The Significance of the Use of Social Networks for the Effective Operation of the Organization - Essay Example

?Exploiting Social Networking to Gain Strategic Change & Business Value Social Media Social media as defined by Betrot et al is ‘refers to media that is created through the social interaction of users via highly accessibly web-based technologies such as Web 2.0’. It is a recent trend in social networking connecting people all from the world in one place. Giving them the ability to stay connected, communicate and share. It is cancel the boundaries of time, location and culture into one. For example, Facebook is considered to be one society with its own culture. The original intention use of social media networking is to socializing but it is has exploited by organizations as a mean of information communication technology ICT’s for strategic change. This exploitation of social media networking is consequence of unintended use of IS application. ICT’s & the Strategic Change Drivers: Organization Perspective Jansen et al (2010) investigated the relationship between information sharing on social media and user’s behaviors, they found that the more users involved in social media application the more is their ability to act on these opinion sharing and knowledge they received. The Drivers of Organization behind Employing Social Media Application In theory, any organization is part of external environments, interconnected to other organizations and external environment which is known as ‘the organization as a system’ (Senior &Fleming, pp.6, 2006). The Organization, as a system theory, is not in isolation but a place in the external environment where it receives its input from the external environment and produces their output to the environment. This implies the interrelation and influence of an organization on each other’s and the influence of the external environment in border context. In another theory called ‘game theory & competitive strategy’ (Day & Reibstein , 2004) they have drawn that all organizations are connected together by a strategic umbilical cord, meaning that any move of one of them will force the others to move as well. In lieu, the organization will need to respond to be able to adapt to these external changes by the so called ‘strategic change’ and specifically the response of the organization would be the refinement of the organization’s strategies. The Game theory helps us to understand our organization and our competitors, the theory has been derived from the art of war based on ‘thus, it is said that one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometime be victorious, some time meet with defeat. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated in every engagement’ (Day & Reibstein , 2004). By understanding the different theories related to the organization and the dynamic external environment that will help us to understand the need for strategic change. Many sounds theory emphasized that any organization is not island of isolation but further more is placed in dynamic environments with many other organizations. Therefore the need to understand this environment is matter along with understanding other organization in another word the ‘competitors’. In the case of UK government, employing some framework would be good to analyze and understand the dynamic environment in which the organization placed. I will apply two framework here which are SWOT analysis and Porter framework. SWOT The basic strength of the UK government is its resiliency and the government structure in itself. The vast resources that have been accumulated in the past several hundred years is a testament to the resiliency of the UK government. The ICT of the UK in general gives an edge over all the other European countries. The weakness from my point of view of the UK government is the red tape that abounds the government offices. This weakness is borne from the different controls needed to safe guard the interest of the public. The opportunity that is presented at the moment is the presence of the European Union which have opened more economic opportunity emanating from neighboring countries. The ICT of the UK could become the de facto standard of the whole European Union. The threats is the continued environmental indifference of its neighboring country that affects the UK even though it has a strong foundation in protecting the environment By applying SWOT analysis on my case, the UK government can understand its strength, weakness, and the existing opportunities and threats. This kind of indirect relation and influence imposed the competition and therefore affect the organization to adapt to strategic change .The decision to employing social media application might be one of the results of these analysis processes. This kind of decision often negotiated at the strategic level in the organization about how to locate the organization with wider context. The strategic change is the result to respond to the external environment on which the organization is located. Number10 (UK government) on Facebook UK government decided to use information communication technology (ICT’s) as a mean to knowledge sharing, keep people informed with latest news and decisions, get in touch and build trust with citizens and to have more transparency. They are exploiting the existence of social media networking by deploying their own application ‘Number10’ on Facebook. Enable the accessibility of governmental information and activities with low cost and to huge volume of recipients by using social media promote good picture for the government and its reliability. On one hand, People need to feel that they are participating in their community, their voices and concerns are heard by their government and on another hand the government wants to know and understand people opinions, their reaction in order to make better decisions. Number10 works as a link between British people and the government to bridge the gap between what people know and what they need to know. Number10 is a strategic tool for sustaining community, when people feel they are able to participate in their community, the level of their loyalty will increase and becoming more willing to support and believe in their government. By applying Relational Model of organizational learning, strategic change and organizational performance, adopted from Jun-Ying (2010) on Number10, we can see the influence of UK government learning by deploying its application on Facebook on both their strategic change and their performance. See appendix A. According to Howard (2010), he defined four principles (RIBS) to develop successful on-line community which is renumeration, influence, belonging, and significance. To judge the success of Number10, I will analyze it based on these four principles 1. Reenumeration is related to start and ranking the discussion and specifying the rules. Number10 missing this element, I think because of governmental nature of that application and sensibility of information related to that. 2. Influence, is about helping people feel that their participating and involvement is important and they have influence and control in the community. Number10 give people the ability feel their influence, to communicate their thought and ideas to shape policies and topics either to support them or protest against. But here is no guidance or information for new members about how they can participate and have influence. 