A study of social media leadership experiences

1. K. LUUKKA
Managers’ Experiences of the Use of the Social Media as Part of Their
Leadership: Towards to the Social Media Leadership Theory
MBA
University of Wales
2011

2. DECLARATION
This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not
being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree.
Signed………………………………………….. (candidate)
Date………………………………………………
STATEMENT 1
This work is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Where
correction services have been used, the extent and nature of the correction is clearly
marked in a footnote(s).
Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. A bibliography
is appended.
Signed………………………………………….. (candidate)
Date………………………………………………
STATEMENT 2
I hereby give consent for my work, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for
inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside
organisations.
Signed………………………………………….. (candidate)
Date………………………………………………
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3. Acknowledgements
My interest in social media leadership started along with my MBA studies three years
ago. Since then my use of social media has extended from personal use to be a part of
my leadership. I have learnt so much about management and leadership with my fellow
students, that first of all, I want to thank you all for the peer support during the whole
study process.
Our MBA course director Steve Griffiths, many thanks to you for the confidence to get
our assignments and dissertation done in time, you were right. My dissertation
supervisor Lucy Griffiths, thank you for your guidance and online discussions on
Facebook. Lucy, your supportive and encouraging feedback made me work in planned
schedule. Mrs Marja Orpana-Niitlahti, the friendliest person in the world, thank you for
language maintenance.
My boss, principal Marita Modenius, I owe my thanks to you. You have encouraged me
throughout my MBA studies, even when studying in one‟s work context was not always
easy. I wish that every worker, at least once in his/her life, would have the opportunity to
have a boss like you, Marita: positive, supportive and visionary. My adult education
management team: Hannu, Hely, Hilkka, Iiris, Jyrki, Kaarina, Risto and Tuula. How can I
ever thank you enough? You have all been supportive and willing to test the possibilities
offered by social media in your own leadership. It has been a pleasure to share the
experiences with you and alongside renew myself as a director.
And last but not least, I want to thank my family. My husband Eero and our daughters
Sanna and Marleena have shared everyday life online and offline with me, and have
reminded me that there is life also outside and after a dissertation. Sanna and Marleena
have leaded me to use social media as part of my life. I thank you both. You have been
my inspiration and strength while doing my MBA studies.
Helsinki, 20th March 2011
Katri Luukka
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4. ABSTRACT
This research had three aims: 1) to investigate managers‟ social media leadership
experiences, how open leadership theory (Li 2010) works in practical leadership
situations, 2) to research how negative experiences, feelings and face to face leading
are part of social media leadership and 3) to expand researcher‟s knowledge and skills
of social media and to find useful practical solutions for the use of social media as part
of her leadership in an adult education organization from offline /face-to-face leading
culture to new online- offline leading culture.
The theoretical background of the study highlights social media tools: blogs, Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Shared documents and Video Conferences and social media‟s
possibilities to improve business leadership. The leadership theories are presented from
trait theories (Taylorism) to behavioral leadership theories. After that follows
contingency leadership theories and the recent transactional and transformational
leadership theories. Finally Charlene Li‟s (2010) open leadership theory is presented.
This research had a case study and action research approaches. Data has been
collected from six international managers on Facebook‟s private discussion group. Data
was analyzed by using a content analysis method.
Summary of findings was that Li‟s (2010) open leadership theory considers the basics
for the social media leadership theory. However, there is a need to develop a more
detailed social media leadership theory, based on the transformation of communication
from face-to-face leadership, offline working culture to the new online-offline working
culture. Li‟s (2010) open leadership theory had disadvantage in that it doesn‟t put
attention to: 1) sustainable and green business while using more social media as part
of leadership, 2) how negative experiences of the use of social media should be
handled, 3) comparing face-to-face- leading and online social networking leading and 4)
discussion of changes to the emotional part of leadership while working changes from
offline to online working culture. The researcher‟s knowledge and skills have expanded
on how to use social media as part of her leadership in an adult education organization
during this research project.
Keywords: social media, leadership, open leadership
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5. CONTENTS
ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………………………..4
1 INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………....8
2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE………………………………………………………………..10
2.1 Social Media..……………………………………………………………………………..10
2.1.1 An Introduction to Social Media………………………………………..10
2.1.2 Social Media Tools: Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Shared
documents and Video Conferences……………………………………13
2.1.3 Social Media‟s Possibilities to Improve Business and Leadership….19
2.2 Leadership Theories………………………………………………………………..…….23
2.2.1 A Brief History of Leadership Theories…………………………..…….23
2.2.2 Transformational Leadership Theory…………………………..………24
2.2.3 Open Leadership Theory………………………………………..………26
3 METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………………..….30
3.1 Research Set-up, Aims and Questions ……………………………………..……….30
3.2 Data Collection……………………………………………………………………..…...32
3.3 Data Analysis……………………………………………………………………..……...33
3.4 Evaluation of the Research………………………………………………...…………..34
4 RESULTS……………………………………………………………………………...……..37
4.1 Managers‟ Use of Social Media as Part of Their Work Now………………………....37
4.2 Managers‟ Experiences Related to the Open Leadership…………………………….41
4.2.1 Sharing in Open Leadership………………………………………….....41
4.2.2 Cultural issues in Open Leadership…………………………………....43
4.2.3 Transformation in Open Leadership…………………………………....44
4.2.4 Mind-sets and Traits in Open Leadership…………………………...…46
4.2.5 Learning in Open Leadership……………………………………………48
4.2.6 Benefits in Open Leadership…………………………………………….50
4.2.7 Monitoring in Open Leadership………………………………………....51
4.2.8 Risks in Open Leadership……………………………………………….53
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6. 4.3 Managers‟ Experiences of the Negative Issues, Feelings and Face-to-face Leading
in Social Media Leadership…………………………………………………….....................54
4.3.1 Negative Experiences in Social Media Leadership…………………...54
4.3.2 Feelings in Social Media Leadership…………………………………...55
4.3.3 Face-to-Face- leading in Social Media Leadership…………………...57
4.4 Social Media as Part of Managers‟ Leadership in the Future…………………...……58
4.5 The Researcher‟s Experiences and Use of Social Media as a Result of Research
Project…………………………………………………………………………………….…….60
4.6 Discussion of Findings……………………………………………………………………67
5 CONLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS…………………….……71
6 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………..…75
APPENDICES:
Appendix 1. Participants of the Research
Appendix 2. A Matrix of the Facebook‟s Group Discussion Themes
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7. List of Figures:
Figure 1. A Matrix for evaluation of external forces against internal capability…………19
Figure 2. A Feeling mirror; critical reflection as a tool for learning from experiences….61
Figure 3. A Quick test for manager‟s and organization‟s social media skills……………63
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8. 1 INTRODUCTION
Time magazine has named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a Person of the
Year (Time 2010). One reason for this nomination is how social networking has during
the year 2010 moved from a personal communications tool to a business tool that
business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and
customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction
(George 2010). Also a radical transformation that journalism is experiencing is a clear
example of how the world of communication is changing to digital all the time (Cambié
and Ooi, 2009 p. 9, TNS 2010). The ministry of Finance has launched the Finnish
national online customer service program (SADe) in 2009. The aim of the program is to
contribute all key online customer services for citizens and enterprises before 2013. All
Finnish public services should be available online for the customers then. The aim is
also to reconcile information technology systems to work together better (SADe 2009).
The Ministry of Finance has also published Finnish National Social Media Information
Security Guidelines in December 2010 (Ministry of Finance 2010). An aim of this
guideline is to encourage administration in the public sector to use social media as part
of work with better security. Generation Y, the 76 million Millennials born between 1982
and 2000; are looking for meaningful work where they can express their potential. The
voice they respect most is that of authenticity and competence, the voice of social
media (Cambié and Ooi 2009, 64-65.) Tapscott (2010 p. 30) calls this generation the
“grown up digital generation”. The information technology is developing all the time and
also citizens‟ skills especially Generation Y‟s skills to use information technology via
social media are changing them into publishers, which is going to change
communication structures between people and organizations (Safko and Brake, 2009 p.
69-94).
This research focuses on social media as part of leadership due to the fact that there is
a pressure to change a traditional adult education business to online business by using
more social media tools like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as part of work and
leadership. The pressure comes from this changing world, where the new young
customers are used to communicating and working on the Web. The researcher works
as a vice principal in one of the largest adult education organizations in Finland. The
organization‟s current leadership culture was based at the beginning of the research
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9. purely on face- to-face leading and therefore an action research approach was taken as
a framework for this study to find out new solutions to improve social media as part of
management team‟s leadership access. Charlene Li‟s (2010) open leadership theory
was chosen as a theoretical background for this study. Open leadership theory states
that sharing is a key issue while using social media tools and it is going to change
organization‟s culture transparent and therefore there is a need to transform
organization‟s culture as well (Li 2010). This research had three aims: 1) to investigate
managers‟ social media leadership experiences, and how open leadership theory (Li
2010) works in practical leadership situations, 2) to research how negative experiences,
feelings and face-to-face leading are part of social media leadership and 3) to expand
