Annotated bibliography – Organisational benefits of blogging

Shortly after blogging hit the mainstream, firms started trying to figure out how to tap into the phenomenon.  The initial foray was through marketing (more on that to come) when firms started reading or lurking around consumer blogs and watching what was said about them.  Then firms tried to give it a go themselves, with limited success, by turning their press releases into PR blogs.  The manipulative tone was the exact opposite of what the blogging community expected and valued.  Now firms are letting employees blogs within varying limits and bringing blogging behind the firewall.  Again, I am not sure firms really get why blogging works, with most organisational blogs being less successful than those on the outside.  Too much focus on the mechanics of blogging and too much control and too little focus on providing employees with the freedom to explore the environment and let it become their own.

This is a long list, so again, I am just including a sentence or two from the abstracts.  Enjoy…

Bar-Ilan, J. (2005). Information hub blogs. Journal of Information Science, 31(4), 297-307.

Blogging has become an important activity on the web; the number of web blogs is growing extremely fast, and thus this phenomenon cannot be ignored. This paper monitors a set of blogs for a two-month period in September-October 2003 and characterizes these blogs based on descriptive statistics and content analysis. We have chosen a set of topic-oriented blogs, i.e. blogs whose purpose is to convey professional information.

Cayzer, S. (2004). Semantic Blogging and Decentralized Knowledge Management. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 47-52.

This article focuses on a system capable of aggregating, annotating, indexing and searching a community’s snippets.

Cox, J. L., Martinez, E. R., & Quinlan, K. B. (2008). Blogs and the corporation: managing the risk, reaping the benefits. Journal of Business Strategy, 29(3).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of blogs in corporate communication and proposes general policies to help corporations effectively and ethically use blogs.

Dearstyne, B. W. (2005). BLOGS The New Information Revolution? Information Management Journal, 39(5), 38-44.

This article discusses the emerging popularity of Weblogs, its categories, and the areas in which records and information management (RIM) managers can influence blog policy.

Ip, R. K. F., & Wagner, C. (2008). Weblogging: A study of social computing and its impact on organizations. [Article]. Decision Support Systems, 45(2), 242-250.

This article reviews weblogs and their role as a social networking device for young people and its probable evolution to the organizational computing medium.

Kaiser, S., & Müller-Seitz, G. (2008). Leveraging Lead User Knowledge in Software Development – The Case of Weblog Technology. Industry & Innovation, 15(2), 199-221.

Firms increasingly rely upon information technology (IT) to manage organizational knowledge, though this does not inevitably result in increased knowledge sharing.

Kaiser, S., Müller-Seitz, G., Pereira Lopes, M., & Pina E Cunha, M. (2007). Weblog-Technology as a Trigger to Elicit Passion for Knowledge. Organization, 14(3), 391-412.

The practice of Weblogging as a new social and technological phenomenon in society and business is gaining a growing number of supporters.

Miller, R. (2007). Breaker, breaker: Is the blogosphere today’s CB radio? Public Relations Tactics, 14(11), 17-22.

The article offers tips on how a company can protect its brand online in the U.S. Blogging is sometimes disadvantageous to a company’s product because the criticisms made by bloggers can either make or break a company.

Ojala, M. (2005). Blogging: For knowledge sharing, management and dissemination. Business Information Review, 22(4), 269-276.

The article discusses the significant benefits of weblogs as vehicles for knowledge management initiatives.

Pabarskaite, Z. (2003). Decision trees for web log mining. Intelligent Data Analysis, 7(2), 141.

Complex and extensive web sites are becoming more and more popular. Companies need to justify their investments.

Pinnock, S. R. (2005). Organizing virtual environments: National union deployment of the blog and new cyberstrategies. WorkingUSA, 8(4), 457-468.

Over the past decade, the use of information technology (IT) by American unions to enhance organizing initiatives has been slow and uneven.

Richards, J. (2008). Because I need somewhere to vent: The expression of conflict through work blogs. New Technology, Work and Employment, 23(1-2), 95-110.

Employee resistance has traditionally been analysed as an activity that occurs in the work organisation. In recent years, new Internet communication technologies, such as blogs, have expanded the possibilities for employees to express conflict. This paper explores how these developments can add to our understandings of employee resistance to the labour process.

Ringberg, T., & Reihlen, M. (2008). Towards a Socio-Cognitive Approach to Knowledge Transfer. The Journal of Management Studies, 45(5), 912.

We present first a critique of the positivist and social constructionist positions; then we introduce a socio-cognitive model that captures and explicates socio-cognitive processes involved in sense making during knowledge transfer. Finally, we explore future research streams and managerial implications.

Sprague, R. (2007). Business Blogs and Commercial Speech: A New Analytical Framework for the 21st Century. American Business Law Journal, 44(1), 127-159.

The article focuses on the free speech rights in light of the introduction and influence of Internet Web logs, popularly known as blogs that is applied to businesses. The author reflects that substantial part of business-related communications is beginning to occur in blogs, including advertising which the commercial speech doctrine has not subjected to regulation.

Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Neither Hayek nor Habermas. Public Choice, 134(1/2), 87-95.

The rise of the blogosphere raises important questions about the elicitation and aggregation of information, and about democracy itself.

Wagner, C. (2005). Supporting Knowledge Management in Organizations with Conversational Technologies: Discussion Forums, Weblogs, and Wilds. Journal of Database Management, 16(2), 1-1.

