How does Enterprise Social Network Influence Enterprise Value Creating? A Literature Review

Abstract

Enterprise social network（ESN）, derived from social media and social network on an individual level, gradually penetrates the business sector and is applied to support business running on the organization level. ESN has aroused academics and practitioners’ widespread concerns because of its flexibility, and we call it affordance. The affordance of ESN is an actively explored concept, which refers to the possibility that technology can help users achieve their goals. The affordance, a core conception to discuss the impacts of ESN, distinguishes ESN from traditional enterprise systems.Based on the literature review of ESN and its impacts, the paper concludes that:（1）ESN has eight affordances, which are behavior visibility, association, centrality, network externality, content visibility, editability, persistence, and diversity, and these affordances fall into two categories: social network related and social media related;（2）There are six specific impact indicators on business value, which are knowledge management, innovation, internal business management, job performance, customer service and financial performance. Due to the above two points, the paper establishes a research framework to describe the relationship between eight affordances and their impacts on business value, and analyzes the research status of ESN impact on business value.In this research framework, the paper constructs five value generation mechanisms of ESN belonging to two dimensions: In the social network dimension, there are three value generation mechanisms, which are social network structure, social network connection and social network actors; In terms of social media, research generally explores the impact of ESN through social media content and social media participation. This paper will play a certain role in promoting related research in the future academic field and the application in the commercial field.