The effects of social networking in the workplace
ABSTRACT
Purpose ? This paper aims to examine the impact of social networking in the workplace and to assess its application as an effective business tool.
Design/methodology/approach? The paper evaluates positive perceptions of social networking in the workplace which increases employee satisfaction and employee productivity and this will undoubtedly lead to increased brand reputation for companies. This paper also studies the reasons why some organizations ban and restrict social networking in the workplace and its negative outcomes. Furthermore the link between social networking and organizational culture is estimated. The findings are expected to show the usage of social networking in a workplace which has started being applied by some organizations in most countries would benefit their business.
Keywords: Social networks, Workplace, Employee productivity and satisfaction, Business success
Paper type: Literature review
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Introduction
In recent years, the Internet and specially the Web has authorized a communication revolution: the ability to send and recover information everywhere has changed the way we work and live. Social networking portals are a new movement. Social networking is based on this theory that there is a determinable construction to how people know each other, whether directly or indirectly (Rob Cross and Andrew Parker 2004).
A social networking site (SNS) connects and links people based on information gathered about them, as saved in their user profiles. These user profiles choose the way in which users are able to present themselves to others. The most significant distinguishing element between the various sites is the range of profile information that they store and can carry out operations on.
The use of social networking sites (SNS), which presented commercially about a decade ago, is now well established among the general population. By late 2008, MySpace and Facebook each had 60 million U.S. users and according to a recent Comscore estimate they have more than 100 million users each. Although some of these sites were initially directed at younger users such as college students, recently SNSs have been attracting large numbers of older audiences interested in professional networking. Use of SNSs like Facebook is also becoming more observable within organizations, especially among younger employees and recent hires that joined the site as college students.
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The virtual workplace
The recent years we have witnessed an atomization and redistribution of working styles and patterns. Hotels, cafes, bars, trains, and airport terminals are becoming more and more utilized as places of work. We are now living in an information age where work is being redefined beyond traditional bounds of space and time (McGregor, 2000a).
Although technology has eased more distributed ways of working, it can also, through the use of social networking, facilitate the human needs that are essential for distributed ways of working to succeed. Technology has blurred the traditional distinctions between work environments and buildings and many businesses have increasingly adopted a virtual approach to workspace (Igbaria and Guimaraes, 1999; Kayworth and Leidner, 2000). In particular, certifying team spirit and culture is maintained no matter where you are in the world. Nowadays work can implement anywhere. So the workplace rather than being a place where people just come to work, is now increasingly becoming a chance for people to indicate personal involvement in organizational culture and to participate in the values and beliefs of the organization (Bell et al., 2008).
What makes social networking unique is that the control of online content moves from the site owner to the contributor of material to the sites. In other words, organizations that have executed social networking have experienced a shift in culture from ?information gathering? to ?information participation?. One could compete therefore, that social networking can enable virtual workers to work more and more effectively through increased collaboration and communication as well as providing loaded of specific details and personal information about contacts which can be updated immediately, when people change jobs, departments or offices. All of these practices are easy to implement and reduced costs. But in some cases whenever workers who are mostly absent from the office for long periods of time, it becomes increasingly difficult to immerse themselves in organizational culture.
Social networking sites, however, supply chances for both formal and informal interaction and cooperation with fellow employees and clients/customers who aids knowledge transfer and communication. The sites also have different informal applications and games that members of the same organization can participate in across geographical boundaries and time zones, so that team spirit and organizational culture can be maintained. Akkirman and Harris (2005) revealed the fact of the most frequently expressed attention about virtual spaces is that old structure of social mechanics that facilitate communication are lost. During their research, they studied a company that implemented lots of social networking strategies to keep the virtual workers in the communication loop. Among these were socially engaging approaches like the e-cafe?, the virtual place where employees could be happy with chat-rooms, reading e-Bulletin Boards, posting, playing chess at lunch time and reading newspapers or magazines. However in their study, Akkirman and Harris (2005) found that companies can achieve benefits beyond enhanced productivity and cost shifting through implementing the above mentioned communication approaches. They became aware of employee satisfaction and related variables such as motivation and turnover can improve as well in other words they have direct relationship (Akkirman and Harris, 2005).
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Back ground of Social Networking
The original concept of social circles was established by Georg Simmel (Rob Cross and Andrew Parker, 2004) by the 20th century. Since this first theory, the discipline has been developed to be used, for instance by modern computer technologies, to authorize social science to do huge studies on all sorts of social networks. The main purpose is to map social relations and to look for variables, which will eventually guide to a better comprehension of how relations work, information flows and organizations cooperate.
