Corporation Privacy and the Impact of Mess Media to Business - Thesis Example

Research Proposal 152.785 30 Credit The relative balance between corporation privacy and social media and the impact of mess media to business. By Xiaoxiang Gu ID: 06195865 Extramural Student Abstract This research proposal aims at examining the processes of incorporation of social media in small businesses, and to investigate the impacts it has on the overall network of business. The main focus is on making social media, such as facebook, acceptable and adaptable for small business enterprises and entrepreneurs in an organizational setting. One of the major concerns of businesses in adopting such technologies is the maintenance of reputation and privacy, these concerns have also been mentioned in studies like that of Gunther in the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology -UTAUT- framework (Günther, 2009), and the paper will analyze the relevant literature on the research proposal in this regard. Introduction Social Media is growing rapidly as never before, it reflecting the facts and figures of each and every corner of the society with comprehensive and prominent style which was incredible before this era. This frequent capture of the society by media also impacts on businesses which have negative and positive both aspects, I wish to discuss in this research. The base of the research would be the social media and the impacts on businesses from the advancement. This research benefit in identifying the ways social media can be of help to small businesses in spreading out and gathering diverse multiple range of weak ties that can be activated when needed. The literature review later on will also give detail on how micro blogging and facebook like social media applications can be adopted for small businesses. With the help of this research, a framework can be built which is designed specifically for the adoption of social media applications for small businesses without harming their privacy and reputation. This research proposal holds significance in identifying the main steps required for the adoption of social media and helping adding to the literature on acceptance of technology. The need of the changing times requires us to study the practices of social media applications and determine how they differ in terms of different user motivations and social connections. It will also be important in examining the behavioral life cycle modification in the variation, retention and selection processes involved in the adoption of social media applications. The amount of literature on social media’s usage by small and micro-business owners is not much. There is a need to fill this gap in research literature regarding this subject. The research proposal is of extreme importance since the use of social media by small businesses is growing leading to the transformation of electronic commerce to social commerce Research Question How the Social Media facilitates corporations? This research problem would provide the positive effects of Social Media for Businesses that how the media facilitates Corporations and why the social media is necessary for organizations. Why the Social Mass Media is need for Businesses? In this hypothesis, we would able to know the need of Social Mass Media for Business and what factors would be raise in absence of media, specially discover the position of businesses when the media was not such effective and common for our society. What are the negative impacts of Social Media on Corporations? We know there are some negative impacts of each positive body. So definitely, there are some negative impacts of Media as well which is affecting the worth and returns of the Corporations. The news should not be revealed in public, are the business of Media. Research Objectives The definitions of company privacy and social media boundary between disclosure obligation and company privacy company privacy and business ethics(the conflicts) How to use social media in business/ the function of social media The impacts that media brings to business, positive impacts and negative impacts The value of social media Research methodology The research would be conduct by following the methodology of Case Study and focused on the Qualitative approach. In this method, we would use the interviewing method within the case study, which would be possible by the related public and the employees of the concern corporations and the social media as well. Furthermore, we would paste the same questionnaire with some different respect by posting the same on online forum, which provide the essential role by getting the answers from all over the world. Applying case studies to address the questions and objectives highlighted above. The significance of qualitative strategy centered action research and case study approach in this regard has been outlined by several writers working in the context of research related to small enterprises. Some writers have criticized the use of quantitative strategy for the study of entrepreneurial networks by commenting that these techniques highlight the structural features of networks like aspects extensiveness, activity levels, density, size, centrality and reachability of networks and ignoring many substantive issues in entrepreneurship, which can only be addressed with the help of qualitative methods and approaches (Jack, 2010). Literature Review The social media phenomenon has attracted interest by all the fields in the society such as education, religion, business, entertainment and government. Almost everybody on earth has a cyber-presence through forums like facebook and twitter. A research in this direction should be highly beneficial since the business owners have already started hiring social media strategists and consultants for exploring and gaining long or short term competitive advantages by experimenting with these social media technologies. The beneficiaries of this research will be install transactional interface having the capabilities of networking to the business moguls with all the stakeholders, hence providing him with at least a short term business advantage over the others. Large technology firms like IBM and Microsoft have conducted research on these propositional aspects. These investigations have revealed that the employees are connecting with, through the use of the social media application for discovery, to the ties similar to their interests and objectives. The general use of social media is taken to be primarily with known off line connections. The use of micro blogging has gained popularity with businesses mainly since exchange of connection is not mandatory. As opposed to social media like facebook, micro blogging can be used for focused directed meaningful connections. Corporations use social media as they are always innovating new ideas and methodologies to create a promotion mix that disseminates information to the marketplace in such a consistent manner, that it clearly reflects its fundamental values. Manigold and Faulds (2009) gave an example of two corporate giants, namely Procter and Gamble and General Electric, who utilized social media within their integrated marketing communication strategies and promotional efforts. Through this it has been realized that the social media allows companies to converse directly with their consumers, and at the same time allows consumers to talk to other consumers. However, the issue with corporate privacy comes into play when blended in with social media. Cline (2008), addresses us in his article that companies are now tapping into the social networking phenomenon, and deploying their own online user based communities. Therefore, with employees being in direct contact with consumers, Cline posts