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Social Media in the Workplace

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The objective of this paper is to discover the social media platforms (SMPs) that are economically relevant to a business organization, the uses to which these platforms are put, and the reasons for their value. Given that social media generates information, the paper assumes that the difference between social media platforms arises from just two factors: the extent of control that may be exercised over the information flow and the extent of collaboration on information flows possible among participants on the platform.

It tests a hypothesis, derived from literature on strong and week ties, that an SMP can be economically valuable to a business organization only if it generates information that either improves the reliability of existing information, or is new information. Using a primary survey of 20 firms, the paper examines their use of social media for various business purposes and asks whether these uses match the theoretical conclusions. Some of the potentially useful business outcomes from social media include hiring and professional development, strategic planning, business development and marketing, project management, strategic planning, project ideation, product development and developing intellectual property, and sales of goods.

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Stanford University
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Rafiq Dossani

Internal and External Innovation Ecosystems in China 2.0

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About the seminar

Strategic value creation networks have become critically important in technology development and economic growth; co-creation relies the relationship infrastructure of people, organizations and policies. These complex intangible relationship assets can be observed through network analysis of small, medium and large enterprises. By identifying relationships through which information and financial resources flow, visual insights toward a shared vision can be created and strategic network orchestration can be implemented. Using social network analysis, these relationship patterns can reveal competitive forces, gatekeepers and collaboration opportunities - within and across sectors - in internal and external innovation ecosystems around the world, including China 2.0.

Dr. Russell's presentation is available here.

About the speaker

Martha G. Russell is a senior research scholar at the Human Sciences Technology Advanced Research Institute and associate director of Media X at Stanford University, a membership-based, interdisciplinary research catalyst focused on people, media, technology, and innovation.
 
Dr. Russell’s background spans a range of business development, innovation, and technology-transfer initiatives in information sciences, communications, and microelectronics at the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas at Austin, and Stanford University. She collaborates with Stanford’s Innovation Ecosystems Network and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Interactive Advertising, the Journal of Electronics, and Technology Forecasting and Social Change.

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Martha G. Russell Associate Director Speaker Media X at Stanford University
Seminars

Research Presentation (2 of 4) - Ishii, Moronaga and Takinami

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In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Wataru Ishii, "Promotion of Tourism in Japan:  Policies and Plans for Development and Involvement of Local Institutions"

Tourism is an industry that covers a lot of areas, such as hotels, transportation, food services and one of a few industries where growth can be expected in the future.  Because of the economic importance of tourism, the Japanese National Government established the Japan Tourism Agency in 2008 and has begun to try to make Japan "Tourism Nation" and local governments are following suit.  Ishii studies the significance of tourism in Japan and policies to attract foreign tourists that will compensate for stagnant domestic tourists.

Yuichi Moronaga, "The Essential Value - Connecting and Sharing Emotions - Storytelling in the Social Media Era"

Customers have high expectations when making purchases.  They expect products to provide value and, at the same time, satisfy their sense of emotions.  Storytelling is an important factor when it comes to these customer purchases.  Knowing the story behind the product or company can create strong attachments and this "essential value" is an important factor in the buying cycle.  These emotions may encourage our next behavior, whether it's repeat buying or long-term usage.  With the increased usage of social media, this type of cycle that is created is vital for a company's marketing plan as well as providing increased motivation of a company's employees.  In this presentation, Moronaga shares examples of storytelling, demonstrating how dynamically storytelling is changing people's purchasing behaviors and the opportunities presented.

Hirofumi Takinami, "Political Economy of the Financial Crises in Japan and the United States:  Why the Difference in Speed to Respond and Recover?"

Within the last two decades, the United States and Japan each experienced the same type of financial crisis, notably triggered by the collapse of major financial institutions.  Both were under the political economic conditions of one of the largest economies in the world as well as of an advanced democratic country.  However, it is symbolically different that Japan let the institutions go into chain-reaction bankruptcies without injecting public money in 1997, while the U.S. undertook a bailout of AIG just after the Lehman bankruptcy in 2008.  And now the U.S. economy is showing earlier recovery compared to what Japan experienced. -- What made this difference in speed to respond and recover?  To explain this puzzle, Takinami focuses on (a) existence of precedent & learning, (b) speed and process of economic downturn toward the crisis, (c) action by national leader & secretarial organization, and (d) status of global standard setter, together with assessing the alternative explanations.  Then, he argues some implications of these analyses.

