TY - JOUR
T1 - Social Media Communication in the Workplace
T2 - Evidence From Public Employees’ Networks
AU - Fusi, Federica
AU - Zhang, Fengxiu
PY - 2020/6/1
Y1 - 2020/6/1
N2 - Although public employees increasingly utilize social media in the workplace, public management scholarship has provided little evidence on how public employees use such tools and what role they play in professional networks. Public organizations struggle to balance policies encouraging social media use for communication and regulations that prevent time wasting or security issues. We suggest that an examination of social media communication patterns can guide public organizations to design organizational policies and address internal social media use. Combining a network approach with insights from communication and social media studies, we investigate how closeness, proximity, interactions, and resources predict public employees’ communication on social media. We develop and test a multilevel model using 2014 egocentric network data among 2,362 employees in a U.S. public university. We find that social media communication in public organizations is explained by proximity, closeness, and social interactions rather than professional interactions and access to resources.
AB - Although public employees increasingly utilize social media in the workplace, public management scholarship has provided little evidence on how public employees use such tools and what role they play in professional networks. Public organizations struggle to balance policies encouraging social media use for communication and regulations that prevent time wasting or security issues. We suggest that an examination of social media communication patterns can guide public organizations to design organizational policies and address internal social media use. Combining a network approach with insights from communication and social media studies, we investigate how closeness, proximity, interactions, and resources predict public employees’ communication on social media. We develop and test a multilevel model using 2014 egocentric network data among 2,362 employees in a U.S. public university. We find that social media communication in public organizations is explained by proximity, closeness, and social interactions rather than professional interactions and access to resources.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058707361&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0734371X18804016
DO - 10.1177/0734371X18804016
M3 - Article
SN - 0734-371X
VL - 40
SP - 245
EP - 271
JO - Review of Public Personnel Administration
JF - Review of Public Personnel Administration
IS - 2
ER -