Impact of Social Media: Management in Contemporary Business Scenarios

This essay examines the profound impact of social media on contemporary business management, highlighting both the advantages and disadvantages it presents. It delves into how social media affects key management functions such as organizing, performance management, leadership, and human resources, particularly recruitment and selection. The analysis reveals that while social media offers benefits like improved employee engagement, market trend analysis, and access to a wider talent pool, it also poses challenges such as potential negative publicity, increased external influence on leadership, and the risk of misinformation in recruitment. The essay concludes that social media is an unavoidable force in modern business, necessitating a strategic approach to leverage its positive aspects while mitigating its negative consequences to optimize management effectiveness.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
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Introduction
Social media is one of the major concepts being evolved in the recent time in the business
scenario. Social media is having huge number of active users and in the current time, the major
portion of the global population is having the access to the social media. Thus, this impact of the
social media cannot be avoided by the contemporary business organizations. In relation to this,
managerial roles are now being influenced by the use of the information technologies such as
social media (Mujtaba & McFarlane, 2005). The approach of the managerial roles also got
drastically changed from what it was a decade ago and now.
This essay will discuss about the areas of management mostly affected by social media
along with their positive and negative impacts. This essay will help to determine the extent to
which management in the contemporary business organizations are being affected by the
evolution of the social media.
Impact of social media on performance management
Organizing is one of the major management functions, which is affected by the use of
social media. This is due to the reason that social media in the current time is the most effective
information technology for the contemporary business organizations. According to Poba-Nzaou,
Lemieux, Beaupre and Uwizeyemungu (2016), initiation of the social media is having major
impacts on the performance management of the business organizations. The approach of the
performance management is quite different for the earlier businesses and the contemporary
businesses. The authors have also stated that the major benefit that is being gained by the
contemporary managers is determining the requirements of the employees from their usage of
social media. This can be possible due to the reason that social media reflects the expectations
and requirement of the employees, which will further help the organizations to design the
approach of the performance management. On the other hand, performance management
strategies in the earlier times were being designed without much determination of the
requirements and expectations of the employees.
However, on the other hand, the authors have also stated social media is also posing
challenges for the managers in the performance management. According to them, one of the
major negative impacts of social media is the bad mouthing of the employees. In the earlier time,

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employees were having less options of publicizing their opinions in case of unfavorable
performance management. However, in the recent time, evolution of the social media is
providing more options for the employees to share their negative feedback in public. This will
have negative impact on the goodwill of the organizations.
Effect of social networking on leadership
Leadership or leading the organization is another aspect of management that is affected
by the social networking. This is due to the reason that in the current business scenario,
leadership approach is more influenced by external factors than it was earlier. According to
Sweetser and Kelleher (2011), emergence of the social media is increasing the external
influencing factors for the leaders. One of the major benefits that can be gained from the use of
the social media in leading the organization is the effective determination of the market trend and
other stakeholders. Initiation of the social media is reducing the gap between the leaders and the
audiences and thus the communication is much more effective than before. It is becomes more
easy to determine the external factors and lead the organization accordingly. However, the
authors have also stated some challenges also that can be faced by the leadership from the
initiation of the social working.
One of the major challenges will be the increase in the bargaining power of the external
factors in leading the organization. In the current time, initiation of the social networking
increased the vulnerability of the leaders in front of the external factors. It becomes important for
the contemporary managers to be informative, communicative and consultative due the reason
that all of their characteristics will get judged by the external factors through the social media.
Therefore, emergence of the social networking is increasing the determining factors for the
leadership roles in the organization. Leadership roles will get more deviated with the presence of
more number of external factors. This will in turn lead to the emergence of more complexities in
the decision making process for the leaders and in the management of the entire business.
Human aspect of management
Human aspect is one of the major areas for consideration for the contemporary business
management. The current scenario is much more dependent on the skill sets of human resources
in order to gain competitive advantages. According to Girard, Fallery and Rodhain (2014),

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recruitment and selection is one of the major impacted areas from the emergence of the social
networking. In the current time, recruiters are tapping the social networking such as LinkedIn.
This is enabling them to reach out to huge number of potential talents in shirt time. Thus, they
are having more options to select the eligible candidates. It is also helping the recruiters to gauge
the eligibility of the candidates from the trend of their usage of social media. Therefore,
emergence of the social networking has changed the entre scenario of recruitment and selection.
However, the authors have also stated that there are few negative points that can get
emerged from the initiation of the social networking in the recruitment and selection process.
One of the major challenges for recruiters is the false information provided in the social
networking sites. There are various instances where the information given by the potential
candidates in the social networking sites are not true. Thus, it is a challenge for the recruiters in
the current time to determine the authenticity of the information of the candidates. More risks are
associated in the recruitment and selection process (Khatri et al. 2015). With the initiation of the
social media, organizations are having the risk of negative branding from the potential candidates
due to the issues in the process of recruitment and selection.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that emergence of social media is having extensive impact on
the existing management scenario. However, the impacts are both positive as well as negative for
the businesses. This essay discussed about different positive and negative impacts of social
media in the business management and the extent to which the existing management approach
got changed due to this. It can be concluded that social media is an inevitable subject in the
current time and it cannot be avoided. Therefore, the management mechanism should be
designed in such a way that it will be able to cut off the negative impacts and leverage the
positive impacts.

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Reference
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Khatri, C., Chapman, S.J., Glasbey, J., Kelly, M., Nepogodiev, D., Bhangu, A., Fitzgerald, J.E.
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Mujtaba, B. and McFarlane, A.D., 2005. Traditional and Virtual Performance Management
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Poba-Nzaou, P., Lemieux, N., Beaupré, D., & Uwizeyemungu, S. (2016). Critical challenges
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