Annotated Bibliography on Using Social Media in the Workplace for Communication

This annotated bibliography provides ten reliable sources on the implementation of digital communication strategy in an organization, specifically on using social media in the workplace for communication. The sources cover various aspects such as motivation, governance, effectiveness, impact on employee engagement, crisis communication, and more.

04 October 2018
Business Communication
Annotated Bibliography

Introduction
The work is aimed at searching ten reliable sources that will be useful in the completion of
the proposal and the Assessment 2a and 2b. The sources would be in relation to the topic that
is implementation of digital communication strategy in an organisation. The topic chosen for
the evaluation is “Using the social media in the workplace to communicate.”

Source 1
Leftheriotis, I., & Giannakos, M. N. (2014). Using social media for work: Losing your time
or improving your work?. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, 134-142. Retrieved
from: https://users.ionio.gr/~mgiannak/CHB2013.pdf
The authors made use of the Hedonic and the Utilitarian values approach to discover
the various motivational factors of the employees for using the social media for their work.
On lines of the same, the authors are able to develop the theory that social media use for work
is positively as well as significantly related to the various values offered to employees,
namely the utilitarian and the hedonic value. The authors of this article have evaluated the
responses of about 1799 employees in the insurance sector to study whether the employees
belonging to the said industry make use of the social media in the organisation for
communication and other purposes. The National Institute of Insurance Studies (IIS) had
conducted the research. However, the article has limitations on the point that the research was
conducted only in one country, i.e. Greece while different countries have different patterns of
use of social media. Thus, the source accords that the use of social media has enhanced the
work performances among individuals.
Source 2
Vaast, E., & Kaganer, E. (2013). Social media affordances and governance in the workplace:
An examination of organizational policies. Journal of computer-mediated
communication, 19(1), 78-101.
The article accords that with the use of social media, employees can deploy resources
in an efficient manner, implement and test the new ideas quickly, thereby making the
organisation more responsive to the demands of the customers. In addition, the article states
that the governance principles are essential to guide the use of the social media at workplace.

The article made use of the affordance approach that is the use of the same resources by the
different individuals yield different results. Thus, the article concluded that substantial
features of the social media do not vary across the environments, the perception of the
members lead to the varied results. Thus, the article logically researched on the four
affordances of social media, and stated that policy documents are essential to govern social
media use.
Source 3:
Baruach, T.D. (2012). Effectiveness of social media as a tool of communication and its
potential for technology enabled connections. International Journal of Scientific and
Research Publication. 2(5).
The article used the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the role and importance of
social media as tool of effective communication at workplace. The methods adopted were the
survey method and the observation method. The article states that email has led to a profound
effect on the organisational communications. The article presented the information in the
form of graphs and charts which makes it easy to analyse. However, the article also presents
some of the concerns that must be managed for yielding of efficient results. Some of these
issues are privacy intrusions, impersonal nature of the social media sites and reduction in
work productivity. The article concludes that collaboration has become easy with the use of
social media with the help of functions like arranging meetings, spreading information, and
gauging the opinion in real time across the world.
Source 4:
Haddud, A., Dugger, J.C., & Gill, Preet. (2016). Exploring the impact of Internal Social
Media Usage on Employee Engagement. Journal of Social Media for Organizations,
3(1).

The article also analyses the role of social media in the employee engagement,
innovation, collaboration, and retention. A significant highlighted in the journal is that each
of the Fortune 500 companies have adopted more than one social media platform to interact
internally and externally. The paper comprehensively analysed the relationship between
social media engagement and employees. The analysis was conducted within a multinational
organisation and the area was the North American operations of the said entity. Data was
collected of 1694 employees and the study showed that the outcomes of social media use
varies in terms of the business divisions and career bands. The results demonstrated that there
is a direct relationship between the usage of internal social media, and the levels of employee
engagement. The responses were self-reported. In addition, it showed that the internal social
media usage also enhances the competencies of entrepreneurship, and receptiveness for the
changes in the organisations.
Source 5:
Leonardi, P. M. (2017). The social media revolution: Sharing and learning in the age of leaky
knowledge. Information and Organization, 27(1), 47-59.
The article makes a significant point that the messages directed at a particular person
in an organisation can be seen or heard by others in the organisation as well. This enables the
leakage of knowledge to wider and often unknown audiences. The same can be enabled in an
organisation in the form of formation of a repository of such knowledge to be used by others.
Thus, this new method of knowledge sharing through the social media use leads the burden to
get shifted from the person who has the knowledge to the person who needs the knowledge.
The person who needs it can find it and utilise it in the best way possible. This paper too
involved a study by the use of data collection at a large financial services firm, and concluded
that while the employees do not use the traditional methods of communicating effectively

