Social media affordances in entry‐level employees’ socialization: employee agency in the management of their professional impressions and vulnerability during early stages of socialization

Abstract

This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted with social media during three stages of organizational socialization. They navigated between four different media affordances (persistence, editability, visibility, and association) while experiencing them as both enabling and constraining in different socialization stages. Qualitative interview data analysis revealed during anticipatory socialization, job applicants realized visibility and persistence in relation to institutional and individualized socialization. During encounter, new employees managed personal and professional life boundaries carefully against the association and visibility affordances. Although some participants used both public and enterprise social media for obtaining job‐related information and understanding coworkers and company culture, during metamorphosis, most interviewees adopted passive information seeking strategies and experienced a paradoxical tension between the enabling and constraining affordances of social media. Findings are discussed with regards to employees’ exertion of agency in managing their professional impressions and coping with high levels of uncertainty and vulnerability during early stages of socialization.

Building better employer brands through employee social media competence and online social capital

“…Prior research highlights the importance of social media for employees and ultimately for the employer brand, especially as employees increasingly socialise with one another on public social media (Huang & Liu, 2017; Lee et al, 2019; Smith & Gallicano, 2015). This, coupled with the growth of casual working and the more recent trend of remote working due to the COVID‐19 crisis, point to the significance of understanding organisational socialisation processes on social media platforms (Connaughton & Lewis, 2020; Schmidt et al, 2016).…”

“…It is important to consider that employees use social media to develop networks with others, including especially their co‐workers, which culminates in the formation of online social capital (Huang & Liu, 2017; Lee et al, 2019; Park et al, 2015). Previous work in employer branding and internal marketing have somewhat overlooked this aspect, and there is subsequently a dearth of research that we aim to address.…”

Consumer resource integration and service innovation in social commerce: the role of social media influencers

“…Table 2 shows the dominant perspectives of SMT affordance research. As is evident, much of the focus has been on studying the affordances associated with intra-firm interactions, i.e., to facilitate knowledge sharing and integration within the firm boundaries (Lee et al, 2019;Song et al, 2019;Treem & Leonardi, 2013). A second set of studies have focused on SMT affordances associated with knowledge creation and sharing in firm-led interactions or engagement with consumers (e.g.…”

“…While prior studies have examined SMT affordances associated with intrafirm interactions, firm-led interactions with consumers, as well as community interactions in non-commercial settings (e.g. Lee et al, 2019;Cabiddu et al, 2014;Raja-Yusof et al, 2016), there has been limited focus on SMT affordances that assume salience in the context of consumer-led resource integration for service innovation.…”

The Structuration of Identification on Organizational Members’ Social Media

“…The challenge of identity management is further complicated when considering the convergence of relational contexts within social media (Lee, Kramer, & Guo, 2019). Geographic, communicative, and self-presentational boundaries affect professional and personal selfpresentation (Dumas & Sanchez-Burks, 2015).…”