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Wataru Ishii

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Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellow
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Wataru Ishii is a Corporate Affiliates Visiting Fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2009–10 and 2010–11. He is chief staff of the International Relations Division of Shizuoka Prefecture Government (SPG) in Japan where he has worked for the past 20 years. Before joining Shorenstein APARC, he worked in several departments of SPG, including taxation, tourism promotion, and public relations. He graduated from Kanazawa University with a BA in liberal arts.

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Wataru Ishii Speaker Shizuoka Prefecture

Yuichi Moronaga

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Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellow
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Yuichi Moronaga is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2010-11.  Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he held positions at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan (METI) for about 11 years, where he took charge of policy making.  His latest position at METI was as deputy director in the Manufacturing Industries Bureau. He graduated from Kyoto University in Economics.

 

 

 

 

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Yuichi Moronaga Speaker Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry, Japan

Hirofumi Takinami

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Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellow
(Revised)_Stanford_Visiting_Fellow_10-11_Hirofumi_TAKINAMI.jpg MA

Hirofumi Takinami is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2009-10 and 2010-11.  He is currently undertaking a collaborative research with Professor Phillip Lipscy, one of the faculty of Shorenstein APARC and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, on the financial crises in Japan and the U.S.

Takinami has been working for the Japanese government for 16 years.  He served, among others, in policy coordination and management positions notably in the public finance area, including Deputy Cabinet Counselor in charge of coordinating domestic and economic policies at Cabinet Secretariat; Director for Office of Planning and Personnel Management, Deputy Budget Examiner on social security expenditures and Deputy Director for Legal Division at the Ministry of Finance.

In addition to positions related to domestic policy, Takinami also worked internationally, attending as one of Japanese delegates to meetings, including Ministerial-level, of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM).  While sent to the Ministry of Justice, he served as Special Advisory Staff to the Director-General of Criminal Affairs Bureau, addressing international economic crimes. 

Takinami graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1994, earning a Bachelor of Law.  In his first dispatch to the United States by the Ministry of Finance, he received a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1998 with a major in finance and public finance.

Takinami was born and raised in Ono, Fukui, the prefecture next to Kyoto, known for producing many CEO's in Japan.  He is proud of inheriting the virtues of "dilligence, honesty and gratitutde" of this snowy country.

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Hirofumi Takinami Speaker MInistry of Finance, Japan
Seminars

Social Media and the Globalization of Business

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Social media—such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn—are increasingly being used for business purposes. The conference will discuss how social media promotes the globalization of ideas in the workplace, with a focus on the promotion of professional development and business development.

Two research papers, based on primary data, will form the core of the conference.

The first, a study done by NOVA, a federally funded agency to promote the employment of a skilled workforce in Silicon Valley, will look at how social media is used by Silicon Valley engineers for professional development and recruitment.

The second, a study done by Stanford University's Rafiq Dossani, examines corporate social media policy and practices for promoting innovation, project management, hiring, marketing and other business functions.

Please click here to read the Stanford Daily coverage of the conference.

Agenda

8:00am - 8:30amRegistration and light breakfast
8:30am - 8:45am                     

Rafiq Dossani, Senior Research Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

Themes of the Conference

8:45am - 10:00am

Philip Jordan, Green LMI Consulting
Stephen Jordan, Green LMI Consulting
 

Social Media Trends with Silicon Valley Employers

(The paper and the presentation are avaiable for download at the bottom of the page.)
 

10:00am - 10:15amBreak
10:15am - 12:15pm

Panel Discussion I

Moderator: Manuel Serapio, Faculty Director and Associate Professor of International Business, University of Colorado at Denver

  • Tuomo Nikulainen, Researcher, ETLA-Reserch Institute for the Finnish Economy
  • Rahim Fazal, CEO & Co-Founder, Involver
12:15pm - 1:15pmLunch
1:15pm - 2:30pm

Rafiq Dossani, Senior Research Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

Social Media in the Workplace

(The paper and the presentation are avaiable for download at the bottom of the page.)
 

