Managing an organisation’s social media presence: An empirical stages of growth model

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Highlights

  • The lack of research in organisational social media management is addressed.

  • A conceptual stages-of-growth (SoG) model is empirically tested in the context of the evolution of social media adoption by organisations.

  • Recommendations for revising the empirical model are provided.

  • A typology for classifying organisations based on the potential of their adopted social media is presented.

Abstract

The adoption of social media by organisations has proven to be very beneficial; however, few studies have examined how to manage an organisation’s social media adoption and usage. Mismanagement of social media could have significant and unintended consequences for the organisation and its stakeholders. This paper addresses the lack of research in organisational social media management by empirically validating a previously developed conceptual social media stages-of-growth model. Hence, the research objectives are to (1) test empirically that the conceptual stages-of-growth model suits the evolution of social media adoption in organisations, and based on the lessons learned to (2) provide recommendations to revise the empirical model. Furthermore, we propose a three-tier typology for classifying organisations based on the potential of their adopted social media. We argue that the empirical model will foster a better understanding of how social media can be adopted and managed within organisations.

Introduction

Social media applications are most typically used by organisations for marketing, advertising, public relations, recruitment, research, product/service testing and review, idea generation, feedback, and occasionally, complaint handling (Aggarwal, Gopal, Sankaranarayanan, & Singh, 2012; Aral, Dellarocas, & Godes, 2013). However, when it comes to social media’s use by organisations, we have “barely scratched the surface of what is coming and what is possible” (Aral et al., 2013; p.3), and there is a “growing importance of social media as a strategic tool” (Parveen, 2012; p.3). Social media can revolutionise how organisations engage with the market and society, creating new enterprise-wide possibilities and challenges from marketing and operations, to finance and human resources management (Aral et al., 2013).

There is a lack of understanding regarding how social media can be managed so that it strategically benefits the organisation (Parveen, 2012; p.2). According to Aral et al. (2013, p.4), “there is no agreement with respect to how responsibility for social media should be allocated within organisations, how social media activities should be funded and governed, what should be outsourced, and what broader changes with regard to an organisation’s structure, processes, leadership, training, and culture are needed to harness the potential of this transformative force”. More importantly, there is no established path of activities that guides a company down the track of social readiness and there are no widely accepted industry-specific best practices (Aral et al., 2013).

This paper aims to address the lack of research on understanding social media management in organisations by (1) empirically validating a Stages-of-Growth (SoG) model; and (2) providing recommendations to improve the empirical model. This paper also proposes a Social Media Business Profile (SMBP) typology for classifying organisations based on the potential of their use of social media. Such typology was developed by applying (Bughin & Chui, 2010; Wilson, Guinan, Parise, & Weinberg, 2011) categorisation of social media strategies to Duane and O’Reilly’s (2012) SoG model. Note that while Duane and O’Reilly (2012) engaged in extensive theory building, they did not empirically investigate or validate their proposed SoG model, a key shortcoming of their work. This paper addresses that shortcoming, and in doing so, the discursive power of the SoG model is significantly improved, resulting in theoretical and practical contributions.

The paper is organized as follows. The theoretical background is detailed in Section 2, which includes a summary of a conceptual stage of growth model (Section 2.1) and presents and justifies the development of our proposed organisations’ typology (Section 2.2). The development of an empirical SoG model is presented in Section 3. Finally, Section 4 presents our discussion, conclusions, and future work.

Section snippets

A conceptual stages of growth model for managing an organization's social media business profile (SMBP)

Social media can be defined as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; p.61). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) identify four key types of social media in organisations: (i) Collaboration projects (e.g., Wikis); (ii) (Micro)-Blogs (e.g., Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress); (iii) Content Communities (e.g., Flickr, Slideshare, YouTube); and (iv)

Development of empirical SoG model

This section details the development of the empirical SoG model, from design to operationalization and analysis. First, the ten benchmark variables developed by Duane and O’Reilly (2012) (Table 1) were analysed and three levels (early, intermediate, and advanced) were assigned to each variable. Then a survey was conducted to gather data and, as part of the analysis process, a number of analysis algorithms including decision trees were developed to assign a single stage or a range of stages to

Discussion and conclusion

This section discusses the results of the analysis, including the possible reasons for the trends and similarities observed in the benchmark variables of organisations in each stage. The section also shows how organisations evolve based on the results obtained from the data.

Our study represents (1) a theoretical extension by developing a typology for organisations and (2) an empirical validation of Duane and O’Reilly’s (2012) conceptual SoG model for managing an organisation’s SMBP. Our model

Alexander Chung is a PhD student specializing in Health Systems at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. He holds a master’s degree in systems science from the University of Ottawa and an undergraduate degree in biology from Carleton University. His interests lie in applying management science methods to environmental and health related issues.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Alexander Chung is a PhD student specializing in Health Systems at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. He holds a master’s degree in systems science from the University of Ottawa and an undergraduate degree in biology from Carleton University. His interests lie in applying management science methods to environmental and health related issues.

    Dr. Pavel Andreev is an Associate Professor of Business Analytics and Performance Management at the Telfer School of Management. He earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Andreev’s research interests are related to modeling and exploring impacts of ICT on performance of commercial and non-commercial organizations on individual, team, and organizational levels. He is also interested in the organization of Peer-Production (e.g. Open Source projects), Open Innovation, Social Networks, Mobility, Healthcare Information Systems (HIS). The results of Andreev’s research was presented and published in leading conferences such as International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), IFIP and journals such as Health Policy and Technology, International Journal of E-Business Research, Transportation Research part C: Emerging Technologies, Behaviour & Information Technology, and Electronic Markets.

    Dr. Morad Benyoucef, PhD, is a full professor in Management Information Systems at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Canada. He holds a PhD from Université de Montréal and an MSc from Rochester Institute of Technology. His research interests include online marketplaces, social commerce, e-health, and business process modeling.

    Dr. Aidan Duane is a Lecturer and Senior Researcher of Business Information Systems in the School of Business at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT). His research focuses on social media management, mobile payments, financial information systems, and data analytics. He has worked with the ICT and Financial Services industry on numerous research and development projects over the past 20 years. He has been involved in a number of successful Irish and international R&D funding applications. He has published research in several international IS journals and conference proceedings and he has won a number of awards for research.

    Dr. Philip O’Reilly is a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at University College Cork, Ireland, is the director of the Irish Management Institute’s Masters in Digital Business and is the Academic co-director of Boole Business Labs. Dr. O’Reilly has in excess of 80 peer reviewed publications. His work has been published in leading journals in the information systems field including the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS) and Information Technology and People (IT&P). Furthermore, his work has been presented at leading information systems conferences. Dr. O’Reilly is a multiple award winning researcher.

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