researcher‟s knowledge and skills of social media and to find useful practical solutions
for the use of social media as part of her leadership in an adult education organization
from an offline /face-to-face leading culture to a new online-offline leading culture.
At the beginning of this study the researcher used Jue et. al.‟s (2010) definition of social
media to describe to the research participants, what social media meant in this study.
Jue et. al. (2010 p. 44) defines social media as follows: “today social media
encompasses all the Internet-enabled capabilities for communicating through different
means: audio, video, text, images and every other combination or permutation
imaginable”. At the end of this study after analysis of the empirical data, the researcher
made her own definition for social media. “Social media is collaborative online working
by using social media tools or social networking communities and other Internet based
solutions to achieve a common goal for online working” (Luukka 2011a, 21.2.2011).
This research report has the following structure. After introduction there follows
literature review of the social media and leadership theories. Then follows methodology-
chapter which includes: 1) research set-up, aims and questions, 2) data collection, 3)
data analysis and 4) evaluation of the research. After that the results are presented the
following order: 1) managers‟ use of social media as part of their work now, 2)
managers‟ experiences related to the open leadership, 3) managers‟ experiences of the
negative issues, feelings and face-to-face leading in social media leadership, 4) social
media as part of managers‟ leadership in the future, 5) researcher‟s experiences and
use of social media as a result of research project and 6) ddiscussion of findings. At the
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10. end of the research report are conclusions, limitations and recommendations and finally
bibliography.
2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE
The literature review considers two aspects for this study: social media and leadership.
The social media chapter introduces basic concepts of Web 2.0 and social media and
also criticism against it. After that follows an overview of social media tools: blogs,
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, shared documents and video conferences and finally
social media‟s possibilities to improve business and leadership and its benefits and
doubts. After social media follows the leadership chapter which has an introduction to
the history of leadership theories from the beginning of 1900 trait leadership theories to
current transformation and to the latest open leadership theory.
2.1 Social Media
2.1.1 An Introduction to Social Media
Web 2.0 (Relationship Web) and Social Media
Tim O‟Reilly (founder of O‟Reilly Media) used term Web 2.0 to describe the significant
shift in how software developers and users were interacting with the Web in 2004. You
could not do this with earlier Web sites, which were primarily used for two things: to
provide information or as Web services. Web 2.0 is working like a relationship Web for
users. Organizations use sites to attract, create, build and deepen relationships with
people: internally with employees and externally with customers, partners, investors or
prospective employees and customers. (Brown, 2009 p. 9, Lincoln, 2009 p. 7, Pauker
Kreizberg 2009, Mustonen, 2009 p.10-11.) Term social media refers to activities,
practices, and behaviors among online communities, where people share information,
knowledge, and opinions by using Web 2.0 technologies for conversational interactions
(Safko and Brake, 2009 p. 6-7). The idea of communication through social media in web
pages is that they are open to everyone. The social media based on web. 2.0 (Funk
2009, Cesar 2008, Shuen 2008), where, for example, Facebook is an online social
networking site (Baloun 2007, Holzner 2009) and Second Life (DeMesa 2009,
Freedman 2008, Terdiman 2008) is a virtual social networking site. Web 2.0 are web
based platforms, which provide solutions for online social networking communities.
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11. Mustonen (2009, 8) continues that social web can be defined as the online place where
people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments, opinions and
other information. Social media can also seen largely as “all the Internet-enabled
capabilities for communicating through different means: audio, video, text, images and
every other combination or permutation imaginable” (Jue et. al., 2010 p. 44). Social
media (Web 2.0) is interactive, where users expect to be able to participate and
generate content and voice opinion and get immediate feedback. Users expect Web
sites to be user-centric. Belsky (2010 p. 129-130) argues that social media tool like
Facebook and Twitter are making the creative process more transparent. The use of
social media tools and social networking are leading organizations towards to the
transparency (Evans D., 2010 p. 207-208, Phillips and Young, 2009 p.37-44, Scott,
2010 p. 191). Social media culture means interactivity in the organisations. (Lincoln,
2009 p.10, Pauker Kreizberg 2009.) Social media has changed the communication
between companies and customers and therefore it can also call as “consumer-
generated media” (Mangold and Faulds 2009) or consumer-generated content (Taylor
and Kent 2010).
Pauker Kreizberg (2009) states five characteristics for the friendly social media (Web
2.0) culture: 1) transparent (open about their actions), 2) user centric (focus on people,
both internal and external), 3) agile (are nimble and quick to adjust), 4) empowering
(give people information and the ability to take action) and 5) creative (encourage
experimentation and innovation). She also indicates ten barriers to friendly social media
culture: 1) Security (ensure security without stifling creativity and communication), 2)
Compliance (balance enterprise needs vs. ease and accessibility of Web tools), 3)
Usability (core competence in usability and user centricity are essential), 4)
Competition (more agile, creative and smaller companies may present a real threat), 5)
Empowerment (people go online to get info they need and take action), 6) Public Face
(user-generated posts can remain available for years, anywhere, on the Web), 7)
Transparency (information is more open, easily found and circulated), 8) Generation
Gap (Boomers and Millennials use the Web differently), 9) Communication (effective
cross-functional communication is difficult whether on- or offline and 10) Behaviour
(employees need to know company policy for online behaviour). (Pauker Kreizberg
2009.)
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12. Pauker Kreizberg (2009) states also four strategies for the managers to improve friendly
social media culture: 1) help your leadership figure it out in terms of your business, 2)
focus on relationships and demonstrate that value through user experiences, 3) cover
your assets with practices that protect the company but do not stifle creativity and 4)
provide training that closes the gap in communication - whether it is across generations,
functions, language, culture or physical proximity. (Pauker Kreizberg 2009.) Fernando
(2010) has also created eight notions as best practice steering points for managers to
improve social media. His steps to social media are following:
1) understand the end goals, 2) formulate strategy, 3) calibrate appropriate social media
tools to match strategy, 4) build an open extensible platform, 5) embody strong
taxonomy and structure, 6) assemble staff for involvement and knowledge contribution,
7) anticipate and embrace varying use cases and 8) develop a company maturity
model. Fernardo‟s (2010) social media steering points are quite similar to Pauker
Kreizberg‟s (2009) strategies but they are more detailed like calibrate appropriate social
media tools to match strategy, assemble staff for involvement and knowledge
contribution and build an open extensible platform.
Criticism Against Social Media
Jain Palvia and Pancaro (2010) are worried about how humans are turning into hermits.
They argue that cyber space social interaction makes students and members of
communities lose touch with real social interactions and experiences. Rather than
calling somebody by phone, many people prefer using Facebook or similar websites to
leave a comment on the receiver person‟s profile wall. The lack of synchronous
communication and decreased desire to communicate face to face is transforming
communication patterns. They continue that these technological toys make our lives
easier and presumably more productive, while enabling our separation from the real
world. As a conclusion they make a statement: “although we may never return to the
“golden age” of face to face conversing with our fellow human beings, we need to be
cognizant of having a good balance between using technology mode and face to face
mode of communication. There is a lot that can be learned from a person‟s tone of voice
and facial expressions through actively listening and observing. The global easy
connectivity offered by networking sites is turning humans into hermits”. (Jain Palvia
and Pancaro 2010.)
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13. Jain Palvia and Pancaros‟ (2010) critique is full of emotions to get back “the old good
times” before social media. The critique is quite heavy against social media, but it is not
unusual to hear this kind of critique in everyday life. They argue that “cyber space social
interaction makes students and members of communities to lose touch with real social
interactions and experiences” shows that Jain Palvia and Pancaros are presenting the
thinking which make a difference between real life and online interactions. The new
Generation Y, the 76 million Millennials born between 1982 and 2000 are not separating
online-offline worlds like the older generations do, because they are the “grown up
digital generation” like Tapscott (2010) calls them. Even though there are also
mistakes, which are possible to make in social media, which Howard (2011) highlights
following way: 1) attempting to be an expert in everything, 2) providing vague
information about giveaways, 3) trying to reach everyone, all the time, 4) trying to be
perfect and 5) spending time that you simply don‟t have.
Carr (2010) highlights, how the internet is changing the way we think, read and
remember. He argues that reading is now skimming and scrolling with little patience. He
also argues that using of the Internet gives a quick access to large quantities of
information with search filtering tools, and an easy way to share opinions with a small
but interested audience. Even though, by using the Internet, you are losing the touch of
books and magazines, the benefits of Internet are bigger and therefore for some people,
the very idea of reading a book has come to seem old-fashioned. (Carr, 2010 p. 8.) Carr
(2010 p. 16) continues that the more you are using Internet the more your brains are
becoming “hungry of the Internet” and you want to be connected all the time. Lanier
(2010 p. 83) is worried about young people, who are getting stressed to keep their
social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and they have to continuously to maintain their
network's reputation.
2.1.2 Social Media Tools: Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Shared documents
and Video Conferences
Blogs
The use of blogs as part of leadership is quite common nowadays. The researcher has
also written blogs as part of her work over two years. The author‟s social media
leadership blogs which are part of this research project are also secondary data of the