3. Belonging can manifest in defining shared stories and goals between all members. In Number10 we can see that members share the latest news and activities in UK. 4. Significance, people need to feel the significance of this community. For example, PM himself have Facebook account and involved in Number10. Generally speaking, Number10 is successful application in keeping people informed about latest news and activities in their community and let them express their feeling. Despite that it is missing topic-focused discussion where topic is placed in organized form and people exchange their beliefs about it. I believe that the limitation of Number10 strongly related to the nature of social media especially identity and privacy issue. The nature of social network and identity issue make it difficult to provide full on-line community services with inability to recognize and identify real participants and control access to the discussion from outside community. Furthermore, open this kind of discussion could open undesirable gaps might be misused later. Number10 is more likely as ICT’S strategic tool rather than on-line community. The UK government successfully increase their popularity and transparency between people and reduce the cost. Also use it as reliable source of information in this digitalized age. Security Threats and Their Strategic Implications for Organizations Using Social Networking Application The security consideration is an integral part of organization plan in different context. The organization needs to secure its assets either physical or informatics, my focus here would be in context of secure organizational IS application over social media. With related to social media application context the security. Threats of Social Engineering Social engineering as defined by Mills (2009) is ‘a process in which an attacker attempts to acquire information about your network and system by social means’. The nature of social networking applications on the internetworking make it prone to various numbers of security threats including personal identity theft which may lead to access and disclosure of sensitive information related to the organization and invade the privacy of the organization, or misuse of stolen accounts or information which will affect the organizational reputation as a whole. Some attackers targeted specific organization and their personnel in order to gain unauthorized access to discover more about organizational strength and weakness. Security threats can be categorized into three levels strategic, operational, and technical. At strategic level, get access to sensitive info targeted to know organizational strength, weakness, and practices or abuse to organization reputation to let it down in the market. At operational level, like unauthorized access or denied of service which disrupt the day-to-day operation and hinder the effective performance of the organization. At technical level, like malware, viruses, and that caused damages to physical peripheral hw or software and services which caused unavailability (shutdown) Attackers can use different ways to steal this kind of information like sniffing. Posting. Continue monitoring to control the content, sharing pass, easy to predict Control of Information Mason (1986) defined PAPA, the four elements to control the information which are privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility. Any invade of one of these elements means breach of organization information system and personnel privacy. Organization depends largely on IS and run over the internetworking which make it prone to invade their privacy by offenders. Also, the accuracy of information on social media application should be reliable and monitored, invade the accuracy can lead to abuse to the content of the app and to the organization itself. The owner of the information and context should be defined for the purpose of share and edit right. Access to information should be controlled, for example differentiation between public access and private access of information, and to ensure the accessibility of information in case of services failure. Organizational essence for adapting security framework & embedded of risk management in their strategic plan Risk management related to business performance. Therefore, organization needs to adapt security framework as integral part of strategic plan in order to secure its IS application over the social media. The more confidentiality, integrity and availability of information (CIA model) is secure, the more is performance of organization is reliable. The consequences of volatile or abuse of number10 would not just affect the social media application but will furthermore affect organization networks as whole witch then affect the business operation. Organization network (intranet) is an important asset to secure. Any unauthorized access presence the danger of get sensitive or important operational information (loose their strategic advances). Employees could also participate in the risky access by using their infected personal computers or ICT’s. There is hidden cost associated with violated & abuse of information. For example if there is an important campaign to launch and then for some reason the application fail or attacked. That would lead to ail the campaign hat organization spent money and time on it. The communication with local society, the supporters of that campaign and the updated information and news, that all of it would be paralyzed. The nature of number10 as a U.K. governmental application imposes the important to ensure its availability 24/7. Distribution in doing the work and focus could negatively affect the organization operation. Organization need to ensure the security of its own application. The unsecure nature of social media platform presents the essence to employed additional secure protocol for encryption and authorization for safe information exchange. Discussion Like any other process or functionality that affect the productivity or impact the infrastructure of an organization risk assessment need to be conducted. Particularly for software that could be used in the office. For Social Networking Application where the codes and the security infrastructure are not within the control of the organization a risk assessment is not only essential it is mandatory. The risk assessment process will dimension the actual benefits to the organization of the social networking application. The risk will then be balanced with the benefits to determine if the social networking application can be blocked or not. The risk assessment will also list the vulnerabilities of using a social networking application. Each vulnerability will be analyzed to determine all the threats associated with it. This would include threats to the privacy of every individual within the organization and the security of the records of each of the clients of the organization. If the benefits are so overwhelming that the cost of resolving the vulnerabilities to eliminate the threats is justified it is prudent to ensure that the resolution is implemented first before the roll out of the social networking application. The recommendations from the risk assessment may entail the formulation of new policies that compel the members or the employees of the organization to follow procedures that will protect the organization its employees and the clients. The success of the social network application comes with its secure and proper use. The risk assessment includes the analysis of residual threats such as critical and adverse information that is contrary to the interest of the organization that may leak or gets published at the social networking site. Therefore, the organization should also regulate and provide policies with regard to the dissemination of information and the extent at which they can be used or shared in the social network site. In the same manner organizations may have to deal on how adverse and critical information published in the social network will be handled. It should be noted that the social network sites normally do not have enough security features that could satisfy regulatory requirements. Organization need to form security strategic and polices in order to secure its IS and increase the awareness between heir personnel of the importance of information security. Secure organizational IS considered to be one of the critical success factors that ensure smooth functional operation into the organization. (Mills, 2009) argued that the personnel whom prone the organizational information to risk by their unawareness and but I think it is also the responsibility of organization to implement high level of security and impose policies and practices and increase the awareness level between the employees. The challenge to have successful application on social network in not the technical issues but. Organization should not rely on social media security but also define their own security procedures and implement security protocols and firewalls and encryption and decryption mechanisms, define policies and practices for secure using and access to information. Control they network access. Appendix A Read More