2:30pm - 2:45pmBreak
2:45pm - 4:45pm

Panel Discussion II

  • Matt Ceniceros, Director of Global Media Relations, Applied Materials
  • Ankit Jain, Software Engineer, Google Inc.
  • Saurabh Mittal, Head of Customer Experience Practice, Wipro
  • Don McCullough, VP Marketing for IP and Broadband, Ericsson
4:45pm - 5:00pmWrap up

 

Sponsors

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Bechtel Conference Center

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South Asia Initiative
Globalization of Services Conference

Understanding China's home-grown social media

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Thomas Crampton, who oversees social media strategy in the Asia-Pacific region for the marketing and communications company Ogilvy and Mather, spoke to a standing room only audience at a seminar hosted by SPRIE about how controls imposed by the Chinese government have created a vibrant and unique social media domestic ecosystem.

Daniel C. Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein Asian-Pacific Research Center, also shared his views on the issue of the role of the internet and social media in social and political change.

Much has been written of late about the PRC government's efforts to control and censor the internet. The government's censorship of websites is an important issue, but it is not the top priority of the country's 420 million internet users or netizens. Their top priority is to connect with other Chinese online. The internet has opened access to information for ordinary Chinese citizens in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Coming from a world where information was pre-filtered by editors at state-run media, China's internet is freewheeling by comparison.

"China's government officials are the most savvy in understanding the power of social media and actively trying to shape its use," Crampton noted at the talk. Rather than eliminate social media, restrictions on foreign websites and social media have resulted in a flourishing home-grown, state-approved ecosystem in which Chinese-owned properties thrive. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have faced blockage in China, but their Chinese equivalents are expanding. According to the official statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) , the number of Chinese netizens reached 420 million at the end of June 2010. But their patterns of use vary from those in other countries. Quoting a 2008 MTV Music Matters survey, Crampton showed a graph that young people across Asia have made a similar number of friends online and offline. Only in China, however, young people actually have more friends online than offline. This points to a convergence of the offline and online worlds, where it is less important to distinguish between what happens online from the "real world." In China, more than in many countries, social media has become deeply integrated into people's lives.

China's government officials are the most savvy in understanding the power of social media and actively trying to shape its use.

- Thomas Crampton, Ogilvy and MatherIn China, as elsewhere in Asia, local variations of internet usage are driven by language, culture, levels of economic development, and the underlying digital ecosystem. For example, rather than short videos popular on YouTube, China's Youku and Tudou are filled with longer form of content, up to 70 percent of which is professionally produced, though individual Chinese users produce and post videos too. Users in China spend up to an hour per day on these sites, compared with less than 15 minutes spent by Americans on YouTube. In the way they present programs, the Chinese sites seem more like online television stations or a replacement for digital video recorders.

Twitter vs. Sina Weibo

Crampton cited another difference between Chinese and foreign social media that is rooted in language. At first glance, Sina Weibo is a latecomer to the microblog phenomenon. Launched in 2009, just about three years after Twitter, it is by far the most popular microblogging platform in China.

Similar to Twitter, Sina Weibo allows users to post 140-character messages, and users can follow friends and find interesting comments posted by others. Small but important differences in the platform have made some say it is a Twitter clone, but better. For example, unlike Twitter, Sina Weibo allows users to post videos and photos, comment on other people's updates, and easily add comments when re-posting a friend's message.

Though mobile phones are used to send less than 20 percent of Twitter updates in the United States, nearly half of Sina Weibo's updates are sent via mobile phone. This phenomenon points to the growth of China's mobile internet, one of the biggest trends in China and Asia.

Perhaps the most striking difference between Chinese and foreign social media, however, is the length of communications expressed via microblogs in Chinese versus English. One measure is to look at what Dell Inc., a company skilled at social media, can communicate on microblogs in Chinese compared to English. Twitter holds messages to 140 characters, which is quite short in English, especially if users want to include a URL. Dell often uses its Twitter feed, @delloutlet, to promote special offers, such as this posting: "Today's Deal: Get FREE Eco-Lite Sleeve with the purchase of any Dell Outlet Insprion Mini 10 or 10v Netbook! http://bit.ly/77fUFG." This message came in at 136 characters, almost the maximum length.