Social interaction was made in early terminal-based computers. The current period of social networking began as Internet performance increased and the Web took hold. From 1995 to 1997, ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger were released. (Meredith M. Skeels, Jonathan Grudin 2009) , use of commercial phone-based text messaging rose, text messaging web portals developed, and Classmates.com and Six Degrees appeared. Messaging brought the buddy lists and common, quasi-real-time communication that are a foundation on which social networking software builds. Mobile phone use and text-messaging also increased the consumer space, especially to young consumers. (Meredith M. Skeels, Jonathan Grudin 2009).
Although lots of newer sites with a social networking component have thrived (e.g., Flickr, YouTube, Twitter), the dominance of older sites suggests that the timing was important. From 2002-2004, Plaxo, Friendster, Reunion.com, Cyworld, LinkedIn, Hi5, Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, and Live Spaces were released or actively advanced. (Meredith M. Skeels, Jonathan Grudin 2009).
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Classmates, Reunion.com and Live Spaces were the six most active US sites in 2005. (Meredith M. Skeels, Jonathan Grudin 2009). Apparently other sites are well known somewhere else (Friendster in Asia, Cyworld in Korea, Hi5 in Spanish-speaking countries, QQ in China, Orkut in Brazil and India). These sites typically suggest some ways for users to communicate and interact with each other within sending e-mail, instant messaging, webcams, chat rooms, blogging and discussion groups file sharing. These sites typically provide a number of ways for users to interact and communicate with each other including instant messaging, chat rooms, e-mail, webcams, file sharing, blogging and discussion groups (Bell et al., 2008).
Ability of networking and maintaining contacts through work and life is one of the most essential aspects for success, but this place is one of the most overlooked areas. It is invisible, intangible work that is unaccounted for in any employee performance appraisal. Nardi et al. (2002) discuss that once contacts are in a network, they often require ?care and feeding?. They further highlighted that while passive contacts may be activated after surprisingly long time, many people feel the need to feed relationships. Nardi et al. (2002) revealed that employees? social networks play a significant role in the workplace, keeping that professional networking has become critical to businesses which shift to project and team related work. When social networking entered the public domain, many recognised it as an opportunity to further enhance work-based communication practices (Nardi et al., 2002).
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Entrance of social network in businesses and negative outcomes
Nowadays most companies use social networking sites as a tool to extend their business. These websites a fantastic opportunity to present themselves and improve their reputation in the market through social networking., Using popular web sites such as Facebook, Mayspcae leads a small business to target an audience of hundreds without much effort for advertising. When social networking entered the public domain, many recognized it as an opportunity to further enhance work-based communication practices (Nardi et al., 2002).
Social networking could be divided into two different topics. First defined as social networking as marketing tools which Kotler and Zaltman (1971) clarified it as the application of marketing principles and tools to achieving socially desirable goals. Second one defined as social networking as business tools which summarised by Williamson (2009), who argues that companies need to think about setting up a community home space featuring pictures and profiles of team members, a discussion board, a team calendar, or a chat room. Now the discursive issue is, organizations focusing on marketing tools mostly and ignore to use social networking as business tools because they believe this tool reduce productivity and profitability. These sites do not cause any problem for organizations, because they are applications, the worry is about the user, the people who use them! Organizations believe employees spend a great deal of time on social networking sites for updating their profiles or some other activities daily. If every employee spent more time on a social networking sites every day, that would work out to a loss of hours of productivity in one year! Except of this matter which is a main intellectual concern for employers, employees also might suffer when they see their colleagues spending hours on social networking sites while they are being involved with overload tasks. Therefore, it is also effect on company morale. Another issue which is also concern to is the messages that employees may post on social networking sites. People usually post messages which explain their feeling about work place and they usually do not think through what they have written. For example, they may write ?I have to work this weekend because we?ve found a problem in our production line? or ?My job is boring?. These kinds of comments could enhance concern among customers who may involve in the system thus these simple issues may leave a bad influence on organizations and make problem for their reputation.
