<b>Introduction to the Special Issue</b>—Social Media and Business Transformation: A Framework for Research

TLDR

Social media are fundamentally changing how we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create, and represent one of the most transformative impacts of information technology on business both within and outside firm boundaries. This special issue was designed to stimulate innovative investigations of the relationship between social media and business transformation, and to outline a flexible framework that will guide future research and build a cumulative research tradition. The authors outline a broad research agenda, place the special‑issue papers within this framework, and identify areas where further research is needed.

Abstract

Social media are fundamentally changing the way we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create. They represent one of the most transformative impacts of information technology on business, both within and outside firm boundaries. This special issue was designed to stimulate innovative investigations of the relationship between social media and business transformation. In this paper we outline a broad research agenda for understanding the relationships among social media, business, and society. We place the papers comprising the special issue within this research framework and identify areas where further research is needed. We hope that the flexible framework we outline will help guide future research and develop a cumulative research tradition in this area.