Infrastructures-in-Practice: Cultivating Enterprise Microblogging

As with other types of corporate social software, companies adopting enterprise microblogging find it hard to make sense of the new service. This comprises both integrating it into their work processes and shaping the implementation and adoption process so that envisioned usage practices evolve. In this paper we are investigating the use of microblogging at a large insurance company by means of genre analysis. We compare and contrast our findings with three similar studies we have conducted prior. We find a significant relationship between the organizational contexts and the related technologies-in-practice that have evolved in the different cases. It becomes clear that management cannot prescribe usage practices for open tools like enterprise microblogging. But management can shape the organizational context in which it is adopted. Thus, we discuss the concept of "cultivation" as a potential management approach for implementing enterprise microblogging successfully.