Social Media Capabilities Research Articles

Social Media Manipulation, Autonomy and Capabilities

To understand why social media platforms’ potency as a tool for manipulation is inadequately apprehended through content-neutral, autonomy-focused analyses, this paper starts with an overview of the structural conditions that allowed such platforms to acquire their considerable regulatory power. Among these conditions, two elements stand out: the hidden -rather than non-deliberative- influence as well as its precise and comprehensive scope. While the hidden influence is what sets social media apart from other, non-manipulatory tools of influence, it is the comprehensive scope that exposes the limits of ‘value-neutral’ autonomy-based frameworks. When we are manipulated into acquiring a certain trait, there is normally enough left of us that is free of manipulatory influence to anchor some after-the-fact endorsement or alienation test. As an alternative to ‘value-neutral’ autonomy-based analyses, this paper analyses the harm that stems from such systematic manipulation through a capability account of autonomy. Of all the capabilities that are essential to what von Humboldt would call ‘self-realisation’, the capacity to imagine oneself as a different person is critical. It is also the capability that is most endangered by social media’s drive to optimise our online (and offline) environment to maximise user engagement.

Leveraging social media for knowledge management healthcare capability

PurposeThis study aims to understand how healthcare social media offer nonmedical psycho-social support for pediatric oncology patients and their care community and how social media can be exploited for healthcare knowledge management.Design/methodology/approachSocial media capabilities were identified and categorized based on psycho-social support services for pediatric oncology patients, caregivers and their community of care. Data were collected from 187 service sites representing more than 100 organizations. These broadly defined capabilities in trusted care organizations were analyzed to understand use of social media in providing psycho-social support.FindingsAnalysis revealed resource guides, stories and in-person support at clinics as the most prevalent forms of technology-guided psycho-social support. Privacy, security and information integrity rose as technical challenges for interactive social media platforms. Medical community trust is inconsistent, leading to immature adoption of critical psycho-social support as a knowledge management source. Findings further indicate the not-for-profit support sector provides robust social media capabilities compared to the healthcare sector.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research may extend to maturing healthcare and not-for-profit sector services and to private sector products such as mobile applications and other technologies.Practical implicationsSurvivor and caregiver quality of life depend on psycho-social support communities and services delivered via social media.Social implicationsChild protection social implications require significant attention due to sensitivity of security, privacy concerns and longevity of digital footprints for pediatric patients.Originality/valueResearch demonstrates opportunity for medical provider, healthcare organization, not-for-profit sector, patient and caregiver cooperation using social media. Data indicate healthcare technology systems leveraging social media can extend knowledge management capability beyond organization boundaries.

Social Media Capabilities dalam Adopsi Media Sosial Guna Meningkatkan Kinerja UMKM

Social media is currently being used by both large companies and SMEs. For large companies the use of social media has been used successfully in reaching potential consumers. However, for SMEs, the marketing strategy of using social media is still being questioned. The purpose of this study is to fill the gaps in previous research by examining the driving factors for SMEs in using social media in promoting their products and testing how the performance of SMEs after adopting this technology is good both in financial and non-financial aspects that have not been done much research. The results of this study found that the compatible, cost-effective, interactive variables had a positive effect on the use of social media and subsequently had a positive effect on both financial and non-financial performance. However, the moderating role of social media capabilities cannot strengthen the relationship between use and the performance of SMEs. The results of this study are expected to be the basis for evaluating SMEs so that they can use digital media to support their business. The government must also pay attention to this to actively socialize the use of digital media for MSMEs so that the performance of SMEs can increase.

Social media resources and capabilities as strategic determinants of social media performance

Recent research reveals meaningful uses of digital marketing instruments, though without addressing internal, organizational antecedents of a firm’s social media performance. Drawing on resource-based theory and the concept of dynamic capabilities, this article identifies social media–specific resources and dynamic capabilities that can enhance social media performance. It also offers theoretically supported and validated scales to measure them. The authors empirically investigate their performance effects using different kinds of data pertaining to consumer brands, gathered from manager surveys, brands’ financial statements, Facebook fans, Instagram followers, YouTube subscribers, and brand image measures. The proposed social media resources and capabilities improve social media performance directly and brand perception indirectly. In particular, the impact of the social media strategy and measurement is moderated by firm size. A profile deviation analysis further reveals that the social media capabilities gap between top-performing versus other brands explains significant variance in social media performance. The advantages of developing social media capabilities early on also persist in the long-term, with substantial relevance for managers.

