Analysis of a Recent IBM Initiative Relating to Social Business - Case Study Example

Learning and knowledge are connected to each other. A person or an organisation requires learning in order to acquire knowledge. There are various theoretical concepts in line with this issue. This leads to the possibility of having various researches and studies associated with finding how to guarantee both learning and knowledge in an organisation. After all, acquiring the relevant knowledge and learning will guarantee a good direction for the decision-making process of an individual or someone who is highly in-charge in an organisation to formulate decisions and ensure the right strategies to guarantee a smooth-flowing process in the entire organizational operation. The work at hand interlinks the idea of Social Business in the acquiring of knowledge and learning via the use and development of social media. With substantial consideration of the cases of IBM and Nokia, the work at hand provides a significant output of the highlighting the recent initiatives of IBM and Nokia relating to Social Business. To start this, it is important to look into the prevailing literature associated with organisation learning, knowledge management and social media development. Organisation learning, knowledge management and social media development The idea of learning and acquiring of knowledge date back to the old times when classically renowned philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had fundamental point of view about learning and knowledge as substantially applied today in modern times (Fine, 2008, p.506; Harari, 2004, p.31; Izak, 2013, p.108). These philosophers had point to say relevant to the work of the mind and how it is capable of recalling similar objects, recalling things that are opposite and recalling an activity related to a previous one (Angermeier et al., 2009, p.3; Almog, 2008, p.111; Delamater and Lattal, 2014, p. 1). As found in various studies about learning, learning and knowledge are connected to each other. There are varying studies that try to explore the idea that the mind can initiate behavior leading to learning and knowledge, and the mind is capable of learning things. Thus, this leads to the point that the environment has a significant contribution to one’s learning and acquiring of knowledge. Therefore, there are claims pointing to the idea that knowledge is obtained from the environment (Gregory et al., 2008, p.174; Baets, 1999, p.188; Caldwell, 1995, p.49; Liu et al., 2014, p. 328; Hong and Scardamalia, 2014, p.279; Salama, 2012, p.8; Al-Ashaab et al., 2012, p.48). For this reason, particularly in the field of business, the idea of studying learning has become a significant component especially in the decision making process within the higher hierarchy of the organisation. Some business ideas point out that learning is a social process just like the case of Jennex’s Pyramid Model as summarized in Figure 1. Jennex’s Pyramid Model shows that decision makers are influenced by the remote nodes in the network (Hemsley and Mason, 2014, p.151; Tjader, 2010, p. 434; Weiss et al., 2012, p. 178). This has become the basis of the argument of Ajzen (2006) pertaining to the point that at certain level people have already engaged in social media channels. The idea of this point is revealed through the diagram of Theory of Planned Behaviour on knowledge sharing behaviour as illustrated in Figure 2. Therefore, Ajzen wants to point out that prior to the modern experience of social media today, everything about it was initially founded within the context of individual experiences and eventually social networks, as far as the actual learning can take place in the environment. Figure 1. Jennex’s Pyramid Model (Jennex, 2009) Figure 2. Diagram of Theory of Planned Behaviour on knowledge sharing behaviour (Ajzen, 2006) IBM initiative relating to social media The secrets to the success of IBM are found in its ability to manage to unite its corporation behind a singular brand message that is formed around integrated business solutions, trust and brand focus (Haig, 2011, pp.71-72). All of these however, require the company to consider the establishment of its social network in order to impart the right message about the company. In other words, IBM needed to initiate the actual move to impart the right message about its brand and the actual solution-service-provider message directly to its target market. In 2010, IBM managed to create around 17,000 internal blogs and almost 200,000 employees on LinkedIn (Earl and Waddington, 2013, p.19). The point of this is to eventually manage its employee’s innovation via the implementation of social media. IBM wanted to ensure generation of idea that in the end will allow it to strengthen its decision-making process. For this reason, the implementation of internal blogs and encouraging its employees to engage in a social networking activity across the world is not just a way to spread the word of mouth about its prevailing organisational strategic direction, but to generate individual experiences from its employees and make sure of the achievement of knowledge and eventually learning primarily on the level of organisational learning. This adheres to the actual concept of Jennex’s Pyramid Model, elaborating further that the actual learning can indeed take place in the environment. In the case of the IMB, its actual generation of knowledge and establishment of learning on the