Open Access

Ann-Kathrin Bettenbühl

• The purpose of this study is to research the impact of enterprise social software on performance management in order to explain the statement of this thesis: performance management can benefit from social software. The thesis first defines the emergent collaborative performance management and enterprise social software systems against the background of the need for ‘modernized’ Human Resource systems. Then, interviews were conducted in order to determine the critical success factors of implementing enterprise social software into business systems and processes. Finally, the derived critical success factors are discussed and compared to different assumptions that are made in literature about the impact of enterprise social software on performance management. It was concluded that performance management can benefit from enterprise social software, but under specific conditions such as rules and policies. Organizations that embrace new technologies and use enterprise social software in compliance with their objectives, strategies and policies can enjoy increased productivity and a collaborative business culture with highly engaged employees.