Information and Communication Technology in Companies - Dissertation Example

? The Influence of Social Media on Organizational Culture and Organizational Productivity Organizations usually try to instil corporate cultures within their ranks to enhance employee performance, and hence maximize productivity. To this end, organizations and companies have traditionally pushed for strict adherence to organizational rules and regulations. However, with advances in information and communication technology, companies have had to move, from traditional modes of communication, to adopt the robust, efficient, and cost effective use of social media in order to compete and remain profitable in today’s fast-moving marketplace. This article purposes to present an evaluation of various literature on the influence of social media on organizational culture and performance. In order to do this successfully, it will introduce the concept of social media, define organizational culture and performance, and provide a summary of how social media affects businesses according to various scholars. Social Media Bercovici (2010) states that the concept of social media came about due to an idea mooted by Ted Leonsis in 1997, who was then the chief executive at AOL. Ted suggested that organizations needed to provide clients with places where they could communicate, engage in social environments, and obtain entertainment. Sixdegrees.com was the first popular social networking site and was launched within the same year. Ever since then, there have been numerous social networking sites; some of them have hundreds of millions of users (Montalvo, 2011). Some of the most popular social networking platforms of modern times include Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Wikipedia, and Flickr. Most of these platforms allow users to create profiles which they fill with data and information that is relevant to them. Facebook, with a subscription of over one billion users, allows individuals, companies, organizations, and even government agencies to create and manage personalized profiles that can then be viewed either publicly, or by authorized people. Companies can create profiles through which they can advertise their products and services, or provide support to customers. On the other hand, a company can develop an internal wiki and use it to enhance communication within its ranks. Blogs and micro blogs like Twitter and WordPress can also be used to seek feedback from clients, and the information collected used to improve product and service quality. Social media have grown tremendously over time and can be assembled into numerous categories depending on how they are structured. Some of these categories include: a. Wikis These are websites that allow their users to add, modify, or edit their content using web browsers and rich text editors or simplified mark-up language (Chatfield, 2009). b. Blogs Blogs are web based platforms that provide information or discussions on issues in a particular domain. They are composed of unique posts that are typically arranged in such a way that the most recent post appears first (Bullas, 2012). A user can either make a different blog post or make a remark on other people’s entries. c. Social Networking Services These are online platforms that allow people, organizations, businesses, or government agencies with similar interests, backgrounds, real-life connections, or activities to build social communities online. They allow users to create profiles, which they populate with information about themselves. This information is what is shared on the platforms. d. Podcasts These are series of video, audio, radio, or PDF digital media that are streamed periodically to mobile devices of computers (Richardson, 2010). e. RSS Rich Site Summary is a technology that uses web feeds to publish works that are frequently updated. It could be used to publish items such as news headlines, audio, video, and blog entries (Richardson, 2010). There are numerous other categories including discussion forums, employee ideation programs, video, and photo sharing. Despite these positive characteristics of social media, there have been instances where employers have raised complaints about them; whereas some of them are genuine, others are not. Organizational Culture Organizational culture refers to the behaviour of people in organizations, and the implications of their actions to them; it is a set of shared mental assumptions that influence analysis and activities to be undertaken in the organization (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). It includes organizational norms, values, beliefs, visions, habits, and systems. These cultures influence actions and decisions made in organizations, even without the people involved knowing; it happens subconsciously. Organizational culture is, therefore, very beneficial as it determines the organization’s well-being and success; it glues company employees, as well as management, together, hence, acts as a guide. Organizational Performance Organization performance is an evaluation of an organization’s actual output computed using its goals and objectives as benchmarks. It is mainly computed in terms of financial performance, product market performance, and shareholder returns. Spitzer (2007), states that the output of an organization rests on many issues including organizational culture, customer orientation, innovativeness, and competition. The Influence of Social Media on Organizational Culture/ Organization Performance i. Job Opportunity Attractiveness According to a 2011 Cisco report that surveyed more than 2800 college students and young professionals less than 30 years old, young employees prefer social media freedom to higher salaries. In addition to this, they also prefer mobility and device flexibility over money when accepting job offers. The study revealed that most workers want a blend of personal and work lifestyles in organizational culture, a fact that has come to determine which companies get the best talent. In fact, 40% of young employees and 45% of students hinted that they would accept low paying jobs that are flexible in terms of social media access, device choice, and mobility, and reject companies that offer handsome packages, but with little or no flexibility (Cisco, 2011). More than half of the respondents said that they would not accept offers from companies that have banned social media (Cisco, 2011). Google© retains some of the