Business Communication: Analyzing Social Media's Workplace Impact

This report delves into the multifaceted impact of social media on business communication, drawing from various research articles. It explores how social media enhances employee communication, knowledge sharing, and team collaboration, fostering a more connected and informed workplace. The report examines the benefits of social media platforms in fostering team spirit, facilitating internal communication, and enabling leaders to communicate effectively with employees. It also addresses potential challenges, such as distractions, addiction, and the need for careful management to prevent misuse of information. The analysis covers the role of social media in business-to-business relationships, the impact on online learning, and how it shapes communication visibility and innovation. The report highlights that while social media offers significant advantages, organizations must navigate potential drawbacks and adapt their strategies to optimize its use for improved communication and overall work performance.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Business Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the Organization:
Author’s Note:

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Cao, X., Guo, X., Vogel, D., & Zhang, X. (2016). Exploring the influence of social media on
employee work performance. Internet Research, 26(2), 529-545.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IntR-11-2014-0299
The journal mainly talks about the impact of social media on the employee
communication in any work field. Communication is one of the most important aspect of any and
every workplace and social media plays a very major role in promoting the workplace
communication. Social media has now become a very important platform for gaining knowledge
on various aspects (Cao et al., 2016). It can help in promoting the social capital of the employees
and can help in increasing and enriching the shared trust and vision of the employees. This in
turn will enhance the positivity among the employees. Knowledge sharing will surely influence
the work performance of the employees. Enhancing social relations of the employees is also very
important in any and every business organization. There can be employees who are hesitant in
speaking with one another. Transparency and opening up with each other is also very much
essential in the workplaces. Hence, it is the duty of the managers to encourage and engage the
employees in various special media interactions like writing articles for the company website or
engage in many business oriented blog writings which will give them a good platform.
Cardon, P. W., & Marshall, B. (2015). The hype and reality of social media use for work
collaboration and team communication. International Journal of Business
Communication, 52(3), 273-293.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2329488414525446
This article mainly talks about the usefulness of using the social networking platforms in
order to foster the team spirit and the team communication among employees. Team spirit is an

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extremely essential aspect in all the workplaces. There are often many employees who are bit
hesitant in communicating with each other regarding their personal and the professional
problems as well (Cardon & Marshall 2015). Social media platforms can be very helpful for
such employees as they will be able to communicate their issues to each other through the social
media platforms. The traditional means of communication like telephones or the face to face
communications are usually considered to be more effective in case of workplace
communication but in the present day scenario the internet based social media platforms are
more effective in case of the business oriented communication. For instance, social media
platforms like chat, blogs, twitter or any other business whatsapp group chats or any employee
forum of the company.
Jussila, J. J., Kärkkäinen, H., & Aramo-Immonen, H. (2014). Social media utilization in
business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in
Human Behavior, 30, 606-613.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.047
This article mainly talks about the role of social media in the business to business
organizations. However there are many gaps that exist between the social media platforms and
the B2B oriented organizations. The major focus is usually given on the usage of social media I
the business to customer organizations (Jussila, Kärkkäinen & Aramo-Immonen 2014).
However, efforts are to be made so that social media usages can be increased in the field of
business to business relationship as well. Mostly all the uses of the social media based
communications were restricted to the public or the customer oriented spheres only. This was
because of the fact that most of the business organizations using the social media platforms for

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communication believed that this kind of communication must be carried only between the
company and the customers. However, more efforts are to be made to use these social media
platforms to converse between one company and another, which will help in getting more
innovative ideas and will make the business much more innovative.
Friedman, L. W., & Friedman, H. H. (2013). Using social media technologies to enhance
online learning. Journal of Educators Online, 10(1), n1.
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1004891.pdf
This article talks about the uses of the social media platform that help the learners who
undertake several distance education classes (Friedman & Friedman 2013). In the present day
scenario, there are many youngsters and college students who work as freelancers in many
business organizations and also undertake several business oriented learning. These social media
platforms like that of face book, twitter, Gmail and many other such social media platforms help
such students and the freelancers in exposing themselves to the rapidly changing scenario of the
world. These social networking sites help the young working professionals to exchange their
ideas and their opinions with any business house or any business experts from any corner of the
world. This enables them to enrich their ideas a great deal.
Lee, C. E. C. (2015). THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN LEADERSHIP
COMMUNICATION: BENEFITS, CHALLENGES AND
LEADERS'PERSPECTIVES. International Journal of Arts & Sciences, 8(1), 513.
https://search.proquest.com/openview/3a4771d1451d676835f104deeca4b398/1?pq-
origsite=gscholar&cbl=626342

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This article mainly talks about the usefulness of social media in the internal communication of
different work places. The in internal communication or the communication between employees
was very much neglected in the past (Lee, 2015). The communication which was carried on was
mainly done with the customers keeping in mind the business- customer relationship. However
with the advent of the social media platforms there has been a considerable boost to the internal
communication as well. The social media platforms have also given rise to the leadership
communication. The leaders can very easily communicate with all their employees instantly and
on a regular basis through the social media platforms. It is one of the most important duties of a
leader to communicate with all his followers every day. It is through this social media platform
that the leaders or the managers can convey the important business ideas and also collect the
feedbacks from the employees on a regular basis.
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.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321300366X
This article mainly talks about the pros and cons of the social media usage used for
communication in the work place. It is very useful on one hand as it helps in increasing the
knowledge of the employees and also speeds up the rate of knowledge sharing. On the other
hand, there are some employees who can take the undue advantage of this and can escape their
work by getting too much engrossed over the online chats (Leftheriotis & Giannakos 2014).
They can even make use of the social media platforms to disclose the important information of

