New Paradigm, New Power: The Role of Social Networks and Social Media in Organizations

Organizational networking can be seen through two dimensions, namely internal and external networking. External networking includes relationships of an organization with its customers, partners, suppliers, or other external actors in a network. Internal dimension covers employees' formal and informal interactions in the organization, which is crucial for the organization to survive, in particular for innovative organizations. Nowadays, in the era of social Web sites, when we hear the word of “interaction”, the terms “social network” (SN) and “social media” come to our minds first. The rationale behind SNs and social media as the Web 2.0 innovations is to make networks of users for creating and sharing content, which forms user-content networks and this is its true value. This rationale can bring a new paradigm for organizations in value creation through employees' interactions in a social network platform with implementing other tools of Web 2.0. Hence, this paper aims to introduce the social network paradigm and investigate the role of this paradigm in shifting the 21th century's organizations to become more employee-knowledge centred. What features should be included in these organizations to help them create value and synergy among employees, is another subject discussed in the study. Furthermore, the paper explains this paradigm with a case study and draws a conclusion on the concept.