best talents in the computing industry not only because of handsome packages they offer, but also their attractive working environment characterized by lifestyles that embrace both professional and personal work. These trends are an indication that companies may be forced to mend their policies to accommodate social media if they are to remain relevant to employees. ii. Visibility Visibility refers to the methods, means, and opportunities for presentation of information. According to Brownand Duguid (2001), people are unlikely to look for information that is difficult to access, or whose existence they are not aware about. Social media such as blogs and wikis make information visible by making it possible for people to trace it easily and with little effort. Social media platforms (?) allow users to expose their behaviour, preferences, knowledge, and communication network linkages that may not be appreciated in the organization. This sharing, in turn, enhances information involvement in the organization; hence boosting productivity. This is because the success of any business is reliant on its ability to share crucial information with its employees (Belleqhem, 2012b). Companies with poor communication strategies find it quite challenging to implement their activities, and hence, fail to meet their objectives and goals (Spitzer, 2007). iii. Persistence Persistence is the ability of a message/ communication to remain unchanged and accessible even after the person sharing it has finished making his/her presentation (Erickson & Kellog, 2000). The shared information remains available to people who want to use it and does not become irrelevant. Social media presents companies with the ability to share and to store information easily over a long time. In addition, retrieving such information is easy; it can simply be done using a basic search tool and key words. This is particularly useful, especially in blogs where a user could want to refer to an entry that was made a while ago. Erickson & Kellog (2000) state that persistence creates avenues through which conversations can be browsed, searched, restructured, annotated, replayed, and contextualized. In addition, tools like blogs and wikis keep a record of the person(s) who made the entries. This is crucial in situations where there may be discrepancies on who did what, when, and how. Such cases can be solved by simply viewing the records in the social networking tools. The diagram below shows how various social media platforms offer persistence. Table 1: Persistence in various social platforms The ability to sustain knowledge over time coupled with the creation of robust modes of communication and growth of content has had an impact on organizational culture and productivity; organizations have formed a tendency of keeping data in forms that make them readily available while maintaining their integrity. This information can be accessed at any instance and used to meet the organization’s goals as the need arises. The overall result is increased efficient productivity as the information required to run the organization is readily available. iv. Editability This is a property of social media that allows users to craft and re-craft messages before sharing them with their audience, as well as after releasing them to the public (Montalvo, 2011). This enables the sender of the message to relay the message as he, or she, intended (Montalvo, 2011). It enables authors to correct spelling or grammar mistakes, update information, and correct wrong entries. It also allows other authorized users to moderate their colleagues’ entries; hence, ensuring that the content of the tool is not only correct, but also reliable. Editability of Web 2.0 tools gives organizations mechanisms through which they can keep themselves and their customers up to date with the recent, up to date material. For instance, if a manager sends an email that contains an error to his team members, he can do little to correct the error; he can only do so by drafting a new email. On the contrary, if he uses a blog or wiki platform for communication, he will just need to identify and edit the clause containing the error. Any member of staff who gets the message after the correction has been made will never realise that an error had been made. Editability regulates personal expressions, targets content, and results in improved quality of information. As such, social media promotes the sharing of information that is accurate and trustworthy. The trustworthiness of information is crucial to clients; people tend to like information on which they can depend (Spitzer, 2007). Social media, therefore, contributes to the productivity of organizations by making their goods and services attractive to the market without incurring the high overhead cost formerly associated with print media. v. Association An association is an established connection between individuals or individuals and content. The relationship between individuals in social media creates a social tie. These relationships can be evidenced by friends on social networking sites, followers on blogs, or subscriptions to tags. Boyd and Ellison (2007) state that the goal of people using social networking tools is to make their social networks visible; it is the relationships that people are able to make using the tools that are of importance. This category of relationships is particularly salient within companies. It boosts the relationship between employees, hence making it easier for them to work as a team towards the realization of company goals. This results in improved productivity among staff, which translates into quality output. The company or organization can then reap the fruits of bearing quality products; increased income. Thom-Santelli, Cosley, and Gay (2010) state that associations allow professionals to exploit their knowledge fully by sharing it with their colleagues. The second kind of association that can be realized using social media is that between individuals and content. Wiki, blog, article tagging and social networking site (SNS) contributions associate individuals with the content they write. When members of staff, or clients, post in blogs, wikis, or SNSs, they develop a sense of ownership over the article. The relationship between the information and the individual bolsters the relationship between the individual and the company/organization, or the relationship between the client and product or service provided by the