Impact of social media on project stake holder management - Research Paper Example

Impact of social media on project stake holder management Introduction Social media is a platform through which people across the globe can communicate effectively and also share different ideas and opinions. This research study would aim at determining the impacts that social media has on the project stake holder management. According to Eden and Ackermann (1998), stakeholders can be defined as small groups or people who have the power to negotiate or to respond through their valuable ideas in the project that is undertaken by the organization. The major issue that is been addressed through this research study is the problems that are faced in proper management of stakeholders involved in a project. This research study is more of a futuristic approach through which social media would play the most critical role in project stake holder management. The term stakeholder management is very important as it forms the basis on which the success of the project rest. It forms an important part that leads to smooth completion of the project that has been undertaken. This is a very important discipline that are mostly addressed by successful people s they believe that the opinions and ideas of these stakeholders are very much fruitful for the overall project development and in the majority cases leads to success of the project rather than failure. There are various reasons that lead to failure of a project; however the factor that is taken into consideration in this research study is the communication factor. An effective communication platform and coordination is the most important pillars in stakeholder management. As the stakeholders needs to be aware about every possible detail of the project so that they are able to contribute towards such project so that it results into a success. Social media in the present scenario is not only bounded within Facebook, twitter, etc., but it has proved itself to be a beneficial tool when there is a requirement to improve upon the level of communication amongst the team members and also amongst all the other stakeholders who play an important role in the success or failure of a project. There are various approaches in social media platform that helps in enhancing communication and applying such principles in a project helps to manage effectively the stakeholders, facilitates better collaboration, beneficial for problem solving and builds community at a much faster pace. Social media as a model helps an individual to focus on how information is being shared, used and aggregated. This model when incorporated in a project helps to connect in a better way with the clients, addresses much of the persistent communication trap that is prevalent amongst the project team members and drives a whole new mechanism so as to communicate with all the stakeholders of a project. The negative impacts of the social media as a communication tool are that it misinterprets many information that is being shared by the shareholders or it even can disrupt the image of the organization that is associated with the project development. There are still questions prevalent in this context that whether social media has a positive or a negative impact on the stakeholder management. Stakeholder analysis forms the major tool for completion and success of a project and in accordance to its critical role this study is to analyze the importance of social media in this field. This research study would also address the major issues that exist with the incorporation of the social media in project development and would be able to highlight certain key findings that would be beneficial for the project managers to use the model of social media in the most appropriate way for managing the various stakeholders who are involved in the project. Research background and questions The aim of the research study is to outline the positive and negative impacts that social media can cause on stakeholder management in a project. The objectives of the research study would be three fold, firstly the study would determine the positive impact of incorporating social media model in a project, secondly it would help in analyzing the key issues that are being addressed by such a model in stakeholder management, and thirdly it would help to determine the negative consequences of using a social media that needs to be handled effectively by a project manager so that there is a proper management of stakeholders in the project. The objectives of the research study would be aligned towards analyzing the benefits of social media so as to enhance the level of communication and at the same time it would highlight the problem areas that needs to be addressed by the project manager so that the common interest of all the stakeholders are accomplished. The existing information in context of this particular topic states that there are various responsibilities that are imposed on a project manager which generally comprises of resolving various problems that occurs in the lifetime of the project, addressing the changes that are made for the betterment of the project and to communicate well the accomplishments and milestones to the project stakeholders. In such a scenario the use of the flexible platform of social media helps in reducing much of the manual hard work that needs to be put in for efficient project management. Social media has been considered to be an effective tool in terms of managing interpretation, inflow of the project information as well its outflow (Spolander & Martin, 2012).The major benefit of utilizing social media is that it helps to eliminate much of the inconvenience that is caused by the traditional approach of handling teams that is through email groups, shared folders that are hard to locate, crowded inboxes of emails, long attachments of project versions, etc., and in such a scenario the members of the teams gets excluded inadvertently and even they happen to miss out on some important updates on the project. The fundamental advantage that social media offers towards stakeholder management is that it create virtual communities through which various ideas can be shared amongst shareholders of a project and even facilitates real time monitoring of various aspects that are related to the project. This kind of community building through social media helps in increasing morale and trust amongst all the project members and this approach plays a critical role when the team members are distributed and the information needs to be transmitted across distances. On the contrary there are certain hazards that are caused by social media on stakeholder management of a project (Scott & Jacka, 2011).The use of social media may cause the issue of confidentiality lack and even disrupt relationships between the stakeholders due to wrong interpretations of the messages