Browsing by Author "Ekman, Tuuli"

The aim of this thesis is to study how the case company’s employees act as company advocates in social media. The thesis takes the employees’ perspective, studying specifically their experiences regarding social media, and thus contributes to the existing research. On a larger scale, the research offers insight on the changing role of the employees as communicators in organizations. The research questions that guide the thesis are What is employee advocacy in social media by nature? and What drives employee advocacy in social media? Many studies have in the past focused on the role of professionals and leaders as communicators, neglecting the fact that communication takes place throughout the organization. However, due to the emergence of the new communication technologies, it can be said that organizational members now more than ever have the means and power to partake in organizational communication (Juholin et al. 2015). More insight on the employee perspective on the topic is needed, and this research aims at casting more light on the issue. Furthermore, the current research agrees that social media seems to be top priority for many organizations, but there exists only a limited amount of information on the use of social media for organizational purposes (e.g. Landers & Callan 2014, Charoensukmongkol 2014). 'Research on social media in organizations is in its infancy,' summarize Landers and Goldberg (2014, 298). In addition, it has remained undiscovered what employees do on social media and what drives their actions (Landers & Callan 2014, 628). The topic is of interest to the case company as they wish to harness more employees to be their online advocates in the future. Overall, the research is interesting to the research community as it is topical and offers insight of a very traditional industrial company and its employees. The theoretical framework of the thesis consists of academic insight on organizational communication, employee advocacy, social media and employees’ usage of social media. Starting point to the research is organizational communication, as employees’ use of social media by definition implies organizational interference (Landers & Goldberg 2014, 302). Especially valuable to this study is the recent, specific research on employees’ use of social media in organizational context. Empirical research consists of two parts, the first being a preliminary survey, which maps whether employee advocacy is a topical and valid research topic for the case company. The main research takes the form of twelve semi-structured interview. These interviews were analyzed using the means of thematic differentiation. The results of the thesis indicate that employee advocacy in social media is largely voluntary of nature, and therefore incentives are not needed to endorse advocacy in social media. They also suggest that the advocates tend to be early adaptors of the new communication technologies, and view them overall positively. The advocates operate in social media on a daily basis, and the advocacy is carried out in the most commonly used social media arenas such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Additionally, employee advocacy was found to be associated with symmetrical two-way communication and positive employee organization-relationship. Lastly, the research unveiled that employee advocacy in social media is driven more by utilitarian than hedonistic drivers.