Organizational Antecedents of Social Media Adoption in Public Administration

Abstract

Research increasingly explores the opportunities social media provide to public sector organizations. Yet, only few empirical studies have addressed the organizational antecedents of social media adoption in this particular context. Based on innovation diffusion literature, we propose a number of organizational antecedents of social media adoption in public administration. At the same time, we find that – due to high levels of formalization and centralization – formal organizational characteristics may exhibit little variability in the public administration context. We therefore suggest that the explanatory power of the proposed model could be increased by considering an intermediate construct capturing the organization’s predisposition to explore new media. From current innovation literature, we derive Entrepreneurial Orientation as a potential mediator of social media adoption. Based on a survey among 2’092 employees of a German state-level administration, we test both an unmediated and a partially mediated model of organizational antecedents of social media adoption. We find that Leadership support, Employee autonomy, Bureaucratization, and Social Influence affect social media adoption. Taking the mediating effect of Entrepreneurial Orientation into consideration increases the explanatory power of the proposed model.