Since each character in Chinese is a word, @delldirect, Dell's Chinese-language feed, can write much more using the Chinese-language Zuosa microblogging platform. As translated by Ogilvy's Beijing team, a similar message reads: "Dell's National Day Sale runs from Sept. 11 to Oct. 8. To celebrate the 60th anniversary with the motherland, Dell Home Computers is offering 6 cool gifts and deals on 10 computer models. These exciting offers will run non-stop for 4 weeks. Also, get a free upgrade to color casing and a 512MB independent graphics card, as well as other service upgrades. All offers are on a first-come, first-served basis. What are you waiting for? Act now!" Even with a message of this length-114 characters in Chinese-there is still enough space to put in a webpage link. In other words, 114 characters in Chinese translates into 434 characters in English, well beyond the text limit of a "tweet" in English. This language efficiency turns microblogging in China into a more blog-like platform.

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Thomas Crampton at the SPRIE seminar on March 16, 2011
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China's Social Media: Same, Same, But Different

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Much has been written lately about the Chinese government's efforts to control and censor the Internet. Internet censorship is an important issue, but it is not the top priority of the country's 420 million Internet users. Their top priority? Connecting with other Chinese online. The Internet has opened access to information for ordinary Chinese citizens in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Coming from a world where information was pre-filtered by editors at state-run media, China's Internet is freewheeling by comparison. Rather than kill social media, controls imposed by the government have created a vibrant and unique social media domestic ecosystem.

Speaker

Thomas Crampton, who oversees social media strategy in the Asia-Pacific region for the marketing and communications company Ogilvy and Mather, will speak about what social media means to China and Asia. A former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, he previously looked at the region in terms of political, economic, and social issues. In his current role, he has been a participant of change as social media is affecting Asia's economics, politics, and society.

Commentator

Daniel Sneider is the associate director for research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Sneider was the former foreign affairs columnist of the San Jose Mercury News and had a long career as a foreign correspondent.

Media X is the partner of this seminar.

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Thomas Crampton Asia-Pacific Director Keynote Speaker Digital Influence, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Daniel C. Sneider (Commentator) Commentator
Seminars

Jong Jin Lee

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Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellow
Jong_Jin_Lee_2.jpg

Jong Jin Lee is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2011.  Lee has been working for the Samsung Group since 1987.  Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, Lee was a Vice President of Samsung Communications Team.  He has considerable background in the fields of Public Relations affairs, especially in the news media (newspaper, broadcasting, internet website, etc.).  He graduated from Korea University in Korea.

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Kenji E. Kushida

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Former Research Scholar, Japan Program
kenji_kushida_2.jpg MA, PhD
Kenji E. Kushida was a research scholar with the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2014 through January 2022. Prior to that at APARC, he was a Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies (2011-14) and a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow (2010-11).
 
Kushida’s research and projects are focused on the following streams: 1) how politics and regulations shape the development and diffusion of Information Technology such as AI; 2) institutional underpinnings of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, 2) Japan's transforming political economy, 3) Japan's startup ecosystem, 4) the role of foreign multinational firms in Japan, 4) Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster. He spearheaded the Silicon Valley - New Japan project that brought together large Japanese firms and the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams, including “The Politics of Commoditization in Global ICT Industries,” “Japan’s Startup Ecosystem,” "How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan’s Domestic 'Galapagos' Telecommunications Sector," “Cloud Computing: From Scarcity to Abundance,” and others. His latest business book in Japanese is “The Algorithmic Revolution’s Disruption: a Silicon Valley Vantage on IoT, Fintech, Cloud, and AI” (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan 2016).

Kushida has appeared in media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei Business, Diamond Harvard Business Review, NHK, PBS NewsHour, and NPR. He is also a trustee of the Japan ICU Foundation, alumni of the Trilateral Commission David Rockefeller Fellows, and a member of the Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future. Kushida has written two general audience books in Japanese, entitled Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities (Chuko Shinsho, 2006) and International Schools, an Introduction (Fusosha, 2008).

Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his MA in East Asian Studies and BAs in economics and East Asian Studies with Honors, all from Stanford University.
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