that are exchanged through this platform. This study is not just an analysis but it is finding out of suitable measures that can reduce the negative impact of social media on the management of stakeholders involved in a project. This research study would not be limited towards analyzing the impact that is created by social media but would encompass analyzing the behaviour of stakeholders of various projects towards such a platform. This research study would be beneficial as it would point out the various aspects that need to be considered while incorporating social media in project management. The research questions for the study would be aligned with the research objectives such as- What are the impacts that are caused by social media on the project stakeholder management? This research question would be the basis of the entire research study as the study is focused towards analyzing the impacts of social media. However there are certain sub-parts of the research that would help in conducting extensive research in this field. This would encompass studying the various aspects of stakeholder management in a project and to identify the specific loopholes that would be addressed by social media. Hence there would be certain other parts to the research question such as – What are the issues of project stakeholder management that are being addressed by social media? What are the negative consequences of incorporating the model of social media in the project management? Is there any other better approach that can be used in stakeholder management and has more of positive impact in comparison to use of social media? The study would not be limited towards just analyzing the positivity of the model of social media in project management but also deal with its negative impact which is not recorded in most of research studies elaborately that has been conducted in this particular field. Hence the study would be able to cover the broader aspect of both stakeholder management and social media and would be able to draw a well defined relationship between both the approaches for effective project development and its success. Research Methods Research methods can be precisely defined as the mechanism that is undertaken by a researcher to determine the facts and figures so as to address the problem area on which the research is being conducted. The research methods are based on the nature of study so that most appropriate results can be determined. This research paper is based on analyzing the impact that is caused by social media which requires extensive analysis of data that is to be collected from various sources of available information. Research methods can be divided mainly into forms that are qualitative and quantitative research. Quantitative research is based on the aspect of collecting data and then performing statistical analysis so that more of accuracy can be achieved in the results. This kind of research is more specific in nature and is used to derive the exact results that would meet the research objectives. On the contrary qualitative research is a descriptive form of study that is used to analyze the research problem on a broader scale (Tracy, 2012).This kind of research methods is utilized when the use of statistical analysis would result into contradictory outcomes or in a scenario when earlier research study and theoretical framework is most essential for the study. This research paper would be based on qualitative research model rather than quantitative research as it would comprise of wide array of theories and opinions of various professionals and experts in context of this field. The theories that would be considered in this study would be based on social networking and various frameworks on stakeholder analysis so that a concise relationship may be established between the two approaches. The methods to be used would be cantered towards the existing research study on this particular study, sources from websites, journals and articles so that real time facts can be obtained in context of the area of the research study. The research study would encompass archival sources such as databases of different organizations so as to analyze the ways through which they have been able to include social media as a tool to manage different stakeholders involved in a project. The databases would also help in analyzing the mechanism that is followed by project managers in the real time and would also indicate the impact on social on such stakeholder management. The research methods would not be limited to archival sources of information but would even comprise of some other qualitative research techniques so as to gather opinions of different project stakeholders and their views and thoughts towards social media. This would help to determine that whether stakeholders are positive towards such new media platform or they feel that the traditional way of managing team members to be still the most effective way in the present scenario. The research technique that can be incorporated in this research study is that of a focus group study. This study would mainly comprise of a group of stakeholders who would be giving their views on the impact that social media has caused in the present scenario towards project management. The historical data that would be used in this research study would be inclined towards the different approaches of social media and the way in which social media in the current scenario has been able to change stakeholder management. The visual analysis would be in the form of some existing charts and figures that would identify the success rates of projects that has social media as its tool for establishing effective communication between different stakeholders of a project. The research questions that has been formulated in this research study would be analyzed on the basis of these qualitative tools that would comprise of real time data as well as some of the historical facts supported with theoretical frameworks. Schedule of work   1st Year 2nd year 3rd Year Months January to June July to December January to June July to December January to June July to December Identification of research area             Research Question Formulation             Collection of research background information             Refining research topic             Consideration of various research options             Research tools selection             Administration of research tools             Information Analysis             Learning outcomes of the research study             References Tracy, S.J. (2012). Qualitative Research Methods. UK: John Wiley & Sons. Spolander, G., & Martin, L. (2012). Successful Project Management. UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Scott, P. R., & Jacka, M. (2011). Auditing Social Media: A Governance and Risk Guide. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Read More