SF is a social enterprise. With sales of $74 billion in 2013, BASF is the world's largest chemical business, 3% up from the previous year. 

Ludwigshaven is the German company's BASF headquarters. It hires over 100,000 employees and has over 400 production sites worldwide. It now operates in 200 countries. BASF is a diversified chemical company that offers additifs, chemicals, catalysts, auto-coatings, seed processing and crude oil and gas development to a wide variety of industries. 

The size and sophistication of BASF have obvious advantages, but also present dynamic organisational and operating problems. It was an effort to create a global BASF community, to organise tasks and personnel around so many time zones, to collaborate in real time and to allow workers to make decisions utilising current IT. 

Managers at BASF acknowledged that social media is a potential solution to the challenges of running a global company as a platform for addressing issues. It was initially uncertain if this was to be achieved, what equipment to implement and how to use it for its 100,000 employees around the world. Stand-alone alternatives, platforms, magazines, wikis and businesses included In the past, web sites just provided partial remedies. Instead, a management connect was added to BASF, a social company platform. The software is based on IBM Connections, an IBM Cloud social networking business site. According to IDC, in recent years multinationals have primarily used corporate social networks to encourage greater collaboration, coordination and innovation within their organisations. 

User profiles, status alert feeds, news feeds, notes, bookmarks and file-sharing features, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr, cloud storage services like Dropbox and web-based content pages like wikipedia, are only a few that can be identified with Connect BASF. The aim is to share ideas, connect and encourage employees and managers to speak about their jobs. Managers agreed that employees should not be coerced into connect .BASF, but should also be encouraged to join depending on their understanding of the benefits and capabilities of the network. It was implemented by two national city managers and three community area supervisors. They then invited followers or early adopters to help spread the message and document the best practises about the social network. 

The users can build practising communities, which are online environments where employees with similar technical skills may share knowledge. The implementation team used a range of tools, including webinars, listening workshops, demonstrations and internal consultations, to maintain its workforce. Connect. Connect. In the first two years of operation, BASF gained over 33,000 customers. The network supports over 3,100 active working groups and 84 percent of customers are conscious of the business priorities of the connection. BASF is a British-based chemical firm According to management, the corporate social network gives business specialists faster entry, greater employee loyalty and better knowledge transfer inside the organisation. Younger workers are particularly attracted and are more comfortable with the network. 

The distraction of employees has been greatly reduced due to the use of cmail and the extensive overhead structures. Managers have also had to study new organisational tactics, more suitable than just traditional face-to-face contact with staff, for the online media environment. BASF's perspective shows how much companies need knowledge services today to improve their productivity and to remain competitive. It also highlights the value of teamwork and coordination-enhancing programmes. 

Please answer the questions below. (The value of each point is 25 points) 

1. Shortly describe the IT network components of BASF and how those components helped BASF to function worldwide. 

2. Describe how managers of BASF used the Model of continuous change management to convince their staff to follow a new company system. 

3. What were the organisational deficiencies of BASF and how did BSAF use the chances of addressing them? 

4. What are the goals of BASF, and how do you intend to help them achieve them?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

ANSWER FOR REQUIRED 1 Connect was BASFs IT network component BASF was built on the IBM Connection enterprise social network technology and runs in an IBM cloud environment BASF contains features simil... View the full answer