Motivated by the phenomenon of customer entrepreneurship in China and the associated research gaps, we conduct a case study to explore how customer entrepreneurs realize benefits from light entrepreneurship enabled by guanxi circles and social commerce affordances. Our study derives a process model that describes how customer entrepreneurs benefit from light entrepreneurship through acquiring knowledge and sharing knowledge within guanxi circles embedded in social media. We also demonstrate the roles of the mass entrepreneurship climate and the social commerce affordances in this benefit realization process. This study contributes to the research and practice with respect to technology-enabled customer entrepreneurship.

We investigate how employees react when confronted with an enterprise system (ES) that does not fit with work processes dictated by local realities. We draw on interview data (n = 31) from a multinational company to reveal how employees devised and coordinated workarounds that were not compliant with corporate IT policy, but enabled the completion of essential activities, thereby creating value for the firm and its customers. The coordination of these workarounds proved essential to their persistence. We discuss both the theoretical implications of our findings regarding workarounds and the practical contributions associated with the idea that non-compliance can be beneficial.

Instant messaging (IM) has become increasingly prevalent in social life. However, the use of IM at work remains controversial, owing to its unclear benefits to organizations. In this study, we employ media performance theories and the concept model of communicative ecology to examine the impact of an IM tool on shaping guanxi (i.e., interpersonal relationship) networks in the workplace. Specifically, we propose that IM has the potential to enhance guanxi networks by improving communication quality and building interlocutors' mutual trust in the workplace. The conceptual model is validated with 253 survey responses collected from working professionals in China. The data indicate that communication quality and mutual trust contribute to the development of guanxi networks. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Social media have transformed social interactions and now look set to transform workplace communications. In this exploratory study, we investigate how employees use and get value from a variety of social networking technologies. The context of this research is 4 software firms located in China. Notwithstanding differences in corporate attitudes toward social networking, we identify common themes in the way Web 2.0 technologies are leveraged as value is created by employees at all levels. We draw on the communication ecology framework to analyze the application of various technologies. We inductively develop 5 propositions that describe how social networking technologies contribute directly to horizontal and vertical communication in organizations, and ultimately to individual, team, and organizational performance. Implications for research and practice are discussed.