Harmonising Social Media Use and Organisational Communication
摘要
Using social media can be a double-edged sword in organisational communication. While there are many benefits, the associated risks should never be underestimated, even if the organisation tries to regulate social media. In this chapter, the documented benefits and risks of social media use in organisational communication are weighed. The gaps are used to develop a conceptual model that can promote harmony between social media use and organisational culture and climate. The study was conducted as a literature review, within a 10-year time frame (2014–2023). This is an era that has seen an exponential rise of social media use in organisational communication precipitated by the COVID-19 restrictions between 2020 and 2022. An exploratory approach was employed based on the availability of literature from various sources and perspectives. Numerous benefits of using social media in organisational communication have been cited, with major themes being the trumping of geographic boundaries and time constraints, transparency, improved rapport with stakeholders, creativity skills from information retrieval and sharing, cost-effectiveness, job satisfaction, better customer relationship management, and market access. However, amid all these benefits, we also found in the literature, a myriad of challenges emanating from social media use such as time wastage and consequent decline in job productivity as many employees engage in non-work-related matters on social media, privacy threats, and consequent reputational damage and technostress. The knowledge gap is that the standardisation and harmonisation of social media use and regulation have barely been tackled; this could impact organisational culture and climate. A conceptual model that could guide organisations and their employees on how to harmonise social media use and organisational communication was developed, and it might translate to achieving organisational culture, climate, and success. The model focuses on continuous monitoring and evaluation of social media available to organisations to determine the impact on organisational success, to find out the various stakeholders’ voices, and to inquire about regulation by organisations and training for social media literacy skills and ethics. Future research could explore employees’ voices regarding social media use and regulation by organisations and stratify social media use by type of organisation to determine the trends.