Source 1: Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work?. Computers in Human Behavior.
The work is aimed at searching ten reliable sources that will be useful in the completion of the proposal and the Assessment 2a and 2b. The sources would be in relation to the topic that is implementation of digital communication strategy in an organisation. The topic chosen for the evaluation is “Using the social media in the workplace to communicate.”
The authors made use of the Hedonic and the Utilitarian values approach to discover the various motivational factors of the employees for using the social media for their work. On lines of the same, the authors are able to develop the theory that social media use for work is positively as well as significantly related to the various values offered to employees, namely the utilitarian and the hedonic value. The authors of this article have evaluated the responses of about 1799 employees in the insurance sector to study whether the employees belonging to the said industry make use of the social media in the organisation for communication and other purposes. The National Institute of Insurance Studies (IIS) had conducted the research. However, the article has limitations on the point that the research was conducted only in one country, i.e. Greece while different countries have different patterns of use of social media. Thus, the source accords that the use of social media has enhanced the work performances among individuals.
The article accords that with the use of social media, employees can deploy resources in an efficient manner, implement and test the new ideas quickly, thereby making the organisation more responsive to the demands of the customers. In addition, the article states that the governance principles are essential to guide the use of the social media at workplace. The article made use of the affordance approach that is the use of the same resources by the different individuals yield different results. Thus, the article concluded that substantial features of the social media do not vary across the environments, the perception of the members lead to the varied results. Thus, the article logically researched on the four affordances of social media, and stated that policy documents are essential to govern social media use.
The article used the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the role and importance of social media as tool of effective communication at workplace. The methods adopted were the survey method and the observation method. The article states that email has led to a profound effect on the organisational communications. The article presented the information in the form of graphs and charts which makes it easy to analyse. However, the article also presents some of the concerns that must be managed for yielding of efficient results. Some of these issues are privacy intrusions, impersonal nature of the social media sites and reduction in work productivity. The article concludes that collaboration has become easy with the use of social media with the help of functions like arranging meetings, spreading information, and gauging the opinion in real time across the world.
Source 2: Social media affordances and governance in the workplace: An examination of organizational policies. Journal of computer-mediated communication.
The article also analyses the role of social media in the employee engagement, innovation, collaboration, and retention. A significant highlighted in the journal is that each of the Fortune 500 companies have adopted more than one social media platform to interact internally and externally. The paper comprehensively analysed the relationship between social media engagement and employees. The analysis was conducted within a multinational organisation and the area was the North American operations of the said entity. Data was collected of 1694 employees and the study showed that the outcomes of social media use varies in terms of the business divisions and career bands. The results demonstrated that there is a direct relationship between the usage of internal social media, and the levels of employee engagement. The responses were self-reported. In addition, it showed that the internal social media usage also enhances the competencies of entrepreneurship, and receptiveness for the changes in the organisations.
The article makes a significant point that the messages directed at a particular person in an organisation can be seen or heard by others in the organisation as well. This enables the leakage of knowledge to wider and often unknown audiences. The same can be enabled in an organisation in the form of formation of a repository of such knowledge to be used by others. Thus, this new method of knowledge sharing through the social media use leads the burden to get shifted from the person who has the knowledge to the person who needs the knowledge. The person who needs it can find it and utilise it in the best way possible. This paper too involved a study by the use of data collection at a large financial services firm, and concluded that while the employees do not use the traditional methods of communicating effectively that is documentation, retrieval and such; social media will usher in an era of leaky knowledge. The article sheds light on benefits and the points of motivation for the employees to use such method, to improve communication.
The paper describes the result of the survey done on the basis of the data collected from approximately 300 local government officials belonging to the United States and working in the municipalities, for the role of social media during the crisis communication. The paper resulted into the findings that the communication in government work places played a fundamental role during natural disasters, transportation, social, political, and other economic crises. Thus, communication through social media has further aided in crisis planning and management of overall operations. Thus, article is effective in a way as it gives a different perspective by researching on the government organisations.
Source 3: Effectiveness of social media as a tool of communication and its potential for technology enabled connections. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publication. 2(5).
The article accords that the managers of the agriculture enterprise must integrate the use of information and communication technology and social media tools in their workplace in the same way other organisations does. This is because of the fact that high quality and readily accessible information is the prime need for the enterprises of the twenty first century. The research was conduct with the help of survey of the managers of companies in the region of Slovak republic. The work makes use of the logic based calculations and analysis to assert that there was a positive impact on the productivity of the managers through the use of information technologies communication strategies and the social media.
The article sheds light on the use of government social media in order to foster openness and accountability in the operations. The work involves the conduct of the study in Greek region using the interviews with the regulators, policy formulators and the top level managers. The analysis of the supporting literature helped to establish the fact that social media use enhances the citizen participation, facilitate transparency, reduces corruption and aids in policy formulations and effective decision making. The work involves extensive research of the literature and makes use of the five initiatives of openness in the Greek context. Thus, an effective data is presented in tabular and literary form.
The study is specifically oriented towards the use and the benefits of social media in the case of B2B organisations for the marketing management, i.e. the external communications. Academic research is conducted on social media marketing and communication in contexts of B2Borganisations. The article’s research is narrow in terms that it mainly focuses on the external communications with the stakeholders. However, the research is also broad in terms that studies were conducted in about 5000 organisations in UK, with the help of the emails. The study in addition focussed on the drivers of the adoption of the social media use in the organisations. The findings were presented with the aid of tables and thus article can be regarded as a good read to understand B2B perspectives on social media usage.
The paper reviews about 66 articles covering the various aspects of the social media usage by the employees. These aspects are legal and policies, knowledge management, human resource management, and learning through communication. In the sharing and learning aspect, the article states that social media usage increases peer support, enhances horizontal and vertical communication channels, and are a cost and time effective strategies. The work categorises its findings in the above mentioned aspects, and concludes that the field of social media is ever changing ad developing and hence proper guidelines are essential to be laid down to gain benefits.