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14. research and therefore blogs are presented more deeply with SWOT- analysis than
other social media tools in this literature review (Luukka 2011a, Luukka 2011b).
Web logs are better known as blogs (Blossom, 2009 p. 32, Briggs and Burke, 2009 p.
281, Burrows 2007, Kilpi, 2006 p.11). There were 60 million active blogs in 2007
(Burrows 2007, 20). It is very difficult to find reliable updated information of active blogs
from latest years because there are thousands of opportunities for writing blogs with
blog tools and also writing blogs on organisation‟s Web pages. There are several tools
for searching blogs from Web: Blogdigger, Bloglines, Feedster, Google Blog Search,
PubSub, Technorati, and IceRocket. (Faigley and Selzer 2009.) Private persons are
writing blogs e.g. to expose their public opinions and for keeping their online journals.
Blogs are also used as a learning method to improve and share reflection on e-learning
(Ferriter 2009, Imperatore 2009, Yang 2009). Enterprises are writing blogs for improving
their business brand but also for internal communication as to implement the
organisation‟s strategy for personnel (Kilpi, 2006 p. 25-27.). Blogs can be useful in
showing the expertise of those within the organisation, but need to be carefully
controlled to avoid releasing damaging information (Chaffey, 2009 p. 130). A typical
blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs or related web pages. The RSS
(really simple syndication) feeds are simply “portable” versions of blogs or other media
sites that can be read via applications called newsreaders (Battelle, 2007 p. 266). RSS
provides the updated information for you (Li and Bernoff, 2009 p. 54). An important
feature of blogging is that readers are able to leave their own personal comments in an
interactive format. (Burrows 2007.) An ever-growing number of online markets are using
blogs to replace more traditional e-commerce web sites (Meyerson 2008). Blogs have a
lot of interactive opportunities e.g. sending sequential posts from site´s owner or visitors
and creating a quick online presence, sharing ideas, offering RSS, showcasing audio
and video clips.
Strengths of Blogs
If the organisation‟s brand is well known locally, nationally and also internationally, the blogs
could also be well known and supporting organisation‟s brand e.g. Finnair‟s (Finnair 2011) and
The White House‟s blogs (White House 2011). The organisation‟s web pages should be
customer based. The blogs should be focused on particular customers (potential and current)
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15. and other enterprises. The distribution in this case means information distribution. The
organisation‟s web pages information distribution should be high. A link to blogs should be
found on organisation‟s front page, therefore the openness of the blogs should also be high and
therefore the opportunity to spread information is also high. The blog‟s linking and blog
marketing are promoting blog‟s distribution.
Weakness of Blogs
Web blogs and also intranet blogs should be connected with organisation‟s strategy.
The intermediaries could be used for organisation‟s blogs marketing. The bloggers‟,
who are writing blogs should be skilful. The cross-channel support between blogs,
bloggers, inside the organisation or between similar kinds of other organisations could
also help blogs distribution. The writing of blogs is linkage with cultural matters (Scoble
and Israel, 2006 p. 115-131). The openness of all people is not naturally high, therefore
there is no habit of public discussions. Because the openness of blogs is high, the
opportunity to spread information is high and also false and bad information can spread
quickly and wildly.
Opportunities of Blogs
The blogging could be an excellent way for cross-selling for different kinds of
organisations. This means that there should be more co-operation among organisation
and its partners in the same business field. Blogging is an opportunity for new markets
and services for people, who are used to use the internet as a tool for communication
and for doing business. Blogs could also implement organisation‟s strategy in a public
format for personnel using intranet blogs.
Threats of Blogs
The blogging could lead to lost customers, if the blogs are written badly and if they
damage organisation‟s brand. Blogging as a social media and new entrants can frighten
personnel. They can be afraid if the writing takes too much time (Financial Times 2010)
and if there is no time for discussion with blogs on the web in this busy working life.
People are worried with regard to the new competitive products especially, if
competitors get secret information about the organisation through its blogs. Blogs can
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16. lead to conflicts, if there are misunderstandings between blogger and readers or e-
customers. Also threats of e-business security (Ghosh 1998), work against using blogs.
Social media networks: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are globally the most widely used social media
networks for private and business purposes and therefore they are chosen to be
presented as examples of leadership social media tools. Social networking services
(e.g. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) focus on building online communities of people
who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and
activities of others. (Bennet et al. 2010.) These social networking sites generally provide
several ways for users to interact and communicate with each other including writing to
each other‟s profile, instant messaging, chat rooms, e-mail, webcams, file sharing,
blogging and discussion groups. Social networking tools foster transparent
communication visible to all, the collaborative input of any employee, could be
recognised and potentially be rewarded. Status and prestige incentives are thus built
into the collaborative process, which are the key factors to contribute to productivity and
satisfaction of employees. Transparency is the key issue of social networking. The
benefits of social networking are the following: community, collaboration and
contribution. (Bennet 2010.) Eyrich et al. (2008) argues that social media has moved to
the status of strategic tool and more practitioners are developing skills related to online
communication technology.
Facebook
Facebook has more than 500 million active users. As many as 50 % of the active users
log on to Facebook every day. The average user has 130 friends. People spend over
700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. About 70% of Facebook users are outside
the United States from 190 countries. (Facebook 2011.)
Facebook is a social networking site that enables users to connect by creating personal
information profiles, inviting friends and colleagues to have access to those profiles, and
sending emails and instant messages between each other (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010.)
Safko and Brake (2009 p. 452) continues that depending on the setup, users are
notified when someone in their network updates their page or status. Users create their
pages based on their personal preferences, add others to their network groups
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17. andshare their experiences with pictures, links or videos. Finally Safko and Brake (2009
p.453) states that Facebook suits for a quick and convenient way to update a multitude
of friends, family, co-workers, or acquaintances on what you are doing. Businesses use
Facebook for advertising.
On each social media tool there is a possibility for a user to set up his/her own privacy
settings. E.g. Facebook has a very clear privacy policy, which all the users must accept.
The privacy policy includes: 1) information Facebook receives, 2) information you share
with third parties, 3) how Facebook use your information, 4) how Facebook shares
information, 5) how you can view, change, or remove information and 6) how Facebook
protects information. The user of Facebook decides with whom he/she wants to share
information: a) with friends, b) friends of friends or c) with everyone (Holzner, 2009 p.
27-31).
Twitter
Twitter has 175 million registered users with 370, 000 new sign-ups every day. 95
million tweets/messages have been sent daily. Twitter introduces the organization as an
information network where millions of people, organizations, and businesses use it to
discover and share new information. (Twitter 2011.)
Twitter is a micro blogging application that allows sending short, text-based posts of 140
characters or less (Brown, 2009 p. 38, Jain Palvia and Pancaro 2010, Kaplan and
Heanlein 2010, Phillips and Young, 2009 p. 17). In Twitter, the messages are called
tweets (Briggs and Burke, 2009 p. 286). Twitter‟s users can post original tweets under
their Twitter accounts and they can “retweet”, which means posting another user‟s
tweet. Twitter users have a profile page, which describes them and indicates their
followers and whom they follow. When following somebody‟s tweets, you receive their
tweets. Twitter users are both consumers of tweets (followers) and producers of tweets
(followed). (Fischer and Reuber 2011.)
Berinato (2010): Six ways to find value in Twitter‟s noise: 1) learn about competitive
landscape, (Tweets about your product that include the names of rival brands can
reveal a lot about market positioning), 2) look for unexpected themes (persistent words
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18. point to persistent ideas), 3) dip deeper in to the stream (while stream graphs give an
overall impression of what people are tweeting about, it is important to know what other
words are being used in relation to those in the stream), 4) look for user experiences
(product testing and reviews can‟t replace user reactions), 5) learn why negative words
are coming up (finding negative words is a good way to locate consumers‟ pain points)
and 6) learn about conversation dominators (words that suddenly dominate the tweet
stream mean something has happened that‟s worth learning about).
LinkedIn
LinkedIn express that they are the world‟s largest professional network on the Internet
with more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories. More than half
of LinkedIn members are located outside of the United States. There were nearly two
billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010. (LinkedIn 2011.)
LinkedIn is a professional (business) social networking site (Jain Palvia and Pancaro
2010, Mangold and Faulds 2009, Qualman, 2009 p. 225-226). Professional networking
sites are more of business nature than social. These promote events and activities in
the professional lives of people allowing them e.g. to share information related to a new
job, a job achievement, job promotion, recommendation of another colleague in general
or specifically for a job category and job availability in a company or in the marketplace
(Jain Palvia and Pancaro 2010, Qualman, 2009 p. 225-226). There is also a possibility
for professional group discussions and sending messages between colleagues and
friends.
Collaborative Online Work: Shared Documents and Video Conferences
Documents sharing by using e.g. Google Docs and WIKI- social media tools is
providing an opportunity to work online together anytime and anywhere. Shared
documents also allow organizing data, controlling access, and working in real time, and
instantly publishing documents on Web pages, blogs, within groups or companies
(Safko and Brake, 2009 p. 581). Shared documents value is as a tool for community
collaboration (Jue et.al., 2010 p. 130). Blossom (2009 p. 33-34) continues that
collaborative publishing and/or social network publishing are enabling groups of people
18

