Employee engagement in generating ideas on internal social media

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore employees’ perceptions of enablers and barriers to engage in multi-vocal dialogues about ideas (ideation) on internal social media (ISM) within a context of corporate communication. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory study is based on four data sets: online observations of employee ideation on ISM from 2011 to 2018, semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with two managers (2015–2016), archival material, and semi-structured interviews with 14 employees (2017–2018) in a large, knowledge-intensive Danish organization. Findings The study identified various enablers and barriers to engagement related to psychological engagement conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability. Managers’ communication role or importance of innovation, as well as tensions, e.g. obligation vs option to ideate or employee influence vs no influence, were identified as enabling or constraining employee engagement in ideation on ISM. Research limitations/implications Broadening interviews to include employees who decided not to participate in online ideation would increase insights and nuance this study’s results. Practical implications Managers need to be aware of the psychological engagement conditions and balance identified enablers, barriers and tensions by acknowledging communication reciprocity on ISM. Not only employees, but also managers, are dialogue partners in employee ideation on ISM. Originality/value The study is one of the first to explore enablers of and barriers to psychological engagement conditions in a context central to corporate communication, namely internal innovation communication on ISM, and to study ideation from a coworker perspective.

Digital internal communication: An interplay of socio‐technical elements

“…High‐quality communication journals that publish seminal works related to DIC are the Public Relations Review (e.g., Men et al., 2020; Sievert & Scholz, 2017; Verčič et al., 2012), Corporate Communications: An International Journal (e.g., Madsen, 2018; Welch & Jackson, 2007), the International Journal of Strategic Communication (e.g., Ewing et al., 2019; Heide et al., 2018), and the Journal of Communication Management (e.g., Madsen, 2016; Madsen & Johansen, 2019). In the last decade, internal social media, already discussed in 2012 (Ruck & Welch, 2012), became a key topic of DIC and was published in a range of journals in the fields of communication, human resource management (e.g., Gode et al., 2019; Sharma & Bhatnagar, 2016), and information systems (e.g., Chanias et al., 2019; Vial, 2019). Notably, current literature on internal social media (e.g., El Ouirdi et al., 2015; Gode, 2019; Madsen, 2020; Men et al., 2020) is founded on previous influential works in the field of IC on employee voice and engagement (e.g., Ruck, 2016; Ruck et al., 2017), and seminal works discussing the foundations of IC (Welch & Jackson, 2007; Verčič, 2012).…”

Internal Communication in Contemporary Organizations

“…Internal communication therefore plays a central role in creative environments, because innovation requires informed and motivated individuals. Organizational members must be willing to contribute with time and effort to the development of innovative ideas (Linke & Zerfass, 2011;Gode et al, 2020).…”

La comunicación interna como área estratégica para la innovación a través de la gestión del cambio y la felicidad organizacional

“…La reciprocidad en la comunicación con los directivos y la transmisión de la importancia de la innovación a través de los medios internos son elementos positivos, mientras que las tensiones derivadas de la obligación frente a la opción de innovar o la no influencia de los empleados en los procesos limitan el compromiso (Gode et al, 2019).…”

“…La literatura indica que tiene una importante influencia en la identificación, fidelización, creatividad y productividad (El-Sholkamy & Fischbach, 2019;Mainardes et al, 2019;Men & Yue, 2019;Raj, 140 140 La comunicación interna como área estratégica para la innovación a través de la gestión del cambio y la felicidad organizacional 2020; Rogala & Bialowas, 2016). También resulta indispensable debido a su papel como vehículo para la transmisión de conocimiento (Leendert & Dolfsma, 2015), así como en la legitimación y efectividad del liderazgo (Gode et al, 2019;Men, 2015). Por otra parte, es un elemento que incide de forma directa en el bienestar y felicidad de las plantillas (Castro-Martínez & Díaz-Morilla, 2020;Hosie & Sevastos, 2009), que a su vez repercuten a través de la creatividad, la implicación y el rendimiento (Kamel et al, 2017) en la capacidad de innovación de una organización (Usai et al, 2020;Weman & Kantanen, 2018).…”