MGT502 Business Communication Module: Social Media in the Workplace

This assignment solution addresses the impact of social media on modern business organizations. The analysis highlights the significant role of social media in internal and external communications, emphasizing benefits like time and cost savings, enhanced collaboration, and increased employee engagement. The solution acknowledges potential risks such as data breaches and privacy concerns, stressing the importance of implementing effective policies to govern social media usage. The assignment is supported by references to academic sources, demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the topic. The arguments presented underscore the need for a balanced approach, recognizing the benefits while mitigating the risks associated with social media in a business context. The solution examines the affordances of social media, including visibility, editability, persistence, and association, within the context of organizational communication, and considers the impact of social media on organizational performance. The document further examines the importance of critical evaluation of academic research to form a supported argument.

ARGUMENT 1
It is a wide known fact that modern business organisations are highly dependent on
technology and innovations. Communications being one of the chief functions of an
enterprise is deeply affected by the technology as well, in the form of use of social media
communications.
As accorded by Treem & Leonardi, (2013), the communications channels of the
modern globalised entities are highly driven by social media use for both external and
internal communications. Some of the benefits as highlighted by Baruah, (2012) by the social
media involvements are the saving in time, cost and communication can be conducted
irrespective of the distance, thereby leading to enhanced collaboration. In addition, as pointed
out by Haddud, Dugger & Gill, (2016), it leads to various value additions to employees in the
form of increased motivation, retention of the employees and engagement of employees.
Additionally, in the case of the public entities, social media use for communication can be
stated to be a means of promotion of accountability and transparency.
In addition, there is a possibility of leakage of information in the form of data breach
and privacy intrusions in the communication channels as stated by Leonardi, Huysman &
Steinfield (2013). Thus, it is essential to formulate an effective set of policies to govern the
extent of usage of the technology for the various organisational functions, as accorded by
Parveen, Jaafar & Ainin (2015).
Thus, as per the argument presented it can be stated that nevertheless, social media
use has a number of benefits both in internal and external organisational functions, a
framework to control the user is equally necessary to be implemented to achieve the desired
objectives from stated use.

ARGUMENT 2
References
Baruah, 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).
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).
Leonardi, P. M., Huysman, M., & Steinfield, C. (2013). Enterprise social media: Definition,
history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(1), 1-19.
Parveen, F., Jaafar, N. I., & Ainin, S. (2015). Social media usage and organizational
performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers. Telematics and
Informatics, 32(1), 67-78.
Treem, J. & Leonardi, P. (2013). Social Media Use in Organizations: Exploring the
Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association. Annals Of The
International Communication Association, 36(1), 143-189. doi:
10.1080/23808985.2013.11679130