An integrated framework of change management for social CRM implementation

Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a new paradigm in e-business environment that enables businesses to collaboratively manage customer expectations via social technologies. It combines the capabilities of social media with traditional CRM software in order that businesses better engage their customers. Implementation of social CRM systems continues to drive changes in organizations; however, the implementation attempts often lead to failure, partially due to the lack of readiness to change or resistance toward change. This study aims at developing a framework to determine change management requirements for successful implementation of social CRM in the organizations. To this end, a comprehensive literature review is done and semi-structured interviews are conducted to develop the initial framework. Best–Worst Method is applied to calculate the weights of each change requirement. Finally, the stage of change management process to which each of the identified sub-factors is related are determined. The proposed framework contains requirements such as ‘content of change’, ‘context of change’, ‘individual’, and ‘process’; for each, a set of sub-factors is defined. It suggests the change management requirements of social CRM implementation based on the sequential stages of Lewin’s model. The proposed framework is presented as a guideline for successful implementation of social CRM.

Changing Landscapes in Higher Dental Education

Skills and development: The way undergraduate dental students have been taught and their methods of learning have evolved over decades. Education methods and needs: Perhaps the most rapid and exponential changes have been in the last two decades with the introduction and utilisation of digital media platforms and social media capabilities. Academic and clinical aspects of dentistry are divided within the curriculum, but less consideration and logic are exercised when focusing on the methods of delivering education and the students’ own preferences, capabilities and adaptation towards learning. Technology and dental education and what we believe: In higher education, closed questionnaires were provided to both dental students (50) and teachers (10) relating to delivery methods and their beliefs regarding education techniques available. Opinions regarding these methods still differ amongst dental teachers and students, with an affinity from the dental students towards the use of emerging technology available in dentistry. However, the questionnaires revealed both groups preferred education via direct care on patients more than any other method of education. Conclusion: The literature would indicate some progress made within the dental profession relating to the use of digital media, advanced technology and improved dental software, however, this has not yet been transferred to dental higher education, despite an accessible and obvious availability of modern resources and techniques.

How important is alignment of social media use and R&D–Marketing cooperation for innovation success?

Efforts to use social media as a network tool for open innovations have not met expectations, or utilized its potential adequately. Recent research on identifying firms’ social media skill has not addressed the complex underlying mechanisms and calibration of social media capabilities. We explore how, why, and which resources an organization should integrate. Social media in NPD should be accompanied by carefully aligned R&D – marketing cooperation. Alignment results in efficient knowledge integration, but dis-alignment fails to tap enough ideas, or can lack information processing capacity. The alignment and disalignment hypotheses are tested using survey data of a sample of 101 innovative SMEs. In a second, configurational study we extend findings from Study 1 to determine micro level social media capabilities required. Results show that social media can be used for both radical and incremental innovation, but are more useful for service than for product innovation.

Digital marketing for B2B organizations: structured literature review and future research directions

PurposeThis study aims to analyze the available literature on the use of digital marketing in a business-to-business (B2B) context. It identifies gaps in the current research knowledge and proposes a research agenda for scholars and practitioners.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review has been conducted on B2B digital marketing. The various themes have been identified on the basis of the comprehensive analysis of extant literature. Also, semi-structured interviews with B2B marketing experts were also conducted to further refine the emerged digital marketing themes.FindingsAlthough some B2B firms use digital marketing, most are unable to leverage its full benefits because of the dearth of comprehensive research on the subject. This review provides an insight into the emerging themes by developing a collaborative conceptual framework. The review highlights that few areas such as digital marketing communication and sales management have witnessed steady development while decision support systems, critical success factors, electronic marketing orientation (EMO), etc., were lesser explored. Furthermore, it identifies research gaps and highlights the emerging research themes for future researchers.Practical implicationsThe collaborative framework will help organizations to align their digital marketing activities as per the changing market dynamics such as the focus on building social media capability, EMO and value co-creation.Originality/valueResearch on the use of digital marketing by B2B firms is still at the embryonic stage. This study is a pioneering effort to review the use of digital marketing in B2B organizations and identify research priorities for scholars and practitioners.

Social Media as a People Sensing for the City Government in Smart Cities Context

Social media have a huge impact on different areas of modern life. In smart city context, they can be used as a tool for enhancing dialogue between citizens and municipalities. Based on present research, empirical evidence is provided on insufficient use of social media capabilities. Relationship between smart cities and social media power is examined through study on the example of Varna municipality. An analysis of city government presence in social media was conducted. Through online questionnaire the citizens’ attitude towards smart city concept was studied. Suggestions for improving the communication between citizens and municipal administration of Varna are given.

