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so what i study is to understand how
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enterprise social media affect various
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type of work outcomes
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the way the reason i'm studying
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enterprise social media is that there's
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actually been uptick in adoption
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in recent years i think in 2009 mckinsey
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report came out only 28 percent of firms
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has used some type of social networking
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tools but by 2012
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that has gone up to 53 percent so we are
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familiar with consumer-facing social
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media such as
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twitter facebook there are lots of
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studies lots of startups or
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industry activities around this
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consumer-facing social media
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but how enterprise social media affects
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performance affect firms
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affected employees effect collaborations
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hasn't been examined
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and that's what i'm trying to do to
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understand how enterprise social media
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enables network formation enables
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information acquisition
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and how these intermediate benefits
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ultimately affect
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various work outcomes such as your
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billable revenue or
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your probability being laid off next
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cycle
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so information diversity and social
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communication are two factors i'm
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looking at in this research
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and i found that both have an impact on
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your work outcomes
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just affect them differently for example
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information diversity
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measures how much information or how or
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how diverse
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your information is and i'm measuring
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this through in machine learning
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techniques
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looking at your email chats and calendar
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events basically all your
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electronic communications and we found
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that information diversity
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is strongly correlated with your
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billable revenue
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and the more information you have the
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more likely you're you're you're able to
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build
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it makes sense in a sense like the more
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influence you have you're a better
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worker and you're better
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able to solve your client's problem
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interestingly we found that
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a particular topic called social
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communication
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does not have a direct impact on your
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billable revenue
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but has a tremendous impact on whether
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you get whether you got laid off
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in the 2009 recession when you have
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social commission have the words such as
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coffee lunch dinner football baseball
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these social words
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the more words you have in your
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communication the less likely
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they are to be laid off and in fact
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that's the most significant predictor
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above and beyond your objective
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performance measures in predicting
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whether you're laid off
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i think the social communication one is
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surprising
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because i thought i i deliberately
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picked industry where you can measure
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your value to the firm very clearly like
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in the end you know how much you bring
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how much money you bring to the firm
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should be the ultimate value i would
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thought all the other stuff should have
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maybe have a bit of
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predictive power but in fact that what i
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found is that social communication has
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bigger power than your objective
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performance
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in predicting what they got laid off in
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the 2009 recession
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i think that's that was really
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surprising to me but i'm not saying that
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people should
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necessarily just stop working and show
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their community should communicate all
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the time
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but i'm surprised i'm thinking that
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there's a perhaps there's some kind of
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intention
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intended value that people should
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communicate can provide
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that we don't see perhaps this person is
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a really good team player i just really
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enjoy working with this person
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maybe that makes him maybe he did not
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build directly
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but he enabled his co-workers or his
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colleagues to do better job
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perhaps that's one reason or you can
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think of the traditional and old boys
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club
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where you know people who are tend to
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schmooze a lot get better but you know i
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don't know which one's which
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but uh you know but that's really
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surprising to me
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i guess importantly well obviously you
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want to do a good job
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you know getting lots of information on
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time is very important
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and your social network plays a really
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key role in helping you get the
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information
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and the stuff by social networks also
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helps you to you know
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i guess smooth the relationship around
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you perhaps you shouldn't just you know
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be the dilbert in the office
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always just work and code and do what do
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we need to do
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it actually pays perhaps to you know get
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to know your co-workers to understand
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what's going on
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at workforce and those kind of
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intangible benefits through social
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communication can be very valuable to
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workers
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and for managers you know again
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maybe you maybe as i think whether
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social communication is a positive
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negative
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in your workforce i think manager has a
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particularly uh
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better ins a particular better insight
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than anyone else maybe
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social communication is really a
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lubricant makes the team collaboration
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better then you should you should foster
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that but if social communication really
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is about political
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backstabbing or boys club maybe you
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should you know try to stem that from
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happening
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i think it's becoming aware that social
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media
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in particular enterprise social media
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can have productivity effect
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is very important and in particular
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what was important as firms started
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adopting enterprise social media at that
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workplace
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i think before you before anyone is
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starting to do that
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i think it's really important to