part of employee innovation are established in the context of the social media, as the specific environment. However, it is clear that the actual implementation or development of the social media especially in the case of IBM sparked up from the idea of trying to establish its employee innovation in order to achieve success of its brand. Social media have changed the landscape for brand management (Gensler et al., 2013, p.242). Figure 3 shows the conceptual framework that illustrates the impact of social media on brand management (Gensler et al., 2013, p.245). Figure 3. A conceptual framework that illustrates the impact of social media on brand management (Gensler et al., 2013, p.245). Technically, Figure 3 shows how the brand performance can be improved, by taking into account the point of establishing channels that will involve understanding market characteristics, characteristics of the firm and the consumer-brand characteristics. All of these try to consolidate all the information that will be obtained from the brands, their stories and the actual responses or reaction from the customers. In the case of IBM, they invested a significant amount of time and financial consideration in order to set up their actual employee innovation program especially in the age of advancing technology and social media development. Their ultimate goal is to engage each employee in its move to establish the brand via the social media network. This therefore allows the IBM to expose its employees on the Internet. However, there are contradicting views regarding the impact of the internet in the society. Some people believe that it erodes the established relationships like taking the community members away from their physical communities, and others believe that people who are frequently online are more involved in community (Finkbeiner, p.8). On the other side, experience in the internet is also found to increase social contact and eventually social online interactions (Finkbeiner, p.8). The good point of this lies on the idea, that social relations are innumerable in terms of sharing, combining and coordination of information and knowledge in a trusted network (Finkbeiner, p.6). This makes the point that extracting data from social media platforms leads to the generation of online sources that will pave the way for a more meaningful result founded with a high level of confidence. A certain study reveals that online sources of data can result to the achievement of results with a high level of confidence (Callarisa et al., 2012, p.73). On the other hand, as also stated earlier, one of the reasons for the success of IBM is trust. IBM was able to make sure a strong stand on this side, especially in the advent of volatile industry where the presence of technology has become constant in changing the market (Haig, 2011, p. 72). Trust is relevant and necessary in this case. Another study reveals that in the comparison of American Twitter users and Ukraine Twitter users. It was found that Trust in Twitter affects the Ukrainian’s actual point of patronizing a certain brand that is hosted on the platform (Pentian et al., 2013, p.1546). This study reveals that the right implementation and usage of a social media network can lead to the strong and effective market positioning of the brand. However, success in IBM is not only confined within the evaluation of how well its brand has been remarkably positioned in its industry or the target market. There is always the inclusion of financial aspect to this issue. In this case, it is important to know the point of how well IBM had managed the demand for its product and service offerings. Managing demand is actually linked to customer management concerns (Kotler et al., 1991; Boone and Kurtz, 2006). The effect of social media marketing is important especially in cases concerning customer management strategies (Stone and Woodcock, 2013, p.394). Social media capabilities relate to these areas: measurement, workflow management and agility, execution, brand and proposition management, customer experience management partner management, data management, technology, direction and leadership, people and culture, insights and planning, and channels and media (Stone and Woodcock, 2013, p.394). Stone and Woodcock suggest that socially enabled businesses have higher return on investment (2013, p.401). This particular claim is shown in Figure 4. IBM eventually is one of the companies, as far as its level of success is concerned, is having higher return of investment, because of its capability to create the right message via social media, ensure higher trust and brand focus through its move for employee innovation while employing social networking platforms (Haig, 2011). This eventually puts IBM to a higher advantage, or a cutting edge above the other in its industry. Figure 4. Socially Enabled Business maturity (Stone and Woodcock, 2013, p.401). However, aside from IBM, there are other potential companies that are trying to exploit social media for their advantage. One of them is NOKIA. NOKIA: A case study Nokia is known in its industry as the streamlined brand (Haig, 2011, p.62). When it comes to size, Nokia has the guaranteed advantage; its large volume of production is its obvious advantage, because it can truly compete on price. However, aside from this, Nokia eventually focused only on only one market, which must be a significant challenge in the ongoing competition by which related brands compete