19. to collaborate on common documents and to build and use relationship with other
people using tools that let people share information about their personal and
professional needs and interests. Online conferencing with videos, chat, or webinars
with two-way communication are available for free or at low cost (e.g. Skype, Google
Talk) (Phillips and Young, 2009 p.19-20). Skype provides one-to-one, one-to-many,
many-to-one and many-to-many real time calls with other Skypes and also inexpensive
local, national and international calls to phones and mobiles (Safko and Brake, 2009 p.
417- 419).
2.1.3 Social Media’s Possibilities to Improve Business and Leadership
Social Media as Part of Market Driven Strategy
The Perrot‟s matrix for external forces and internal capability is illuminates the problem
where traditional business is nowadays struggling to use on not to use social media
(e.g. blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) as part of their business plan (Chaffey,
2009 p. 275).
Market Driving Market Driven
Strategy: Customer Strategy: Keep
HIGH
education and pace with market
Internal capability /
Incentives motivation threats/ opportunities
Status Quo: Capacity Building:
Don‟t Bother Build for transition to
Electronic
LOW Commerce
LOW HIGH
External Forces / Incentives
Figure 1. A Matrix for evaluation of external forces against internal capability
19

20. Market driven strategy leads to the benefits for the first or early movers of using e.g.
social media as part of leadership. The early movers benefits of online business are the
following:
- the ability to amass a critical mass of customers,
- developing distinct business models to exploit the advantages of the internet for
trading,
- gaining economies of scale through exploiting network externalities,
- building customer loyalty through brand recognition,
- building in switching costs to the website,
- building relationship with customers electronically,
- establishing partnership with key industry players ahead of competitors,
- influencing the industry infrastructure,
- refining the value proposition and adding value to customers through innovations,
- managing both physical and virtual value chain for competitive advantage,
- building an understanding of customers and their buying habits via the internet
and
- becoming a learning organisation. (Combe, 2006 p. 306.)
Combe (2006 p. 302) argues that to compete effectively in the internet economy
requires managers to address the following criteria: 1) draw up a business plan, 2)
determine what is to be sold or what service is to be delivered, 3) have a good quality
website design, 4) ensure security, 5) set appropriate delivery times, 6) create a brand,
ensure good customer service, 7) promote the website, 8) pricing, 9) define terms and
conditions of sale and 10) ensure scalability of technology. Chen (2001) identifies
seven things that needed to be aligned in strategic changing to an online (virtual)
organisation: 1) strategic, 2) systems, 3) structure, 4) style, 5) staff, 6) skills and 7)
shared values.
Social Media Benefits
Many business researchers have stated social media as marketing tools (Berinato
2010, Dholakia and Durham 2010, Kozinets et al. 2010, Trusov et al. 2009). On the
20

