Social Media in the Workplace: A Systematic Literature Review, 2008-2012

1. Social Media in the Workplace: A Systematic Literature Review, 2008-2012 Asma EL OUIRDI a, Mariam EL OUIRDI a, Jesse SEGERSab & Erik HENDERICKX a aAntwerp University, Belgium; b Antwerp Management School, Belgium ContactAsma.ElOuirdi@student.ua.ac.befor a copy of the paper. INTRODUCTION • BACKGROUND • Social media have become ubiquitous in daily life, including the workplace. • Research on social media-related topics has been on the rise since 2007. • Little work has been done to review this body of research. • RESEARCH QUESTIONS: • What is the topical and methodological status of research on social media in the workplace? • What are possible future research venues on social media usage in the workplace? METHODOLOGY Flow chart of the systematic review process for literature on social media in the workplace • Detailed Process of the Systematic Review • Specified the review scope in terms of: a) form: certified knowledge, i.e. only academic journal articles; b) content: corporate usage of social media for human resources-related purposes. • Chose relevant keywords: ‘social media’, ‘Web 2.0’, ‘social networking sites’, ‘workplace’, ‘employee’, and ‘employer’. • Searched for articles in five databases: Emerald, ScienceDirect, Academic search elite, Business Source Premier, and Web of Knowledge. • Coded all 307 articles and extracted relevant information about them, and then eliminatedduplicates. • Conducted a first screening by two of the authors based on the abstracts of 192 articles, with a Cohen’s Kappa score of 0.849. Irrelevant articles were excluded. • Conducted a second in-depth screening, followed by a joint assessment by two of the authors, and the exclusion of more irrelevant material. • Final inclusion of 57 articles in the review. FINDINGS Number of Articles by Theme • Examples of Organizational Practices Using Social Media • Social bookmarking to facilitate the movement of ideas in organizations (Gray, Parise, & Iyer, 2011); • Corporate wikis to better exploit corporate knowledge (Hasan & Pfaff, 2012; Lykourentzou, Papadaki, Vergados, Polemi, & Loumos, 2010); • Facebook to increase the exposure of a brand as a recruiter (Freer, 2012); • Web 2.0 technologies to strengthen employee engagement (Rai, 2012; Xarchos & Charland, 2008); • Various social media tools to facilitate workplace learning (Leino, Tanhua-Piiroinen, & Sommers-Piiroinen, 2012; Zhao & Kemp, 2012); • Other social media tools to tap into employees’ innovation (Dahl, Lawrence, & Pierce, 2011). • Results • Six major research themes were identified: ‘human resources management’ (HRM), ‘learning’, ‘laws and legislation’, ‘knowledge management’ (KM), ‘communication’, and ‘miscellaneous’. • Top used methodology is qualitative methods, followed by reflective essays and conceptual papers. • Social media and Web 2.0 tools are used in several organizational functions. DISCUSSION REFERENCES • Brown, V. R., & Vaughn, E. D. (2011). The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of Social Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions. Journal of Business and Psychology, 26(2), 219–225. • Dahl, A., Lawrence, J., & Pierce, J. (2011). Building an innovation community. Research Technology Management, 2011(5), 19–27. • Fink, A. (2009). Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper (p. 272). SAGE Publications. • Freer, T. (2012). Social media gaming – a recipe for employer brand success. Strategic HR Review, 11(1), 13–17. • Gray, P. H., Parise, S., & Iyer, B. (2011). Innovation Impacts of Using Social Bokmarking Systems. MIS Quarterly, 35(3), 629–643. • Hasan, H., & Pfaff, C. C. (2012). An activity-theory analysis of corporate wikis. Information Technology & People, 25(4), 423–437. • Leino, J., Tanhua-Piiroinen, E., & Sommers-Piiroinen, J. (2012). Adding Social Media to e-Learning in the Workplace: Instilling Interactive Learning Culture. International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning (iJAC), 5(3), 18–25. • Lykourentzou, I., Papadaki, K., Vergados, D. J., Polemi, D., & Loumos, V. (2010). CorpWiki: A self-regulating wiki to promote corporate collective intelligence through expert peer matching. Information Sciences, 180(1), 18–38. • Rai, S. (2012). Engaging Young Employees (Gen Y) in a Social Media Dominated World – Review and Retrospection. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 37, 257–266. • Xarchos, C., & Charland, M. B. (2008). Innovapost uses Web 2.0 tools to engage its employees. Strategic HR Review, 7(3), 13–18. • Zhao, F., & Kemp, L. J. (2012). Integrating Web 2.0-based informal learning with workplace training. Educational Media International, 49(3), 231–245. • LIMITATIONS • Used keywords limited the scope of the review. Relevant literature might have been overlooked due to the omission of other keywords • Timeframe covers only references that were indexed in the selected databases, and not all articles published, up to December 2012. • FURTHER RESEARCH • Employ quantitative research methods. • Examine further how employers and job applicants can harness social networking sites to their advantage (Brown and Vaughn, 2011) • Focus on a single discipline at a time in future reviews, to benefit from the extant convergence in theories and methodologies in each stream of research, and employ content analysis for deeper understanding of the field.