each other. A remarkable strategy is required in order to generate competitive advantage (Schnaars, 1998, p.60; Porter, 1998, p.34). This has become the reason why Nokia ensures to compete on price by streamlining its operation. However, aside from this, this company cannot just rely on one strategic advantage, but in the advent of social media, generation of information is necessary in order to make sure good decision-making output. What Nokia eventually lacks at this time is its failure to facilitate and spread consumer advocacy, which can be made possible via social media marketing (Holloman, 2013). Nokia lacks the ability to make the word-of-mouth messages to spread further and faster. It is eventually clear in this aspect that Nokia still has many things to learn, including individual experiences of its customers, allowing it to know their behaviors as based on the concept of Ajzen. After all, to employ effective marketing strategy, understanding consumer behavior is a must (Peter and Olson, 2007). A certain study reveals that the impact of purchase intention was found to be influenced by electronic word of mouth, as it tries to develop trust and guarantees enduring long-term relationship with customers (To and Ho, 2014, p.182). It is important to understand consumers and their actual use of the social media and response to a brand. After all, a research suggests that consumers may eventually vary in their level of trust given to a certain brand while they use of the social media, but particularly this issue concerns the possibility of cultural background (Uslu et al., 2013, p.455). There is a need to evaluate the potential impact of positive and negative word of mouth on brand purchase (East et al., 2008, p.215, Belch and Belch, 2009). Social media are fundamental tools with significant contribution of achieving important things, even in hard times. It was found that more publics use social media especially during crises and this is the reason why studies pertaining to understanding how crisis professionals should optimize the social media tools prevail (Jin et al., 2011, p.74; Utz et al., 2013, p. 40; Freberg, 2012, p. 416). Social media allow people to connect, communicate, and collaborate leading to dynamic and complex infrastructure that enables easier, faster and more widespread sharing of information (Hemsley and Mason, 2013, p.138). Thus, social media are tools that can make word-of-mouth moves at a fast pace, as shown in Figure 5. Figure 5. A social-mediated crisis communication model (Liu et al., in press). For this reason, it is a substantial recommendation for Nokia to deal more on the aspect of studying its market and consumers more while it continues to explore the deeper side of its streamlining strategy. The framework in Figure 6 can be relevant for this purpose. As shown in Figure 6 and integrating the concept in it with the stated theories so far, it is remarkably clear that Nokia will be able to gather or generate data and information somewhere in the framing cycle and augmenting cycle. These cycles ensure theories are applied and proved prior to gaining the actual knowledge during the entire learning process. Figure 6. A structured-pragmatic-situational approach to conducting case studies (Pan and Tan, 2011, p.164). The social media used between IBM and NOKIA Based on the above information so far, it is clear that the remarkable advantage of IBM over Nokia is its mature implementation of the moves that require the use of social media. IBM has remarkably established the idea that social media and acquiring learning and knowledge for the benefit of the organisation are essential partners that cannot just be overlooked. IBM has showed that the use of social media should not only end up somewhere at the side of the customers, but there must be a continuous connection between customers and employees. Nokia on the other hand may be so focused on its ability to compete on price, which leads it to overlook the important point of social media for increasing the word-of-mouth concerning its products via the employment of social media. Nokia must essentially need to establish more learning and knowledge from its network in order to formulate strategies that can guarantee competitive advantage. The use of a social media for sure is one important activity that will make sense for this matter. Conclusion In a nutshell, the work at hand reveals that learning and knowledge are interrelated. Any organisation should require learning via acquiring of more knowledge and make sure of it as a possibility, just as presented in the case of IBM. For this reason, one must be guided by any relevant theoretical concepts in order to guarantee learning and implementation of knowledge relevant to decision-making process. This brings forward the idea of the relevance of the social media to the actual implementation of social business. Although IBM and Nokia may have eventually created their brands in their industry, there is still a great deal of consideration of their use of the social media. They have focused on formulating their strategic advantage, but of the two companies, IBM must have remarkably employed the fundamental advantage of social media. It turned out that Nokia must require more learning, especially in its customers where it has focused its streamlining and focus strategies. As already shown, learning can be contributed by the social media. 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