The Executive’s Role in Social Business

Executive commitment is essential when companies launch and grow social business initiatives. What’s more, social business is starting to change roles within the C-suite.

BY DAVID KIRON, DOUGLAS PALMER, ANH NGUYEN PHILLIPS AND ROBERT BERKMAN

In a recent interview, Gerald Kane, an associate professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, aptly described the rapidly evolving role of social business tools within companies. “Any new technology experiences a faddish hype cycle where people adopt it because they feel they have to,” Kane said. “With social, we are passing the peak of faddishness. Companies are starting to crack social’s code and turning to it for business ...