The Effect of Social Media-Enabled Mentoring on Online Tacit Knowledge Acquisition within Sustainable Organizations: A Moderated Mediation Model

Tacit knowledge is an important strategic resource to the sustainable development of organizations. Although scholars and practitioners have noticed the growing use of social media in transferring tacit knowledge, extant empirical research has been fairly mute about this phenomenon. This study is novel in that it explores when and how social media used for mentoring (i.e., an emerging electronic mentoring) promotes tacit knowledge acquisition in sustainable organizations. This study develops a framework and proposes six hypotheses, which predict how social media-enabled mentoring promotes tacit knowledge acquisition through two mediators. Furthermore, two social media characteristics moderate the two mediating processes. The authors conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey in 45 sustainable companies and obtained 156 valid cases. All of the hypotheses are supported. The findings show that the effects of social media-enabled mentoring on tacit knowledge acquisition are mediated by both an affective learning mechanism (i.e., liking) and cognitive learning mechanism (i.e., shared mental model). Moreover, the two mediation processes are moderated by two capabilities of social media (i.e., social presence and synchronicity). This research bridges extant e-mentoring literature and sustainable TK management literature. It also enlightens managers to effectively integrate social media and mentoring to improve TKA in sustainable organizations.

Process Level Social Media Business Value Configuration of SMEs in Saudi Arabia

The key enabler of strategic design based on IT is process level value; however, few researchers have tackled the mechanisms through which small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can create value at the process level. This study sheds light on the mechanism of creating social media business value at the process level by identifying the interaction effects of social media and IT resources and the mediating role of management’s commitment to innovation as an organizational factor. The research model is based on the IT business value approach, quantitative and descriptive methodology is adopted, and the data are analyzed using structural equation modeling. Among the findings based on 301 SMEs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that management’s commitment to innovation is a necessary condition for social media resources to create dynamic capabilities, and the interaction effects between social media resources and IT resources on social media capability have no impact on the value-generation process at the process level. The result improves the understanding of the theoretical implications of social media business value at the process level, which can be used to guide theorizing about IT business value. SME managers, IT designers, and national decision-makers can use the findings to gain strategic advantage through social media platforms.

Improving students’ attitudes about corporate social responsibility via ‘Apps’: a perspective integrating elaboration likelihood model and social media capabilities

ABSTRACT In recent years, online education has boomed. However, online business ethics education faces a challenge in which the lack of communication among teachers and students leads to a decline in teaching effectiveness. Social media applications can be imbedded in traditional ethics education to solve this problem. In this paper, based on the elaboration likelihood model and social media capabilities theory, we develop an integrated model to explain how the change in students’ attitudes about corporate social responsibility (CSR) happens in a social media-supported environment and how social media capabilities affect the processes. We conducted a teaching experiment and collected 233 valid samples of students to verify the hypothesis. Our study confirmed there are two mechanisms to affect students’ attitudes about CSR, source credibility, and argument quality. Concurrency has a moderating effect on attitudes change. Possible reasons, limitations, implications, and advice for future studies are also presented.

How corporate social responsibility activities influence employer reputation: The role of social media capability

This study analyzes the relation between the firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, employer reputation, and social media in the academic conversation on business value of technology. Motivated by the controversy over the function of social media in the firm's generation of value from CSR activities, this study hypothesizes that firms that perform CSR activities may become better employers and that this positive relationship may be stronger when firms leverage social media technologies. We explain this effect of social media by arguing that these social technologies enable higher social visibility and exposure/credibility. We tested our research model with data from 100 organizations in Spain. The results provided two key insights: 1) CSR activities enable firms to build greater employer reputation; and 2) social media capability amplifies the effect of CSR activities on employer reputation. This study contributes to Information Systems and Business Ethics research by arguing theoretically and demonstrating empirically that leveraging a technology such as social media generates business value through maximization of the positive impact of CSR activities on employer reputation of the firm.

Toward a normative social media theory for public relations

Social media might represent the greatest social innovation/revolution in the history of communication, fundamentally altering how humans communicate, and the practice of public relations, journalism, advertising, marketing, and business. Dozens of theories and concepts including dialogue, engagement, identification, social presence, uses and gratifications, conversational human voice, and many others inform social media. However, what has commonly taken place in social media contexts and public relations has been the importation and application of other theories and concepts, rather than exploring and clarifying the unique features and capabilities of social media per se. This essay argues that social media represent a new communication paradigm, and this essay takes up the challenge of building social media theory for public relations by identifying features of social media that have emerged from existing research as fundamental to understanding social media, and eventually developing a theory(s) of social media for public relations.

Unions, social media and young workers—evidence from the UK

This paper explores the way in which the youth sections of three British unions use social media. We contribute to both the literature on unions and young workers, and union engagement with social media by providing the first systematic examinations of union youth sections' social media usage in terms of method, scope and content. The paper examines differences in Twitter usage between the youth sections of GMB, PCS and Unite over a two‐year period from June 1, 2014, to May 31, 2016. The paper considers the extent to which these union accounts fully utilise the interactive capabilities of social media, and whether the content of messages is specifically targeted towards young workers. We find similarities between the three accounts in terms of message content and focus and that the youth sections of unions are more involved with the interactive capabilities of Web 2.0 than the existing literature suggests.