that is documentation, retrieval and such; social media will usher in an era of leaky
knowledge. The article sheds light on benefits and the points of motivation for the employees
to use such method, to improve communication.
Source 6:
Graham, M. W., Avery, E. J., & Park, S. (2015). The role of social media in local government
crisis communications. Public Relations Review, 41(3), 386-394.
The paper describes the result of the survey done on the basis of the data collected
from approximately 300 local government officials belonging to the United States and
working in the municipalities, for the role of social media during the crisis communication.
The paper resulted into the findings that the communication in government work places
played a fundamental role during natural disasters, transportation, social, political, and other
economic crises. Thus, communication through social media has further aided in crisis
planning and management of overall operations. Thus, article is effective in a way as it gives
a different perspective by researching on the government organisations.
Source 7:
Szabo, L., Romanova, A., Bolek, V., & Zelina, M. (2017). Intensity of ICT use by managers
of agricultural enterprises. Agricultural Economics/Zemedelska Ekonomika, 63(11).
The article accords that the managers of the agriculture enterprise must integrate the
use of information and communication technology and social media tools in their workplace
in the same way other organisations does. This is because of the fact that high quality and
readily accessible information is the prime need for the enterprises of the twenty first century.
The research was conduct with the help of survey of the managers of companies in the region

of Slovak republic. The work makes use of the logic based calculations and analysis to assert
that there was a positive impact on the productivity of the managers through the use of
information technologies communication strategies and the social media.
Source 8 :
Stamati, T., Papadopoulos, T., & Anagnostopoulos, D. (2015). Social media for openness and
accountability in the public sector: Cases in the Greek context. Government
Information Quarterly, 32(1), 12-29.
The article sheds light on the use of government social media in order to foster
openness and accountability in the operations. The work involves the conduct of the study in
Greek region using the interviews with the regulators, policy formulators and the top level
managers. The analysis of the supporting literature helped to establish the fact that social
media use enhances the citizen participation, facilitate transparency, reduces corruption and
aids in policy formulations and effective decision making. The work involves extensive
research of the literature and makes use of the five initiatives of openness in the Greek
context. Thus, an effective data is presented in tabular and literary form.
Source 9 :
Siamagka, N. T., Christodoulides, G., Michaelidou, N., & Valvi, A. (2015). Determinants of
social media adoption by B2B organizations. Industrial Marketing Management, 51,
89-99.
The study is specifically oriented towards the use and the benefits of social media in
the case of B2B organisations for the marketing management, i.e. the external
communications. Academic research is conducted on social media marketing and

communication in contexts of B2Borganisations. The article’s research is narrow in terms
that it mainly focuses on the external communications with the stakeholders. However, the
research is also broad in terms that studies were conducted in about 5000 organisations in
UK, with the help of the emails. The study in addition focussed on the drivers of the adoption
of the social media use in the organisations. The findings were presented with the aid of
tables and thus article can be regarded as a good read to understand B2B perspectives on
social media usage.
Source 10 :
El Ouirdi, A., El Ouirdi, M., Segers, J., & Henderickx, E. (2015). Employees' use of social
media technologies: a methodological and thematic review. Behaviour & Information
Technology, 34(5), 454-464.
The paper reviews about 66 articles covering the various aspects of the social media
usage by the employees. These aspects are legal and policies, knowledge management,
human resource management, and learning through communication. In the sharing and
learning aspect, the article states that social media usage increases peer support, enhances
horizontal and vertical communication channels, and are a cost and time effective strategies.
The work categorises its findings in the above mentioned aspects, and concludes that the field
of social media is ever changing ad developing and hence proper guidelines are essential to
be laid down to gain benefits.