Uso de redes sociais virtuais por empresas sob a ótica do modelo de adoção de inovação

Abstract

The interconnectivity and interactivity of the Internet makes it a unique medium in the strategic context. The evolution of technology and the development of new applications using the worldwide web has promoting the emergence of a new generation of online services that made possible the wide and easy interaction between people and businesses, and created the opportunity of generation and proliferation of social networks that become more and more popular, promoting a new form of communication between people and between people and companies that make use of tools and services available on the Internet. This work aims at identifying the determinants of adoption of virtual social networks on business processes of companies, proposing and testing a theoretical model to assess the adoption of social networking for virtual organizations, understood as an organizational innovation. In order to that end, we developed a model of adoption of virtual social networks by organizations using the multi-level organizational innovation adoption model, developed by Frambach and Schillewaert, conceptually proposed but not tested. The study collected information from companies using virtual social networks into their business processes, and the theoretical model analyzed through the structural equation modeling and the technique of partial least squares (PLS). The theoretical framework used was social networking, innovation and innovation adoption. The results indicate a significant influence of perceived characteristics of innovation and characteristics of the adopter constructs in the intensity of use of virtual social networks by enterprises, as well as introduce key business processes using virtual social networks and the virtual social networks more used by companies.