organization. Association is, therefore, crucial in the improvement of productivity, in any organization that uses Web 2.0 technologies. Contrary to popular belief that social media alienates users, it bridges the gaps between individuals, enhances relationships that already exist, and builds communities that bring people with common interests together. The tools achieve this feat by enabling emergent connections, providing access to relevant information, and supporting social connections (Dugan, Geyer, & Millen, 2010). vi. Reduced Expenditure Web 2.0 technologies have reduced the costs incurred in content discovery, and distribution by large margins (Chatfield, 2009). This is because can create and maintain their online presence easily and economically. Organizations use the large subscriber bases that social networking sites and blogs such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn have to market their products and services. This marketing strategy, commonly referred to as ‘word of mouse’ has become popular amongst companies and organizations. This has been credited to the fact that it is easier to track marketing progress on social networking platforms than on mainstream media (Spitzer, 2007). Organizations can establish their marketing performance by analysing data obtained by studying the statistics collected by tools such as Google Analytics. Such software tools eliminate the need for companies to hire external research firms to help them establish their status in the market. vii. Increased Speed The speed with which information moves in social media has proved useful to companies and organizations that need quick communication with their staff, clients, and partners. This has been necessitated by the fact that information in the environments external to companies and organizations is shifting at a faster rate than that within them. This is because, unlike in social media, the corporate world presents a lot of stumbling blocks to information sharing in terms of infrastructure, culture, policies, and security. Companies have had to replace some of their strict rules and regulations with policies that allow them to operate using social media. viii. Transparency and Accountability The speed with which information moves in social media has denied companies the opportunity to decide on which information to share; even if companies implement strict policies not to share information with the public, the information finds its way to social media through employees, partners, or suppliers (Solis, 2011). Any leaked information, no matter how trivial, can go viral in social media in a matter of hours provided it is of interest to the public. This forces companies to be open to the public, reporting both their successes and failures, in order to maintain credibility. Companies, therefore, have no option, but to address the various issues that arise due to their activities, goods, or services. ix. Power Shift Many companies use traditional means of communication within and without their premises; this is despite the emergence of modern communication techniques that are not only efficient, but also financially viable. Social media has, however, forced some companies to change their culture without intending (Manning, Bodine, & Bernoff, 2012). Dell, for example, had no intention of using social media to conduct its activities despite the fact that it is an IT company. The company only opted to use social media after it realized that most its clients were using powerful Web 2.0 tools to speak their minds about its products and services. This forced the company to re-evaluate its corporate culture to find a way to engage the disgruntled customers. This case is a representation of how social media directly changes corporate culture, and consequently corporate productivity in organizations (Collier, 2007). x. Business-to-Person (B2P) Businesses are shifting from business to business structures to the efficient business to person strategy. This model has been influenced by the positive results that businesses have experienced while engaging their clients on a one-on-one basis. Through the use of social media technology, businesses are able to reach out to their customers easier than before (Belleqhem, 2012a). This has made it easy, and cheap, for businesses to meet their clients’ needs. Social media has, therefore, necessitated the development of new business concepts such as the business-to-person strategy. xi. Inclusive Marketing Marketing has traditionally been the reserve of public relations experts. However, social media have forced companies and organizations to include all members of staff and management into their marketing strategy. The argument being fronted is that employees are in their individual nature, representatives of the company’s or organization’s brands (Hinchcliffe, Kim, & Dachis, 2012). It is, therefore, crucial that all the organization’s stakeholders who use social networking tools act as ambassadors to their employer; they should put the organization’s interests at heart while undertaking their activities in the Web 2.0 applications. As such, organizations train their staff on how to portray themselves, and hence the organization, in the best way. This has been a break from the old ways in which marketing was a job reserved for a few employees. Apart from this, organizations have to hire additional staff with expertise in social marketing; this helps them to maximize on opportunities that the technologies offer. The influence of social media on organizational culture and performance cannot be ignored. It is evident that social media has become a crucial pillar in the marketing of products of services, as well as in the provision of support. Social media also allows companies and organizations to collect their clients’ feedback on their products and services. It is, therefore, necessary that any organization that is seeking to attain its goals and objectives adopts the use of Web 2.0 technologies. They present the best solutions not only for the present, but also for the future. References Belleqhem, S. V. (2012a). The conversation manager: The power of the modern consumer, the end of the traditional advertiser. London: Kogan Page. Belleqhem, S. V. (2012b). The conversation company: Boost your business through culture, people and social media. London: Kogan Page. Boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. 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