21. other hand social media is full of marketing tools, which are changing the marketer-
generated business to user-generated business (Evans, D. 2010, Evans, D. 2008 and
Evans, L. 2010). Eva Fisher and Reuber (2011) have argued that social media is not
just as marketing tools, but also as a form of communication that can have much
broader consequences at the individual and firm level. Social media have the potential
to be valuable tools that, if deployed well, can positively affect business outcomes such
as sales growth, brand image and company reputation (Fisher and Reuben 2011). Scott
(2010 p. 3-13) argues that the old rules of marketing and PR are ineffective in an online
world. Jaokar et al. (2009 p. 83-104) argues that business should understand the data
behind social networks and Spark (2010) continues from organization‟s personnel point
of view that “there is gold in your employees‟ personal networks. Curtis et al. (2010)
have found in their research that social media tools are beneficial methods of
communication for public relations practitioners in the nonprofit sector.
Mangold and Faulds (2009) have argued that social media is a hybrid element of the
promotion mix because it combines characteristics of traditional IMC tools (companies
talking to customers) with a highly magnified form of word-of-mouth (customers talking
to one another) whereby marketing managers cannot control the content and frequency
of such information. They also have stated social media enable instantaneous, real time
communication and utilizes multi-media formats (audio and visual presentations) and
numerous delivery platforms (e.g. Facebook, YouTube and blogs), with global reach
capacities (Mangold and Faulds 2009).
Even though a company cannot directly control customer-to-customer conversations or
word of mouth marketing (WOMM) (Kozinets et al. 2010) in social media, it can
influence and shape these discussions in a manner that is consistent with the
organization‟s mission and performance goals. Mangold and Faulds (2009) have
suggested nine shaping for social media‟s discussion: 1) provide networking platforms,
2) use blogs and other social media tools to engage customers, 3) use both traditional
and Internet-based promotional tools to engage customers, 4) provide information, 5) be
outrageous, 6) provide exclusivity, 7) design products with talking points and
consumers‟ desired self images in mind, 8) support causes that are important to
consumers and 9) utilize the power of stories.
21

22. At point when fears and anxieties diminished against social media (Web 2.0), company
leaders may start to appreciate that social networking tools and technologies can be
utilized to:
- enable speedier location, access and sharing of information,
- enable more efficient leverage of contacts and knowledge,
- help retain key employees by improving satisfaction in the workplace,
- break down time and geographical boundaries to improve communication
between widely dispersed personnel,
- reduce expenses and improve productivity and competitiveness. (Strategic
Direction 2009.)
Social Media Doubts
Taylor and Kent (2010) have argued that there is still so little evidence about social
media‟s effectiveness beyond anecdotes and self report studies. They have stated that
social media should be problematized by asking questions: 1) how can you build a
relationship in 140 characters or less, 2) what demographics are likely to be effectively
reached via social media, 3) what traditional media might be as useful or more useful,
and when should you use them and 4) what happens to the public that are not online?
(Taylor and Kent 2010.) One of the great threats of social networking is that Taylor and
Kent (2010) have stated, as a fear, if social media‟s outcomes are not as
productive/effective as the input to the social media e.g. human and technological
resources have taken.
Wyld (2008) suggests that in the Web 2.0 environment, senior managers need to
examine carefully and provide informed responses to of the following:
1) time and energy required to commit to maintain effectively blogging,
2) the Web 2.0 and blogging knowledge of the company,
3) bloggers‟ best practices development in a company,
4) monitoring of the blogosphere, what is being said of the company,
5) legal issues arisen from blogging among employees and executives,
6) dealing of blogs and Web 2.0 media with communication policy of the company,
7) awareness of new Web 2.0 technologies and their benefit use and
8) measuring the effectiveness of blogging activities.
22

23. Aula (2010) argues that social media generates, expands and boosts risks dynamics.
That‟s because in social media, users mostly generate unverified information – both true
and false – put forth ideas about organizations that differ greatly from what
organizations share with the public. Dholakia and Duerham (2010) continues that
cautious optimism seems wise, while using social media. Companies should see what
Facebook can do for them but use it as just one nice tool.
2.2 Leadership Theories
2.2.1 A Brief History of Leadership Theories
A history and the first phase of leadership theories started from trait theories called
also Taylorism which was based on industrial leadership that happened in 1900 – the
early decades (Friedman, 2010 p. 291-304). Traits theories were based on leading of
industrial workers (machine operators) (Drucker, 2009 p. 183). Glynn and DeJordy
(2010 p. 119-157) continues that the traits theories was launched from a psychological
perspective and with the overriding assumption that leaders were somehow different
and in possession of special, unique, or extraordinary personality attributes, abilities,
skills, or physical characteristics that others did not have. Mullins (2007 p. 367) adds
that traits leadership leaders are born and not made. After traits theories followed
behavioral leadership theories of leadership which focus on a leader‟s style of action,
typically categorized with regard to a task orientation and people orientation. This
leadership approach had its origins in the work of Lewin, Lippitt and White in 1939 who
outlined three basic leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire (Glynn
and DeJordy, 2010 p. 119-157, Mullins, 2007 p. 371.) Both traits and behavioral
leadership theories led to studies and assessment of leadership styles like Likert‟s
“attitude toward men” and Blake and Mouton‟s “managerial grid” as a test of manager‟s
task or people orientation (Gill, 2006 p. 42-43).
In contrast to trait and behavioral theories followed contingency leadership theories
(1960 – 1980) which assumed that leadership can vary across situations and that there
may not be a universally effective way to lead; different contexts may call for different
kinds of leadership. Contingency theories of leadership contextualized leadership and
modeled it as more supple, adaptive, and situationally flexible than trait or behavioral
23

