The role of organizational identification and the desire to succeed in employees' use of personal twitter accounts for work

Abstract This study aims to develop a better understanding of the potential drivers of personal social media use for work and the work-related information employees share through these platforms. This is important given both the increased use of social media as a form of self-presentation and the potential organizational consequences of workers' online knowledge and information sharing behaviors. The results draw upon a multi-method design combining survey data with content analysis data of workers’ personal Twitter accounts. Findings indicate that organizational identification and a desire to succeed are related to the sharing of two distinct types of work-related content on social media: Organizational information sharing and professional information sharing. This research extends our understanding of how workers might use social media to communicate to audiences in different ways, and how this activity is related to their perceived relationships to organizational and professional groups.

[1]  P. Leonardi,et al.  Social Media Use in Organizations: Exploring the Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association , 2013 .

[2]  P. Leonardi,et al.  Social Media and Their Affordances for Organizing: A Review and Agenda for Research , 2017 .

[3]  Paul M. Leonardi,et al.  Knowledge Management Technology as a Stage for Strategic Self-Presentation: Implications for Knowledge Sharing in Organizations , 2012, Inf. Organ..

[4]  Michael J. Muller,et al.  Motivations for social networking at work , 2008, CSCW.

[5]  M. Lombard,et al.  Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability , 2002 .

[6]  Naomi Ellemers,et al.  Pride and respect in volunteers' organizational commitment , 2008 .

[7]  Paul M. Leonardi,et al.  Ambient Awareness and Knowledge Acquisition: Using Social Media to Learn "Who Knows What" and "Who Knows Whom" , 2015, MIS Q..

[8]  Julia Eisenberg,et al.  Overcoming the "Ideology of Openness": Probing the Affordances of Social Media for Organizational Knowledge Sharing , 2013, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[9]  Michail N. Giannakos,et al.  Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work? , 2014, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[10]  E. Litt.  Knock, Knock. Who's There? The Imagined Audience , 2012 .

[11]  José van Dijck,et al.  'You have one identity': performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn , 2013 .

[12]  Y. Connie Yuan,et al.  Location, Motivation, and Social Capitalization via Enterprise Social Networking , 2013, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[13]  Binshan Lin,et al.  How social identification and trust influence organizational online knowledge sharing , 2012, Internet Res..

[14]  Steven R. Corman,et al.  Development of a Structurational Model of Identification in the Organization , 1998 .

[15]  Sonja Dreher.  Social media and the world of work : A strategic approach to employees’ participation in social media , 2014 .

[16]  S. Alexander Haslam,et al.  Motivating Individuals and Groups at Work: A Social Identity Perspective on Leadership and Group Performance , 2004 .

[17]  Ward van Zoonen,et al.  How employees use Twitter to talk about work: A typology of work-related tweets , 2016, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[18]  S. Utz,et al.  Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication on twitter, blogs and traditional media , 2011 .

[19]  Veronica Dahir,et al.  Ambition as a Motivational Basis of Organizational and Professional Commitment: Preliminary Analysis of a Proposed Career Advancement Ambition Scale , 2000, Perceptual and motor skills.

[20]  Gerald C. Kane.  The evolutionary implications of social media for organizational knowledge management , 2017, Inf. Organ..

[21]  Jennifer L. Gibbs,et al.  The Dialectical Nature of Impression Management in Knowledge Work , 2014 .

[22]  Saggi Nevo,et al.  Organizational members' use of social networking sites and job performance: An exploratory study , 2013, Inf. Technol. People.

[23]  Keri K. Stephens,et al.  It Depends on Who You're Talking To…: Predictors and Outcomes of Situated Measures of Organizational Identification , 2009 .

[24]  J. Stuart Bunderson,et al.  Power, Status, and Learning in Organizations , 2011, Organ. Sci..

[25]  Kalle Lyytinen,et al.  Social networking as the production and consumption of a self , 2016, Inf. Organ..

[26]  Menno D.T. de Jong,et al.  Multiple organizational identification levels and the impact of perceived external prestige and communication climate , 2007 .

[27]  Rex B. Kline,et al.  Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling , 1998 .

[28]  Lauren J. Human,et al.  Self-Expression on Social Media , 2017, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[29]  Stephen Lacy,et al.  Sampling Error and Selecting Intercoder Reliability Samples for Nominal Content Categories , 1996 .

[30]  Danah Boyd,et al.  I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience , 2011, New Media Soc..

[31]  Justin M. Berg,et al.  in Cyberspace : How Boundary Work in Online Social Networks Impacts Professional Relationships , 2013 .

[32]  Bruno S. Silvestre,et al.  Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media , 2011 .

[33]  Steven L. Blader,et al.  Testing and extending the group engagement model: linkages between social identity, procedural justice, economic outcomes, and extrarole behavior. , 2009, The Journal of applied psychology.

[34]  H. Tajfel,et al.  An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. , 1979 .

[35]  Ward van Zoonen,et al.  Social media’s dark side: inducing boundary conflicts , 2016 .

[36]  Paul M. Leonardi,et al.  Enterprise Social Media: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies in Organizations , 2013, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[37]  P. Leonardi,et al.  Social Media as Social Lubricant , 2015 .

[38]  Jennifer L. Gibbs,et al.  The Use of Enterprise Social Network Sites for Knowledge Sharing in Distributed Organizations , 2015 .

[39]  Xiongfei Cao,et al.  Exploring the influence of social media on employee work performance , 2016, Internet Res..

[40]  Christian Fieseler,et al.  Professional Personae - How Organizational Identification Shapes Online Identity in the Workplace , 2015, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[41]  Jeffrey W. Treem,et al.  Social Media as Technologies of Accountability , 2015 .

[42]  Julie B. Olson-Buchanan,et al.  The Use of Communication Technologies After Hours: The Role of Work Attitudes and Work-Life Conflict , 2007 .

[43]  Patrice M. Buzzanell,et al.  Cybervetting, Person–Environment Fit, and Personnel Selection: Employers' Surveillance and Sensemaking of Job Applicants' Online Information , 2014 .

[44]  Jonathan Grudin,et al.  When social networks cross boundaries: a case study of workplace use of facebook and linkedin , 2009, GROUP.

[45]  François A. Carrillat,et al.  Leveraging social media to enhance recruitment effectiveness: A Facebook experiment , 2014, Internet Res..

[46]  Fred A. Mael,et al.  Alumni and their alma mater: A partial test of the reformulated model of organizational identification , 1992 .

[47]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  8 Social Hierarchy: The Self‐Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status , 2008 .

[48]  Zach W. Y. Lee,et al.  Self-disclosure in social networking sites: The role of perceived cost, perceived benefits and social influence , 2015, Internet Res..

[49]  David C. Li,et al.  Online social network acceptance: a social perspective , 2011, Internet Res..

[50]  Natalya N. Bazarova,et al.  Self‐Disclosure in Social Media: Extending the Functional Approach to Disclosure Motivations and Characteristics on Social Network Sites , 2014 .

[51]  J. Verhoeven,et al.  Employees work-related social-media use: His master's voice , 2014 .

[52]  Peerayuth Charoensukmongkol,et al.  Effects of support and job demands on social media use and work outcomes , 2014, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[53]  Yoon Hyung Choi,et al.  Self‐Disclosure Characteristics and Motivations in Social Media: Extending the Functional Model to Multiple Social Network Sites , 2015 .

[54]  Brad McKenna,et al.  Social media in qualitative research: Challenges and recommendations , 2017, Inf. Organ..