various questions regarding this matter. What if employees commit to slander to other employees regarding the workplace? What if certain employees leak out information meant to be kept as a company secret? If an employee is being considered for promotion internally, would his posts on the social media be considered in his or her assessment? The mass media plays an extremely crucial role within the confines of our society. It is able to alter or even determine our buying habits, tastes and politics. Thos works the other way round as well, since the media is also affect by our tastes, interests and beliefs (Biagi 2011). The mass media assists many businesses as they are able to keep track of current trends of their competitors through newspapers, television and radio. The mass media is also utilized in order to expand its marketing strategy with promotion campaigns advertisements (Oxford Journal). There is a concern for external validity, which is the generalization of results obtained based upon the population, settings and time (Wimmer and Dominick, 2010). The difference between the social media applications and their use by businesses accompanied by the scarcity of research in small business and entrepreneurial settings indicates a huge limitation in the literature. This makes it necessary to work with two distinct sets of literature; one on social media and the other on the well-researched, mature and rich subject of entrepreneur networks. We can examine the methods of usage of social media technology by the employees of a company as there is not much material on its use by the companies as a whole. DiMiccoet has presented the idea in his work that the application of social media by technology companies is primarily a self-presentation tool to broadcast themselves as evangelists and leaders (DiMicco, 2008). Some famous tools like the wikis and the blogs cannot be described as social software tools as they do not help you connect with friends; they are purely information-centric software (Brzozowski, 2009). Brzozowski is of the opinion that social media provides with a free platform, unlike e-mail, for authors to by-pass the traditional hierarchies of organizations and helps maintenance of communication with physically and geographically distant readers. Scholars, based on survey results, find current applications of social media by businesses more inclined towards communication to the customers in more of a traditional sense like public relations, branding and lead generation, rather than communication with the customer directly to understand the customer and internal communications (Kärkkäinen, 2010). Research by businesses has considerably increased towards use of micro-blogging as an application at the backdrop of this discussion. Authors like Blake (Blake, 2010), Günther, Meyer &Dibbern (Meyer, 2010), Riemer & Richter (Riemer, 2010) (Riemer, 2010) and Fischer & Reuber (Fischer, 2010) have investigated upon adopting micro-blogging as a business tool. The next section will examine favorability of micro blogging and the adoption challenges it presents for businesses. Micro blogging is being adopted by business owners for making directed connection with direct and indirect stakeholders of their businesses and therefore, micro blogging is enjoying a substantial user base with medium and small enterprise owners. Some researchers are of the view that the application of micro blogging presents businesses with unique challenges which arise specifically because of the collaborative nature of micro blogging, while the traditional tools like spreadsheets and word processing and even the e-mail do not do so. In comparison to the email communications, the closed virtual groups conversation carried out on micro blogging are available to a definable population, and this leads to knowledge storage and exchange within a specific group with the protection of privacy. Researchers have differentiated micro blogging categorically from the facebook based on the specific requirement of facebook to acknowledge a relationship for communication maintenance (Ellison, 2006). In facebook, a person has to accept other as a friend or some other relation in order to proceed with the exchange of communication, but in the case of micro blogging that is not how it is done. In micro blogging, a person can be following the information shared by another person without the requirement of any acknowledgement or sharing any information himself. A user of twitter observed that twitter provides a person with a platform to announce what he had to offer through a megaphone to the passersby, and it is your choice to pass him by or stop and listen (Donsbach, 2011). Twitter provides with the opportunity of really connecting with the people, and as the number of its users rise so does the opportunity for the businesses to find their target audience. It is through connecting with the people that the businesses can reach out to them and engage in conversations, marketing and exchange of information. The research literature points out that one of the most consistent findings in the area of social sciences is that ‘whom’ you know is directly relates to ‘what’ you eventually come to know (Venkatesh, 2003). Micro blogging provides small and medium enterprises with appropriately directed connectivity with the people, who are the stakeholders, and thus its importance in a research paper aimed at analyzing the use and impact of the social media in the business arena is paramount. Other researchers have realized he importance and significance of this fact as well, but a lot of research is still required. Information provided by the following authors is useful in this regard; Tredinnick (Tredinnick, 2006), A. Lewins (Lewins, 2007), N. Kock (Kock, 2007) etc. The use of facebook by the businesses is more like an application for connectivity maintenance with the weak ties and advancement of careers, instead of for the regular use of connecting with friends. Research has been done to study the key factors involved in motivating businesses to use the social media (Jack S. , 2002). The analysis of the behaviors of the users and other surveys including data from interviews indicate that we are currently presented with a case where the professionals use the internally directed social networking for strengthening their relations with the weaker ties and for reaching out to employees that are not interacted with much. The motivation for them to do so is to connect and interact on a personal level with the co-workers and help campaigning with projects, and also for career advancement. Some of these results, however, are contradictory to the investigations of Lampe (Lampe, 2006), Joinson (Joinson, 2008) and Ellison (Ellison N. B., 2011), who investigated the motivation of facebook users in settings of educational institutions. Ethical Issues, The research methods adopted in this research focuses on case studies as its primary data. Similar to other case study on firm’s social media and networks, there may be ethical dilemma to the level of secrecy on certain information. However the case study information obtained from this research will be based on individual firms’ public information that will not cover specific sensitive information. Conclusion Small businesses and entrepreneurs are recognized in the world by all economies as the building blocks of innovation, productivity, flexibility and also efficiency generating wealth and employment for the nation. The internet and social media technology boom has given rise to a new breed of entrepreneurs. It has also aided in augmenting the existing businesses to service, develop and interact with their customers, in ways never imagined before. 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