24. theories (Glynn and DeJordy, 2010 p. 119-157, Mullins, 2007 p. 374-381.) An example
of contingency period is Henry Mintzberg‟s study of managers work. He concluded that
managerial work involves interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles.
These roles require a number of skills: developing peer relationships, carrying out
negotiations, motivating subordinates, resolving conflicts, establishing information
networks and disseminating information, making decisions with little or ambiguous
information, and allocating resources (Mintzberg 1975.)
The recent transactional and transformational leadership theories have taken their
roots from trait, behavioral and contingency leadership theories. Transactional
leadership is more instrumental by using rewards or punishment to motivate
subordinate efforts (Glynn and DeJordy, 2010 p. 119-157.) Transactional leaders
appear to be strongly directive and they tend not to use the consultative, participative or
delegative leadership styles. They set objectives and performance standards, but do so
in a directive rather than participative manner and they also use closed and leading
questions in their interactions with others (Gill, 2006 p. 51.) Mullins (2007 p. 381)
continues that transactional leadership is based on a relationship of mutual dependence
and exchange process of “I will give you this, if you do that”. Transformational
leadership is more inspiring and exciting followers to high level of performance through
visionary leadership (Glynn and DeJordy, 2010 p. 119-157.) Transformational
leadership features and its connection to social media is highlighted more in the next
chapter (2.2.2).
2.2.2 Transformational Leadership Theory
Ducker (2009 p. 177) dominates the last century as “a Century of Social
Transformation”. He continues: “No century in human history has experienced so many
social transformations and such radical ones as the twentieth century”. He argues that a
change from industrial workers to knowledge workers has made this great change of
working culture during the last century (Ducker, 2009 p. 177-204.)
According to Northouse (2004 p. 174) “the transformational leadership theory is
concerned with performance of followers and also with developing followers to their
fullest potential”. Yukl (2002 p. 241) adds that “transforming leadership appeals to the
24

25. moral values of followers in an attempt to raise their consciousness about ethical issues
and to mobilize their energy and resources to reform institution”. Ruggierri (2009)
argues that tranformational leader increases their followers interests, respects group‟s
obligations and mission, demonstrates qualities which induce respect and reaching
pride, becomes role models, and examines new prospects for solving problems and
reaching goals by encouraging followers to find new solutions and propose new ideas.
Nissinen (2006) has emphasized that transformational leadership is also near deep
leadership. He argues that both deep leadership and transformational leadership are
stimulating, constructive and interactive relationships where objectives of followers and
leaders come closer to each other and where leaders can become agents for the growth
of others. Transformational leadership considers four factors: 1) idealized
influence/charisma, 2) inspirational motivation, 3) intellectual stimulation and 4)
individualized consideration (Bass and Avolio, 1994 p. 1-9, Mullins, 2007 p. 382,
Northouse, 2004 p. 174-178).
Idealized influence (charisma)
The transformational leaders have the charisma (the idealized influence) and they act
as strong role models for followers (Bass and Avolio, 1994 p. 1-9, McManus, 2006 p.
17, Northouse, 2004 p. 174). They have high standards of moral and they are deeply
respected by followers.
Inspirational motivation
The leaders with inspirational motivation communicate high expectations to followers,
inspiring them through motivation to become committed to and a part of the shared
vision in the organization. (Bass and Avolio, 1994 p. 1-9, Northouse, 2004 p. 175-176)
According to Northouse (2004 p. 176) this kind of manager motivates his personnel to
excel their work through encouraging words and pep talks that clearly communicate the
integral role play in the future growth of the company. This means that manager should
be good at giving speeches, which focus on essence. Manager should be assertive and
get people to listen to him/her. His/her talking should be calming.
Intellectual stimulation
The intellectual stimulation includes leadership that stimulates followers to be creative
and innovative, and to challenge their own beliefs and values as well as those of the
25

26. leader and the organization. This kind of leadership supports followers as they try new
approaches and develop innovative ways of dealing with organizational issues (Bass
and Avolio, 1994 p. 1-9, Northouse, 2004 p. 177.)
Individualized consideration
The individualized consideration represents leaders who provide a supportive climate in
which they listen carefully to the individual needs of followers. Leaders act as coaches
and advisers while trying to assist individuals in becoming fully actualized (Bass and
Avolio, 1994 p. 1-9, Northouse, 2004 p. 177).
Transformational Leadership and Manager’s Use of Social Media
According to Mullins‟s (2007, 382) and Northouse‟s (2004 p. 174-178) transformational
leadership theory there are four factors: 1) idealized influence/charisma, 2) inspirational
motivation, 3) intellectual stimulation and 4) individualized consideration; these four
factors explain also quite well the features needed in manager‟s social media leadership
skills. If a manager, who uses social media tools as part of his/her leadership, is also
charismatic, he/she will get lots of followers on his/her blogs, Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn profiles. A manager, who has skills for using social media tools with
inspirational motivation way is assertive and gets people to listen, look at and also
read his/her presentations on social networks. A manager with intellectual stimulation
supports followers by e.g. sharing documents online and participating online discussion
while his/her followers are trying new approaches and develop innovative ways of
dealing with organizational issues. A manager with individualized consideration social
media skills acts as coach and adviser, who tries to assist individuals in becoming fully
actualized social media online-offline workers.
2.2.3 Open Leadership Theory
Charlene Li (2010) has stated in her Open Leadership theory that while using social
technology, it “can transform the way you lead”. She argues that her research shows,
“the biggest indicator of success has been an open mind set- the ability of leaders to let
go of control at the right time, in the right place and in the right amount” (Li, 2010 p. 8).
She continues by defining open leadership as follows: “having the confidence and
26

