Abstract:
The current competitive environment drives companies to seek solutions to improve the performance of their projects. In this context, the adoption of tools to support the management of these projects is essential. Social media such as wikis, blogs and microblogs, have emerged to present innovative ways to facilitate project management (PM) activities so that they can contribute to the success of the projects. However, companies underexplore the effective integrated use of such tools as a support in PM. Project managers face some challenges, such as lack of knowledge of the tools and, where and how to store data for the effective use of these technologies. The objective of this research is to develop a prescriptive framework to guide the integrated use of social media to support PM. This exploratory and qualitative research was conducted under the social constructivist epistemology and hermeneutics. First, I performed a literature review using a hermeneutic approach. As the use of social media in PM is still an emerging theme, there are few empirical studies on the subject. To overcome this problem, I interviewed project managers and I led an exploratory focus group with participants who use social media in their profession. I analyzed the data using Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) of the Charmaz, a constructivist and the later version of Grounded Theory. Finally, I led a confirmatory focus group to validate the framework. Findings show the understanding of the resources of each social media, along with actions to raise awareness of the use of a common set of tools, represent a powerful instrument for conducting projects in organizations. Four categories of the use of social media were identified: communication, control, dissemination and repository. Considering that most research explores the use of a single tool or their use isolated, this research adds to the literature SOME4PM - a prescriptive framework of integrated use of social media in PM. As a practical contribution, it presents a view of framework contains examples of currently social media to help organizations choice the set of social media that better fit in their needs. Furthermore, it provides scenarios and recommendations for the effective use of SOME4PM in organizations. Hence, project managers have a broad vision on how social media are being used and how they can be integrated to support PM.
