Kaisa Pekkala, Tommi Auvinen, Pasi Sajasalo and Chiara Valentini
This study focuses on managers' perceptions of employees' communicative role in social media, and explores the changes in the contractual nature of employment relations in…
Abstract
Purpose
This study focuses on managers' perceptions of employees' communicative role in social media, and explores the changes in the contractual nature of employment relations in mediatized workplaces in which the boundaries of professional and private life are becoming more fluid.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach was employed to explore this relatively new phenomenon. The data, comprising 24 interviews with managers responsible for corporate communication and human resources in knowledge-intensive organizations, was thematically analysed.
Findings
The analysis shows that employees' work-related social media use creates new types of exchanges and dependencies between an organization and individual employees, which relate to employees' representation, knowledge and networks.
Originality/value
The study is among the first to examine the exchanges and dependencies in an employment relationship that emerge from increased use of social media for professional purposes.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to explore how employees' work-related communication is managed in knowledge-intensive organizations.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how employees' work-related communication is managed in knowledge-intensive organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was conducted by applying an exploratory, qualitative approach. The data were collected from six knowledge-intensive organizations operating in the professional service sector in Finland, and the data set used included altogether 23 interviews.
Findings
The interviews confirmed that employees' work-related communication on social media is regarded as an increasingly important area, and that it has required companies to establish new managerial processes that are aimed to affect employees’ communication behaviors (ECB) either as enablers or motivators. How companies apply these processes depends on contextual factors, and three different managerial approaches were identified, namely, individual-, corporate- and business-oriented approaches.
Research limitations/implications
Based on the findings, this article proposes a new field for the communication management literature, management of the communicative organization (MCO), which builds on behavior management knowledge and focuses on managing employee communicators in multivocal organizational communication systems (MOCSs) that are dependent on employee-generated content.
Originality/value
The study advances the field of communication management and ECB by empirically proving that organizations manage their employees' work-related communication and the management processes and practices identified derive from behavioral management tradition. The proposed MCO framework introduces a novel area for academic discussion on how communication management affects ECB and attitudes, such as motivation.