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The impact of social networking access restriction
Now, according to mentioned matters and their negative effect on organizations the question is to ban or not to ban? Banning access to social networking sites may be an optimal solution for some organizations. There is no simple clarification to any of discussed issues. Many businesses believe social networking tools pointless and have banned their use in the workplace or in some cases they have not supported them enough. Many companies still fear employees spending lots of time on social networking pages or watching YouTube, or Tweeting.
According to the expectancy theory model proposed by Vroom, Van Eerde and Tierry (1996), employees will not work to their full potential if they perceive that the organization does not appraise their efforts and reward them.
By internal controls and used technology to limit employees? activities on social networking sites, it leads them to have their posting at home and this is the dilemma that most of businesses face today. Businesses require rebuilding in their culture which means they should implement social networking as business tool, not as marketing tool. It is increasingly becoming an opportunity for employees and clients to transfer knowledge and have communication through social networking. In other words, as mentioned before the organizations which implement social networking changed their culture from information gathering to information participation. Actually is it difficult for organizations to make balance between advantages and disadvantages of social networking.
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The benefits of using social Network in workplace
Social networking can empower employees to control over the content of material and knowledge sharing. Consequently, it also has the potential to empower public sector. Lange et al. (2008) examined the advantages of social networking into three categories namely community, collaboration and contribution. First one is clarified the use of social networking tools that provide some opportunity for people to share their interest and activities. Networks relationship, discussion groups, friendship groups also about the issues that might absorb considerable variety of opinions. Second category clarified as the use of social networking tools and how to make a connection with people, knowledge and resources in search of problem solving that cannot be generated with any one of those ingredients alone. This could be consider as a technical self-help community working together to answer problems or share data about where to find the cheapest products.
Last category ?collaboration? discussed as the use of social networking tools and ways to make it easier for consumers to present their ideas, expertise, attention and preferences in the procedure of production especially for new products, services or implemented policies.
According to the latest researches and regarding to the benefits of social network, organizations required to change culture and adopt with this new technology. Reinventing the culture of companies and the way companies do business is a key to achieving increased levels of workplace productivity and employee satisfaction (Pitt and Bennett, 2008). Researches also find out banning social networking is meaningless; employees will use these tools anyway. Social networks propose considerable benefits to corporations if used correctly. They can enrich and increase business processes, employee satisfaction, and employee productivity. This improvement will undoubtedly lead to increased brand reputation for companies. Tucker and Smith (2008) discussed, personalization and workplace satisfaction have close associations. Apparently the only way to fight against disenchantment at being avoided from personalizing workspace would be to implement social networking into the virtual workspace. This empowers employees to control over the content of material and share knowledge rather than just collecting information and data from a central source. Akkirman and Harris (2005) proved the fact that companies can collect benefits beyond raised productivity and cost shifting through implementing the communication approches. They argued that employee satisfaction and some related variables such as motivation and turnover can improve as well. By giving them the right environment and tools, employees can collaborate and cooperate with new colleagues and potential contacts to help achieve the overall strategic goals of the organisation (Fraser and Dutta, 2008). Earlier Ancona and Caldwell (1988) examined that counting on outsiders for resources or data can produce valuable resources that are linked to high team performance.
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Conclusion
In recent years, generations Y, are rapidly becoming the core employee of diverse businesses, it is obviously essential that organizations should adapt and accept to the actuality that its workforce has widely targeted social networking sites. Utilising social networking and the associated tools for collaborative ways of working is absolutely essential and businesses should try to attract and retain high performance of their employees. Lange et al. (2008) discussed that not adapting to these technologies and not distingushing the opportunities might lead to two pronged systems: one led by ?early adopters? the people who use this new tools and techniques for collaboration: and the other by ?laggards? avoiding change and sticking to the old system. Bell et al. (2008) also argue that Generation Y will adapt better to new work style. Besides, they will be professional social networkers. According to Generation Y ages we could easily find out they are already old enough to hold important positions such as, senior, executive and manager in organisations and are almost confident to be active social networkers. In order for organisations to experience the clear business value of social networking tools, the traditional forms of institutional power and management strategy have to move to a more horizontal diffused network. This will assuredly lead to raised brand reputation, a more open, transparent culture and a more effective and efficient way of working.
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Anahid Akbarialiabadi??????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????Mona Zolfaghari
Business school of Management???????????????????????????????????????? Business school of Management
and Science University,??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? and Science University,
Kualalampur,Malaysia???????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????Kualalampur,Malaysia
ana.akbari@gmail.com??????????????????????????? ????????????????????????moonaramoona@gmail.com
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