Towards a Maturity Model for the Adoption of Social Media as a Means of Organizational Innovation

Social Media applications as a contemporary phenomenon attract the attention of organizations and researchers. While these technologies are mainstream in a private setting, there is still uncertainty among organizations of operating them. The corporate perspective aims at deploying these technologies for value creation, i.e. improvement and even innovation. Conceptual guidance for a proper management to professionalize Social Media management is missing. Maturity models provide support to this challenge. This paper deals with the development of a maturity model for the organizational adoption of Social Media. By means of a design science research approach, the model is defined along the dimensions strategy, processes, IT systems, culture, and governance and measured against five maturity stages. Thereby a contribution is made to the knowledge base of corporate Social Media usage as well as to the development of a maturity model along a defined design methodology.