Overcoming the Barriers of an Enterprise Social Media Initiative

Today's business environment requires innovation and multidisciplinary teams. In this context, a growing number of organizations are adopting Enterprise Social Media (ESM) to initiate their Digital transformation journey. However, many ESM initiatives fail, only achieving superficial interactions without creating value for organizations. This paper represents two contributions. First, it unveils the main barriers related to the deployment of an ESM initiative in a small organization. Second, it provides insights for overcoming such barriers. For conducting this research, a 12 months action research has been adopted. During this period, the authors studied the implementation, use, and value creation of an ESM initiative within a small non-profit organization starting its Digital transformation process. This paper provides empirical-longitudinal perspective on the subject, offering management practitioners and scholars insights about how to overcome the barriers of an ESM initiative during a Digital transformation project. In addition, this work proposes future avenues of research.