27. humanity to give up the need to be in control while inspiring commitment from people to
accomplish goals”. Open leadership fosters new relationship with new rules like:
1) respect that your customers and employees have power,‟
2) share constantly to build trust,
3) nurture curiosity and humility,
4) hold openness accountable,
5) forgive failure (Li, 2010 p. 14-15.)
The Two Basics of the Open Leadership: Sharing and Transforming
Organization’s Culture
The key issue in open leadership is confidence. A leader has to have faith that the
people he/she passes power to will act responsibly. This means that a leader must
understand that there are actually more capable people who can do the things that the
leader does. This requires humility from a leader (Li, 2010 p. 18.)
Ten elements of Sharing
Li (2010 p. 17-48) defines ten elements of the openness as following: A. Open
Information Sharing: 1) Explaining, 2) Updating, 3) Conversing, 4) Open Mic, 5)
Crowdsourcing, 6) Platforms, B. Decision-making: 7) Centralized, 8) Democratic, 9)
Self-managing (Consensus) and 10) Distributed. Explaining and updating are the kind of
information that originates from within the organization. Conversing, Open Mic and
crowdsourcing mean the kind of information where information comes from outside the
organization back into it. Platforms are offering technological solutions for openness in
information sharing. Decision-making four types 1) centralized, 2) democratic, 3) Self-
managing (Consensus) and 4) Distributed are changing because of the openness of the
organizations. No one type of decision-making is best. They just differ in terms of the
degree of control, extent of information shared, and choice of people involved as
appropriate for each situation. (Li, 2010 p. 17-48.)
Organisation’s Culture and Transformation
Li (2010 p. 245) emphasizes that company‟s cultural issues are following: 1) values
drive the vision, 2) leaders set the tone and example for others to follow, 3) extending
the old culture into new and 4) systems and structure sustain the transformation. She
27

28. has developed an action plan to improve transformation towards to open leadership in
organization. The action plan contains seven recommendations: 1) create a sense of
information sharing, 2) identify the values that will carry you through the transformation,
3) lead by example, 4) encourage risk taking; reward risks taken, 5) start small to win
big, 6) institutionalize systems and structures and 7) be patient. (Li, 2010 p. 267-268.)
Mind-sets and Traits
A major theme through open leadership theory is that leadership is about relationships,
and because social technologies are changing relationships, leadership also needs to
change. Li (2010 p. 174-187) defines four open leadership archetypes mind-sets 1)
Cautious Tester, 2) Worried Skeptic, 3) Realist Optimist and 4) Transparent Evangelist,
which are based on four mind-sets: optimistic, pessimistic, independent and
collaborative. The Cautious Testers are both pessimistic and collaborative. They
understand the need to collaborate because they can see the benefits, to the
organization and to themselves, of involving a greater circle of people. Cautious Testers
are willing to test options, plans and new ideas, and to do so with other people but their
enthusiasm for trying new things is tempered by their pessimism. The Realistic
Optimists can see the benefits of being open but also understand the barriers. They
can also work through the tough situations, have the collaborative mind-sets and skills,
and most importantly, know how to overcome organizational obstructions by showing
doubters the genuine benefits of being open and winning their trust. Realistic Optimists
are both collaborative and optimistic. The Worried Skeptics are the opposite of
Realistic Optimists in that they are pessimistic and independent. These people by
nature worry about all things that can go wrong and with an independent mind-set, they
believe that success comes from the strengths and skills of individuals. Transparent
Evangelists, they are “bitten by the technology bug” and they have personally
experienced a transformation and derive tremendous personal satisfaction and joy from
engaging with people through social technologies. Transparent Evangelists are both
independent and optimistic. (Li, 2010 p. 174-187.)
Four Open Driven Objectives: learning, dialog, support and innovation
In her work with companies Li (2010 p. 53) has found that there are four underlying
objectives integrated into almost every successful strategic plan. Li (2010 p. 53-56)
28

29. states that first and foremost, organizations must learn from employees, customers, and
partners before they can do anything else. Organizations and their leaders must be
constantly open for learning. She continues, communication (internal and external)
transforms a relationship from of shouting out one-way messages to a dialog between
equals. And along the way, people in the conversation become more and more
engaged, to the point where they have a dialog without having to be present. People
both inside and outside the organization need help/support at different times.
Creativity/innovation needs to be fostered, both inside the organization.
While using dialog, open leadership also increases employees and customers
engagement to the organization step by step. The first step is watching (e.g. read blogs,
see videos or listen to podcasts). The next step is sharing (e.g. sites on Twitter and
Facebook). The third step into deeper engagement is commenting (e.g. to organisations
blog or site). The fourth step is producing (e.g. writing a blog or create a podcast). The
last and highest step of engagement is curating. Then people become highly and
personally engaged in a community. (Li, 2010 p. 58-62.)
Benefits, Monitoring and Risks in Open Leadership
Benefits
Li (2010 p. 77) has found in her studies that the open-driven objectives all create some
common benefits like: 1) remove friction, 2) scale efforts, 3) enable fast response and 4)
gain commitment. She continues also with the benefits of 1) open learning, 2) open
dialog, 3) open support and 4) open innovations. The benefits of these open leadership
areas are difficult to measure but Li has done also calculations, how to get positive
return of these too (Li, 2010 p. 75-103.) Li (2010 p. 76) adds that leadership should
rigorously examine the benefits of openness but she also argues that an undue
emphasis on hard ROI does no one any good.
Monitoring (measuring the benefits being open)
Li (2010 p. 54) suggests the use of basic monitoring tools (free and paid) to track the
discussions, what the customers are having of the organization. She also suggests that
organisations should evaluate their decision-making processes:1) centralized, 2)
democratic, 3) Self-managing (Consensus) and 4) Distributed, who is involved, what
kind of shared information is used to make the decision, and how effective the decision-
29

30. making process is. Also to improve effectiveness, one choice is to make the decision-
making process more open. Another choices are to consider who is involved in
decision-making or whether better information sharing could improve effectiveness as
well. (Li 2010 p. 47.)
Risks
Li (2010, 211) encourages to risk taking and speedy recovery from failure. She argues
that an inherent behaviour of open leaders is to encourage responsible risk taking. With
risk taking come the inevitable failures, and open leaders must prepare their
organizations for those as well in particular, how to deal with and recover from failure.
(Li, 2010 p. 211). In social media it is not possible to hide failures and therefore there is
a need for a whole different attitude about failing than earlier (Li, 2010 p. 237).
3 METHODOLOGY
This methodology chapter considers first epistemological assumptions of case study
and action research set-up. Then follow research aims and questions, data collection
and analysis. Finally is the evaluation of the research, which considers validity and
ethics.
3.1 Research Set-up, Aims and Questions
A Methodological Set-up; A Focus Group Case Study’s and an Action Research’s
Epistemological Assumptions
This qualitative research focuses on managers‟ experiences of use of social media as
part of his/her leadership. Therefore social media and leadership are presented as
theoretical backgrounds of the research. Facebook was chosen a social media tool for
data collection for the focus group of six participants/managers. Focus group is
structured by the researcher, who has a list of topics/questions that make up the focus
group‟s agenda (Cooper and Shindler, 2008 p. 178-184, Davis, 2007 p. 202-204, James
and Busher, 2009 p. 131). From the epistemological and philosophical assumptions,
this is a case study (Dul and Hak, 2008 p. 4, Yin, 2003 p. 13-14) with action research
(Cooper and Schindler, 2008 p. 185, Gray, 2009 p. 313-334) approach focus on
participant managers‟ and researcher‟s experiences of the use of social media and have
therefore a connection to the constructivism (epistemology) and phenomenology
30

