Will you be my friend? Social networking in the workplace

Abstract

Purpose -This paper aims to provide an overview of the perceptions of librarians regarding the use of social networking in their professional lives. Design/methodology/approach -A survey was administered to a random sample of librarians at academic institutions. Findings -Adoption rates for social networking were high, with 85 percent of the 765 respondents reporting an account in at least one social networking account. Responses reveal opinions about privacy, boundaries, and professional relationships within social networking, suggesting that it does influence relationships within the profession.Research limitations/implications -The paper presents a snapshot of users' perceptions. Since social media changes rapidly, it is likely that perceptions will also likely change over time. Practical implications -The paper presents a snapshot of the perceptions of librarians towards social media. This article could be useful to librarians who currently use or are considering creating a social media account. Originality/value -This paper looks at social media and how it changes interactions between co-workers, which have been little studied in the past. This can be valuable to organizations who create policy and also to employees, who need to consider privacy issues as they become involved in social media.

How employees use Twitter to talk about work: A typology of work-related tweets

“…Our content analysis of employees' tweets paints a picture that is consistent with the archetypical social media behaviors e i.e., knowledge sharing and socialization e identified in earlier research (Back & Koch, 2011;Del Bosque, 2013;Ollier-Malaterre et al, 2013;Peluchette et al, 2013;Treem & Leonardi, 2012). Similar to the three levels of identification derived from social identity theory (Bartels et al, 2007;Hekman et al, 2009), employees share profession, organization and work-related information strategically (Gibbs et al, 2013;Majchrzak et al, 2013) with their imagined audience (Litt, 2012;Marwick & Boyd, 2010) e i.e., professional contacts e thus enhancing horizontal communication among organization members (Dimicco et al, 2008).…”

“…Social media afford employees the ability to express identities (Del Bosque, 2013;Ollier-Malaterre et al, 2013), share knowledge about their work or organization (Dreher, 2014) and engage in relationships with other professionals (Peluchette, Karl, & Fertig, 2013). Thus, workplace communication on Twitter involves knowledge sharing about the profession, organization and work behaviors, as these are important cues for employees' professional identities (e.g., Leftheriotis & Giannakos, 2014;Miles & Mangold, 2014;Ollier-Malaterre et al, 2013;Van Zoonen et al, 2014).…”

“…Social media use in organizations is evolving at an unprecedented pace (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). The large number of workbased friendships (Del Bosque, 2013;Dutton & Ragins, 2007;Ollier-Malaterre, Rothbard, & Berg, 2013) and the notion that work is a pivotal life domain (Dutton, Roberts, & Bednar, 2010) results in the use of personal social media technologies, including Twitter, for work-related purposes (Johnston, 2014). Hence, a significant amount of publicly available tweets is likely to be work or organization related (Ollier-Malaterre et al, 2013;Van Zoonen, van der Meer, & Verhoeven, 2014).…”

Online privacy in job recruitment processes? Boundary work among cybervetting recruiters

“…Therefore, the safest option for Internet users is to be as cautious as possible in sharing information (cf. Solove, ; Bosque, ). For some of the recruiters in our study, we can see that this is already the case.…”

“…The self‐regulation that this profile management involves is captured in previous research that explores how SNS users manage their own boundaries on social media, so‐called online boundary management. Although there are reports that people have consistent online and offline identities that are not affected by the forum (Bullingham and Vasconcelos, ), several studies indicate that SNS users felt a need to ‘self‐censor’, not to post certain content, or to use separate accounts for personal and work‐related use (Trottier, ; Bosque, : 437; Fieseler et al ., ; Vitak et al ., ; Rosengren and Ottosson, ; Berkelaar, ; Hurrell et al ., ). Social media thus leads to changed boundaries between work and non‐work, as well as to new forms of boundary work conducted in both the public and private realms.…”