BENEFITS OF A CORPORATE MICROBLOG IN A COOPERATIVE ORGANIZATION

Abstract

The goal is to identify the benefits derived from a social media tool in a cooperative organization. This qualitative research is based on the observation of the activity of a microblog. Fifteen user interviews were conducted representing the promoters, lurkers and active users of the platform. An open coding of the transcripts in Atlas.ti was also performed. The findings show that the benefits derived from the use of the microblog impact positively at different levels of the organization: customer satisfaction, empowerment of employees, organizational environment, knowledge management practices, cooperative’s innovation and feedback processes. The limitations are that the results may be applicable to the cooperative organizations but they may differ significantly from those non-cooperative companies. However, the study contributes to show the benefits of social media tools in the context of a small cooperative organization, a little studied context.