A tale of two trajectories: bottom-up social software adoption in differing organisational contexts

Abstract

The inherent bottom-up nature of social software diffusion differs markedly from the adoption trajectories to which most organisational IT strategies are accustomed. Through case studies in two organisations, this paper presents insights into how adoption of emergent social software platforms may take form, and discusses the implications of two radically different approaches to manage these processes. Our findings suggest that organisations may need to cede control over parts of the IT innovation adoption process to benefit from grassroots initiatives, and rather standardise successful innovations on an ongoing basis to avoid detrimental fragmentation of media usage across organisational boundaries.