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the company to its rival groups just in order to fulfill their personal gains. Employees can also
get very much addicted to the usage of the social media and can get distracted during the
important meetings. This can make them miss the important parts of the meeting and will in turn
hamper the total production of the company.
Leonardi, P. M. (2015). Ambient Awareness and Knowledge Acquisition: Using Social
Media to Learn" Who Knows What" and" Who Knows Whom". Mis
Quarterly, 39(4).
http://aisel.aisnet.org/misq/vol39/iss4/3/
This article talks about the usefulness of sharing the information of two parties to the
third party in case of any large financial organization. Social media can be very useful in sharing
the ongoing communication between the customers with some specific partners to the other
members in the organization (Leonardi, 2015). This will make the third parties to stay aware
about the ongoing conversation between the co workers of the organization. As a result of this,
the third parties can interfere at the necessary time and share their feedbacks. This will enable the
workers to increase their level of accuracy and develop the production.
Leonardi, P. M. (2014). Social media, knowledge sharing, and innovation: Toward a theory
of communication visibility. Information systems research, 25(4), 796-816.
http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/isre.2014.0536
This article mainly deals with the establishment of a new kind of social networking
technology that can be used in case of a large financial service. This will be very much helpful in

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for the third parties. This will be very much helpful for them as they can increase their meta
knowledge. The Meta knowledge will enable them to know all the other employees in a better
way and community (Leonardi, 2014). The communication channel that will be shared with the
third parties will enable them to interfere at the necessary intervals and will help them to share
the necessary knowledge that will be beneficial for the overall production of the company. This
will help the workers to enrich their knowledge from the shared ideas of the third parties and
they will be able to incorporate them into their work and will also be able to avoid duplicity.
They can also proactively gather information on a day to day basis.
Treem, J. W., Dailey, S. L., Pierce, C. S., & Leonardi, P. M. (2015). Bringing technological
frames to work: How previous experience with social media shapes the technology's
meaning in an organization. Journal of Communication, 65(2), 396-422.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcom.12149/full
This article mainly talks about the expectations that the employees of any and every
workplace might have regarding the usage of the enterprise social media. Different workers are
of different age. As a result of which their expectations from the usage of the social media also
varies. The workers are quite old may not prefer the usage of social media communications over
the traditional ways. However the workers who are young might have a strong preference over
the usage of the enterprise social media (Treem et al., 2015).
Van Deursen, A. J., Bolle, C. L., Hegner, S. M., & Kommers, P. A. (2015). Modeling
habitual and addictive smartphone behavior: The role of smartphone usage types,

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emotional intelligence, social stress, self-regulation, age, and gender. Computers in human
behavior, 45, 411-420.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214007626
This article talks about the challenges that are often associated with the extensive use of
social Medias platforms in the workplaces. Using the social media platforms like facebook,
twitter, wiki is both useful and harmful for the employees at the workplace (Van Deursen et al.,
2015). This is because of the fact that employees can often get very much addicted to the usage
of smart phones which can make them distracted in the midst of any important ongoing business
process. If social media is used in extensive amounts for employee communication rather than
using the traditional communicating means then it can often harm the employees and the
workplace environments as a whole. The employees can carry on long hours of informal chats
with their friends in the name of information gathering. They may also try to escape work and
carry on watching films over the YouTube during their working hours. This will make them
loose their self regulation and hamper their concentration.

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References
Cao, X., Guo, X., Vogel, D., & Zhang, X. (2016). Exploring the influence of social media on
employee work performance. Internet Research, 26(2), 529-545.
Cardon, P. W., & Marshall, B. (2015). The hype and reality of social media use for work
collaboration and team communication. International Journal of Business
Communication, 52(3), 273-293.
Friedman, L. W., & Friedman, H. H. (2013). Using social media technologies to enhance online
learning. Journal of Educators Online, 10(1), n1.
Jussila, J. J., Kärkkäinen, H., & Aramo-Immonen, H. (2014). Social media utilization in
business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human
Behavior, 30, 606-613.
Lee, C. E. C. (2015). THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION:
BENEFITS, CHALLENGES AND LEADERS'PERSPECTIVES. International Journal
of Arts & Sciences, 8(1), 513.
Leonardi, P. M. (2014). Social media, knowledge sharing, and innovation: Toward a theory of
communication visibility. Information systems research, 25(4), 796-816.
Leonardi, P. M. (2015). Ambient Awareness and Knowledge Acquisition: Using Social Media to
Learn" Who Knows What" and" Who Knows Whom". Mis Quarterly, 39(4).
Treem, J. W., Dailey, S. L., Pierce, C. S., & Leonardi, P. M. (2015). Bringing technological
frames to work: How previous experience with social media shapes the technology's
meaning in an organization. Journal of Communication, 65(2), 396-422.

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Van Deursen, A. J., Bolle, C. L., Hegner, S. M., & Kommers, P. A. (2015). Modeling habitual
and addictive smartphone behavior: The role of smartphone usage types, emotional
intelligence, social stress, self-regulation, age, and gender. Computers in human
behavior, 45, 411-420.