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understand potential implications
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for our workforce what is the mechanisms
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going on what
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enables your workers or employees to do
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better job
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and before knowing that's what's
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happening you may actually experience
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some unexpected consequences of adopting
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center by social media
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so although i'm studying consultants but
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i think this type of work can generally
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applicable to all kinds of information
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workers
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including lawyers consultants scientists
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any kind of information related worker
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would be you know
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we find this research very valuable but
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i think as enterprise social media is
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becoming more prominent
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any firms are trying to adopt this type
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of technology will find this very
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interesting as well
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i think the closest one perhaps marissa
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meyer's decision to
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ask all the workers to show up instead
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of working remotely
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i think a lot of people there's a lot of
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backlash against that particular
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policy especially for working moms i'm
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actually
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i'm working on myself and but i actually
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think there's some merits
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in that as well but for the workers if
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you think social
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communication is really going to be such
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an important
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predictor in your career outcomes or
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career trajectories
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perhaps it pays to show up and to
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lubricate this
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social communication around you and to
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understand each other to understand your
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colleagues who know what's going on
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because a lot of
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information or especially intangible
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information are passed down
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through water cooler conversations and
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with that but if you're working at home
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all the time without having that access
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perhaps you actually you're actually
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doing your own
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you know you're actually worse off as a
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result if you're kept
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doing that so i think marissa has a
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point but whether
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we should enforce 100 percent i think it
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depends on the setting depends on the
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firm
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was it was what was needed and uh
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perhaps marisa made it the right
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decision i don't know it means actually
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yahoo
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well i guess it depends on the person
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again
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right this perception again depends on
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who you're talking to
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perhaps for a consultant this may be may
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not be as surprising i don't know
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but for someone you know for like me or
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anybody who's in the
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in the industry at least in america we
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think of meritocracy
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right we think that meritocracy is
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ultimately what gets us
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you know promoted we got we were
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rewarded for you know
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for doing our job well but the fact that
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we the fact this is
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this research i've shown that social
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communication matters it's interesting
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takeaway in the sense that not only
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should you do your job well
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but you also have you also should worry
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about some other
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intangible communication or other stuff
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you have to do at work it makes us more
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likely that you will be do
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you'll be you know keeping your job
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getting promoted or
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improve your career outcomes
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i think enterprise social media in
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general hasn't been studied much
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we see a lot of again facebook and
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twitter social media that's consumer
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facing
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and what's unique about this research is
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that i have the
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real social network of employees
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because if you think about your
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communication electronic communication
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channels including your
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calendar events that capture some of the
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meetings facebook facebook
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basically encounters these are all real
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communication that your real network at
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work
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and to capture that precisely to
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understand the intermediate outcome
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that networks can produce is something
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that hasn't been done before
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so i'm actually in the process of
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finishing another project related to
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this
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and where we found a emergence of a
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network biased technical change
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in instance as a social media is being
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adopted at work
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we actually see a you know digital
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divide among workers
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so you think that perhaps social media
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enable people to find
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each other more easily and may therefore
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we raise some of the barriers that we
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have in
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connecting to other people at work and
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perhaps the dilbert of the world would
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be better off
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because now he has to use social media
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to find the people he needs to find
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but in fact what i found is actually a
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little disco disconcerting the sense
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that
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dilbert are becoming worse off as social
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media becomes more available
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if you think about it if you were making
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connection you need to find a person you
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wanted to connect but you also need to
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persuade that person to become connected
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to you
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so as a search cost have become erased
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because of social media this conversion
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cost of
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you know making the person become your
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friends is even becoming more prominent
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as a result if you have a lot of
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political i mean social capital before
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you are even better off because you have
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the power to make that person
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be connected to you whereas if you don't
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have that power even you found the
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person you defined
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they may not choose to connect with you
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and then you're actually worse off
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so in a sense we actually do see a rich
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get richer and poorer get poorer
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phenomenon with enterprise social media
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and i think that's again some unexpected
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consequences
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that firms should should try to
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understand before they adopt these type
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of
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technologies
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you
