Investigating the role of enterprise social networks in facilitating organisational change in GCC countries

Abstract

The importance of enhancing internal communication and its content during organisational change appears to be neglected by many organisations. Although change management literature agrees generally about the role that communication plays in facilitating change, there is still a dearth of empirical studies that focus on improving internal communication during organisational change phases. The evolution of communication technology has provided some new tools that can enhance internal communication within an organisation. This study explores the role of using of one of these new communication technologies in communicating organisational change through the development of a novel conceptual model. The developed model covers the communication needs in each phase of a planned change, and combines the benefits of communicating organisational change with the benefits of using Enterprise Social Networks (ESN), as found in the literature. The aim is to investigate empirically how ESN as a new internal communication technology can be employed to communicate organisational change effectively in order to facilitate that change. To do so, the researcher in this study has applied a qualitative approach through a case study strategy in order to validate the conceptual model being proposed. The researcher conducted 32 interviews and analysed all of them qualitatively using Nvivo software. The findings of the conducted study revealed that using ESN had many positive impacts on employees, such as increasing their awareness, engagement and participation, which helped to facilitate the overall change projects. Moreover, the study proved the suitability of the validated novel model to contribute in facilitating organisational change through ESN, which can guide leaders, managers, change agents and academics on how ESN can be used to communicate planned change effectively in order to facilitate it.