The article reviews requirements and tool availability for knowledge management in virtual communities and other knowledge sharing environments, where professionals wish to quickly and easily share knowledge and information.

Ward, R. (2006). Blogs and wikis: A personal journey. Business Information Review, 23(4), 235-240.

Describes the use of social software and social media, incorporating blogs and wikis, to develop websites to support internal communication and collaboration in a law firm.

Wyld, D. C. (2008). Management 2.0: a primer on blogging for executives. Management Research News, 31(6), 448-483.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate executives of companies are using blogging as a new communications channel.

Xifra, J., & Huertas, A. (2008). Blogging PR: An exploratory analysis of public relations weblogs. Public Relations Review, 34(3), 269-275.

Although there are ever more weblogs on the Internet, this is an area that has been little researched in public relations, and where they have been analyzed it has been as a tool for communication rather than a primary information source in the public relations body of knowledge.

Annotated Bibliography C to D

Yikes – I haven’t kept up on my promise to annotate my bibliography.  Here are another couple of letters.

Chopin, K. (2008). Finding communities: alternative viewpoints through weblogs and tagging. Journal of Documentation, 64(4), 552.

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss and test the claim that user-based tagging allows for access to a wider variety of viewpoints than is found using other forms of online searching. Design/methodology/approach – A general overview of the nature of weblogs and user-based tagging is given, along with other relevant concepts. A case is then analyzed where viewpoints towards a specific issue are searched for using both tag searching (Technorati) and general search engine searching (Google and Google Blog Search). Findings – The claim to greater accessibility through user-based tagging is not overtly supported with these experiments. Further results for both general and tag-specific searching goes against some common assumptions about the types of content found on weblogs as opposed to more general web sites. Research limitations/implications – User-based tagging is still not widespread enough to give conclusive data for analysis. As this changes, further research in this area, using a variety of search subjects, is warranted. Originality/value – Although proponents of user-based tagging attribute many qualities to the practice, these qualities have not been properly documented or demonstrated. This paper partially rectifies this gap by testing one of the claims made, that of accessibility to alternate views, thus adding to the discussion on tagging for both researchers and other interested parties.

NOTE: Good basic article on blogging and includes tagging which is hard to find in the literature.

Cox, J. L., Martinez, E. R., & Quinlan, K. B. (2008). Blogs and the corporation: managing the risk, reaping the benefits. Journal of Business Strategy, 29(3).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of blogs in corporate communication and proposes general policies to help corporations effectively and ethically use blogs. Blogs are among the new communication media that are playing an increasingly important role in the corporate world. Most companies, however, are not yet taking advantage of this opportunity, nor do they manage the associated risks. We have developed a series of best practices to help companies address this issue. We examine the evolution of the blogging phenomena and create a framework for characterizing the potential impact of blogs on the corporation. Policies are derived from data compiled from the literature, case studies, and existing proactive corporate strategies. Most companies do not have well developed strategies for corporate blogging. As a communication medium, blogs represent a significant opportunity to further corporate marketing goals, particularly in light of the changing face of information consumption. The prevalence of blogs poses risk to corporations as a relatively uncontrolled medium. This paper illustrates the need to develop proactive strategies for corporate blogging and provides guidelines for corporate blogging policies. Companies should integrate blogging policies into their overall corporate communication strategy as well as develop an approach for addressing the risks they impose. This is the first paper to consider both the benefits and risks of blogging from a policy point of view.

NOTE: Didn’t get much out of this, but I may re-read it later.  It is a little off topic for me, but there are so few articles on blogging and management, I feel like I have to read them all.

Dearstyne, B. W. (2007). Blogs, Mashups, & Wikis Oh, My! Information Management Journal, 41(4), 24-33.

This article focuses on Web 2.0, which refers to the perceived new generation of Web-based services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users, and explains its relevance to records and information management (RIM) professionals. It says that Web 2.0 is changing the way people work and the way records and documents are created, exchanged and used and this trend poses new challenges for RIM professionals. Examples of Web 2.0 services include MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Second Life.

NOTE: Not much on blogging, just a bit on “the gatherers” and tying it to web 2.0 as a collaborative activity – I’ll need to think on that at bit more, I am not sure I get it/agree.

Dingwall, R. (1997). Accounts, Interviews and Observations. In G. Miller & R. Dingwall (Eds.), Context and method in qualitative research (pp. 51-65). London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Providing a critical examination of the principles and practice of qualitative research and the interplay between context and method, Context & Method in Qualitative Research addresses methodological and practical issues central to the concerns of qualitative researchers: The validity and credibility of qualitative methods The problems encountered using specific techniques in a range of social settings The discussion of moral issues raised in qualitative research Leading international researchers from North America, the United Kingdom, and France focus on the thoughtful, project-like character of high-quality qualitative research. They reflect on their experiences and on the methods and strategies they have used to study everyday life, also making practical suggestions to readers on why and how they conducted their own studies. These all-star contributors go beyond cookbook-like discussions on subjects such as how to enter social settings, manage ones research subjects, and ask good questions while formulating research strategies. Context & Method in Qualitative Research is a coherent, wide-ranging, and practical collection that will be an invaluable resource for both the experienced and beginning researcher, practitioner, and student of qualitative research.

NOTE: I just used this for reference on qualitative methods.