RE-EXAMINING THE LEARNING PROCESS IN SMALL FIRMS: MULTI-CASE ANALYSIS ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

This paper is aimed at exploring the merits of an organisational learning perspective as a framework for analysing the continuous use of social media (SM) technology in small firms. Despite the scholarly call for building entrepreneurial learning theory, the entrepreneurial literature remains highly individualistic, ad hoc and fragmented, calling for both theoretical and empirical development (Wang and Chugh, 2014). Wang and Chugh (2014) argue that despite the insights from entrepreneurship and organizational learning on the integration of individual and collective learning, several questions deserve more attention in future research: for example, `How do small firms learn to use Social media? 'How do small firms manage the risks associated with the use of social media? This study is intended to provide empirical evidence to fill these gaps. There is also a gap in the literature with regards to the lack of a longitudinal study in this area and a deeper understanding of behaviour and beliefs. In their study of how a social venture forms reference points for social performance, Andre et al. (2018) used a longitudinal qualitative case study and suggest that a longitudinal study would provide more conclusive evidence as to the process through which beliefs, attitudes, norms, and intentions are formed and temporally evolve. They suggest that further research should look into how individuals receive, make sense of and assess feedbacks, while Mathias and Williams (2018) encourage future longitudinal exploratory studies. A longitudinal multiple case studies approach is chosen because extant literature indicates that it is an appropriate method for having a clear understanding of observable phenomena (Gummesson, 2005; Yin, 2014). The case study firms were purposively selected to provide data pertinent to understanding the research objective (Shaw, 1999). The ten case study firms were drawn from different business sectors. To be included in the study the firms had to be in existence for five years; be independently owned; and have adopted social media for at least a year. Each firm had to meet the EU's (2008) definition of SMEs. A case material is built up on each company. In the UK, the majority of businesses are engaging with social media in some form. However, in certain sectors there is a huge lack of proper integration of social media to the business as a whole and limited value on offer to the consumer (McGrory, 2016). The findings in the study suggested that small firms only learned to manage risks after things have gone wrong and either caused embarrassments or reputational damage. They learned through experience/mistakes and the experiences of others to manage risks through a number of ways such as providing staff guidelines, creating social media policy for staff, monitoring and listening to customers' complaints, keeping record of passwords and establishing ownership of social media accounts. The study contributes to the broader body of literature by providing evidence to illustrate the learning process involved in the use of social media by small firms, thus helping to advance entrepreneurial research. It contributes to knowledge by identifying the key learning features in relation to social media technology and SMEs and how they evolve around the managers. Finally, it discusses how organizational factors in small firms influence the aspect of learning and relearning from past and potential future behaviors. Simply put, how learning takes place and when learning takes place are fundamental to the understanding of entrepreneurial process ( Wang and Chugh, 2014). Thus, this study illustrates how small firms learn to develop a social media competence. The paper suggests that conceptualizing the use of social media in small firms within the context of organizational learning holds promise as an explanatory framework.