Identifying Twelve Emerging Models of Social Technologies Implementation: A Systematic Literature Review

The interest of companies in social technologies is growing since case studies are suggesting positive effects on business performance. However, a systematic literature review (SLR) for synthesizing the huge number of individual cases presented is lacking, with negative implications for both theory and practice. It is difficult to theorize the concrete impact of social technologies in all their facets, understand the state-of-the-art and propose future directions, as well as there is a lack of awareness of where social technologies can help business growth and which emerging practices can be implemented. The purpose of this article is to narrow these gaps by performing an SLR on a sample of 777 scientific papers, proposing a methodology to classify business case studies. The following social technologies are considered: social media and networks, mobile applications, crowdsourcing platforms, crowdfunding platforms, open innovation platforms, open access platforms, open data platforms, open science platforms, and open source. After the presentation of a comprehensive state-of-the-art of social technologies implementation, by employing a decision tree algorithm, 12 relevant models are identified so that companies could rely on a few models that can drive toward the effective use of social technologies for business.