What Whatsapp Status Enables Reseller to Do as Channel

This research aims to understand the phenomena that arise from WhatsApp users who utilize WhatsApp Status to market their products. This research focuses on the background capabilities of WhatsApp Status that allow resellers to market their products based on capabilities of WhatsApp Status as part of social media, as a channel to deliver the value proposition to the customer, and as a means of supporting engagement between sellers and buyers. The qualitative approach was carried out by involving selected active users of WhatsApp Status based on Snowball Sampling. This research identifies the significant capability of WhatsApp Status as the main digital marketing channel for resellers in marketing their products where WhatsApp Status allows attachment between resellers and customers while WhatsApp itself is the most used chat application. However, WhatsApp Status has limited functionality only as a marketing channel with all the capabilities of social media in general.

Smart Monitoring and Controlling of Government Policies Using Social Media and Cloud Computing

The governments, nowadays, throughout the world are increasingly becoming dependent on public opinion regarding the framing and implementation of certain policies for the welfare of the general public. The role of social media is vital to this emerging trend. Traditionally, lack of public participation in various policy making decision used to be a major cause of concern particularly when formulating and evaluating such policies. However, the exponential rise in usage of social media platforms by general public has given the government a wider insight to overcome this long pending dilemma. Cloud-based e-governance is currently being realized due to IT infrastructure availability along with mindset changes of government advisors towards realizing the various policies in a best possible manner. This paper presents a pragmatic approach that combines the capabilities of both cloud computing and social media analytics towards efficient monitoring and controlling of governmental policies through public involvement. The proposed system has provided us some encouraging results, when tested for Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation by Indian government and established that it can be successfully implemented for efficient policy making and implementation.

Brand orientation and brand performance in SMEs

Purpose This study aims to investigate the moderating effects of innovation capabilities and social media capabilities on the relationship between brand orientation and brand performance among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on the size differential feature from the organizational ecology theory, the paper further tests variations in these conditions across disaggregated SME levels. Design/methodology/approach The empirical part of the study was carried out with a sample of 484 enterprises in an emerging market context via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, along with a moderated hierarchical regression. Findings Results from the moderated hierarchical regression analysis indicate that although the two capabilities generally offered positive moderating effects across all enterprises, these are conditional and not invariant when disaggregated based on enterprise sizes (small vs medium). Originality/value The study suggests the need for enterprise owners/managers to identify optimal combinations of enterprise capabilities, based on their sizes, for which their complementarities with brand orientation efforts are more potent.

Is Social Media a Passport to SMEs’ Foreign Market Entry?

Social media has provided opportunities for businesses to develop close relationships with customers leading to customers’ engagement as it influences loyalty and satisfaction, and assists in expanding the markets. While small and medium enterprises (SME) are at a disadvantage compared to large firms, establishing management control in a foreign market remains a challenge. In addition, a considerable number of studies on foreign market entry mode choice have concentrated on large firms. Moreover, social media has become increasingly relevant for SME to “level the playing ground” with large firms. However, little is known about the SME role in engaging with their customers and especially in how SME use social media capabilities. We respond to this gap in the literature by exploring how SME use social media platforms to connect with customers in a foreign market. A qualitative analysis was conducted through in-depth interviews with six Portuguese firms. The findings indicate that social media provides a distinctive pathway to SME to connect emotionally with customers in a foreign market.

How social media increase selling trend in clothes industry? (Case study: selling brand clothes named Cotton in Iran via Instagram)

Social media changed different aspects of human life. More and more people use this tool for different aims such as make communication, find friends and family members, share the information and idea, and speak about products’ experience and even searching for advice about special brands and goods. Companies have been started to think about the way they can use this tool for advertising and earn more benefits. Although most companies put social media in the top of marketing strategy. The difference in marketing method and strategy which happened recently based on social media makes a big question about the effective method for using this opportunity. The aim of this article is to identify the different variables which have an effect on increase selling brand clothes named Cotton via Instagram in Iran. Instagram has the ability for sharing the photos and it is a big benefit for advertise clothes. Although previous studies have shown interest in social media for making the new strategy, this article aims to focus on increasing the selling process, finding effective variables and ranking them. The results of the survey revealed there are four effective factors on grow selling including social media capability, the power of the brand, marketing strategy, and customer reaction. The result can be useful for the owner of the cotton brand and the strategy designer in the clothes shop to have the better understanding and view of the customer and their behavior and the researcher who wants to do research in this area.