a specific group, situation, organization, individual or phenomenon in a specific period of time. Case study method in science aims at understanding the dynamics in specific settings and it usually combines several data collecting methods. The data used in case study research can be qualitative, quantitative or both. Case studies can be used in accomplishing for example the following: to provide description, test a theory as well as to generate a theory.
Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.
The case study paper of my choice is From Diagnosis to Death: A Case Study of Coping With Breast Cancer as Seen Through Online Discussion Group Messages by Kuang-Yi Wen, Fiona McTavish, Gary Kreps, Meg Wise and David Gustafson. It was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (impact factor of 3.541). The chosen case study conducted a study by using an online narrative analysis as an innovative approach to investigate changing message themes across the cancer trajectory.
This case study was about a chosen individual on an online discussion group, and her 202 messages where the sample. The researchers stated clearly the theoretical framework: the model of coping (Lasarus & Folkman) and the fact that no previous research had examined how the messages of a breast cancer patient change across her medical timeline. The analyzing of the data was decided to do with using a qualitative approach, considering it was best for the aim. According to Eisenhardt's table, this case study was neither theory nor hypothesis, which retained the theoretical flexibility. The study has a strong justification, but it doesn't state a single research question or hypothesis: "the purpose of this analysis was to identify the patterns of online discussion group message themes in relation to the medical timeline of one woman's breast cancer journey from the time of her diagnosis to the time of her death." So this could perhaps be seen as a weakness: the lack of a clear research question.
The strengths in this case study could be the within-case analysis, since the study has a strong framework and also a database to which the chosen individual's messages are rather easy to compare. This case study also had multiple investigators: the open coding was done by two of the researchers. The study also manages to discuss well with the previous studies and answers to a question that is left open in previous studies, as stated above.
It actually felt quite hard to find the weaknesses of this study in respect of Eisenhardt's table. The study entered a rather new field with the online environment, and used the results of previous face-to-face studies as a framework, not so much as contradicting them. They reached a conclusion and left suggestions for future studies. They even answered the causalities and helped the reader to understand why.
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