A social network theory perspective on the potentials of enterprise social media for purchasing and supply management

The use of enterprise social media (ESM) within purchasing and supply management has not been studied extensively so far. Therefore, based on the social network theory for an internal individual and cross-department consideration, five in-depth cases consisting of 22 expert interviews were conducted with European manufacturing companies. The results reveal numerous benefits of ESM that improve the flow of information and organisational exchange through higher information transparency, which leads to enhanced knowledge generation and company-wide dissemination. Besides, the strategic orientation of the purchasing and supply management department can be enhanced, while reducing information exchange and coordination efforts. In doing so, the paper extends the current understanding of the potentials of ESM for purchasing and supply management and provides a conceptual framework. Likewise, several negative aspects of ESM, such as information overflow, misbalanced information, or cultural and personal differences in content generation and consumption are elaborated.