31. (philosophy) research approach. An epistemology means how you know, what you
know and the methods you choose to use in order to test validity of knowledge (Davies,
2007 p. 236). Constructivism rejects the objectivist view of human knowledge. Truth or
meaning is constructed not discovered. People may construct meaning in different
ways, even in relation to the same phenomena. In phenomenological approach humans
are interpreting the world. The aim is to grasp and understand how individuals come to
interpret their and others‟ actions meaningfully. (James and Busher, 2009 p. 7-8.) The
researcher has acted like an action researcher during this research project. She has
used more social media tools as part of her own leadership and her experiences has
been documented to social media leadership blogs (Luukka 2011a, Luukka 2011b).
Therefore Loxman‟s (2006 p. 122) approach to action research managers have been
used as an approach in this research. The study‟s action research part was evaluated
through Loxman‟s suggestions for action research managers in results chapter (4.5).
Research Aims and Questions
The main aim of the research project was to investigate managers‟ social media
leadership experiences, how open leadership theory (Li 2010) works in practical
leadership situations. The other aim was to research how negative experiences,
feelings and face-to-face leading are part of social media leadership. The answers to
these research aims were searched with following four research questions:
1. How do an international group of managers perceive their use of social media as part
of their work now?
2. Can their experiences be related to theory of open leadership (Li 2010)?
3. How do the participants see negative experiences, feelings and face- to face leading
involved in social media leadership?
4. How do the participants see their presence in social media communities developing
in the future?
The second aim for the research project was to expand researcher‟s knowledge and
skills of social media and to find useful practical solutions for the use of social media as
31

32. part of her leadership in an adult education organization. The following fifth research
question was aimed at finding answers to that research aim.
5. How has the researcher‟s experience and use of social media tools changed as a
result of research project?
For the first four research questions primary data was collected by using a private
Facebook discussion group for six international managers; four from Finland, one from
Italy and one from Portugal. For the fifth research question, the secondary data was
collected by researcher‟s participation in discussions on Facebook discussion group
with managers and by her social media blogs.
3.2 Data collection
The primary data of the research has been collected on Facebook‟s social media
leadership discussion group between 1 November – 12 December 2010. First the focus
group was meant to be open for a month for four participants Harry, Tony, Mike and
James. James didn‟t take part in discussion and therefore two new participants Pamela
and Jane were asked to take part in for the two last weeks of group discussion. Their
participation in the group discussion brought a female perspective on social media
leadership to the data. All participants have been renamed with new names Harry,
Tony, Mike, James, Pamela and Jane in this research report (Appendix. 1). This is
because of the anonymity of the participants sought to retain and new names make
participants more human than just naming them from participant 1 to participant 6. The
participants of the research were found vithe researcher‟s online – offline networks.
Harry was her prior colleague, James was her MBA‟s fellow student, Mike was her
friend‟s relative and Pamela was her colleague from National level organisation. Tony
and Jane, they took a contact to researcher after having noticed her announcement of
the MBA‟s research issue on Finnish social media network (SOMETU 2011). The
researcher has met participants Harry, James, Pamela and Jane face-to-face.
The secondary data of the research considers the researcher‟s own participation in
Facebook group discussions with the participants of the study. Researcher‟s blogs are
another part of the secondary data. The researcher has published 14 blogs considering
the theme social media leadership from July 2010 to January 2011. The seven: 1) 15
32

33. September 2010, 2) 9 October 2010, 3) 9 November 2010, 4) 22 November 2010, 5) 19
December 2010, 6) 25 January 2011 and 21 February 2011 are published in Finnish
(Luukka 2011a) and seven: 1) 3 July 2010, 2) 15 September 2010, 3) 11 October 2010,
4) 11 November 2010, 5) 8 December 2010, 6) 11 January 2011 and 7) 6 February
2011 in English (Luukka 2011b).
3.3 Data Analysis
The research questions were divided into smaller sub-discussion themes for the
discussion group. The 15 sub-discussion themes were: the use of social media 1) in the
very beginning, 2) at work now and 3) a vision of social media at work in the future. The
open leadership theory (Li 2010) was divided into eight sub-discussion themes that
were: 1) Sharing/Openness, 2) Cultural Similarities and Differences, 3) Change of
work/transforming, 4) Mind-sets and Traits, 5) Learning, 6) Monitoring, 7) Effectiveness
and 8) Risks. The other issues of social media were: 1) Negative Experiences, 2)
Feelings and 3) Face-to-Face leadership. The fifteenth theme was an opportunity to
give feedback to researcher. Discussion matrix shows participants activity to take part in
each discussion themes (Appendix 2.). The data were analysed by theory based
content analysis (Latvala & Vanhanen-Nuutinen, 2001 p.30-36) also called Top-Down
analysis driven by theory (Chi, 1997). The primary (participants‟ discussions in group
and information got with a questionnaire Appendix 1.) present evidence, how
participants‟ discussions agree or disagree with open leadership theory. The researcher
red participants‟ discussions (original data) through “with a question in her mind”: does
this participant‟s discussion topic‟s content agree or disagree with the theory of open
leadership. The secondary data: 1) researcher‟s discussion in group and researcher‟s
blogs were analyzed with the same method as primary data, but also doing self-
reflection, how her own knowledge and experiences have been expanded during the
research project. The conceptual mode of analysis (Strauss and Corbin,1998 p. 66) was
used as a method to doing line-by-line coding to search from the data properties and
relationships of the concepts. The result chapter includes parts of original data shown
as samples of discussion of each research topic. These samples are quite large but it
was hard to cut them down because after cutting down the story line of discussion topic
would have been lost. Finally both primary and secondary data‟s outcomes were
connected to Li‟s (2010) open leadership theory and also to the other social media
33

34. leadership literature. At the research report the original data samples as evidences are
written in italics, with Arial font number 11 and with line space one.
3.4 Evaluation of the Research
Research’s validity
The concept validity has traditionally been used in quantitative research but it has been
adopted in qualitative research including many others concepts, which refer to the
aspects of validity (Gray, 2009 p. 190.) While doing an evaluation of the research, the
two key terms validity and reliability of the research are often presented (Gray, 2009 p.
190-197, Yin, 2003 p. 33-39). Reliability can also been defined as part of validity as in
this research. This research‟s validity has looked into four aspects of validity: 1)
construct validity, 2) internal validity, 3) external validity and 4) reliability (Yin, 2003 p.
34). Construct validity establishes correct operational measures for the concepts
being studied (Gray, 2009 p. 157, Yin, 2003 p. 34). This can also to be asked by the
following question: Does the research study key concepts which it was aimed to study?
An answer to that question in this study is positive. This research focused on managers‟
use social media as part of their leadership, the theoretical background of the study and
the empirical data were connected together through the research with the same
concepts of social media and leadership. Results of the study are written in the following
way: first primary data results, then secondary data results and finally primary and
secondary data results (empirical data) have been connected to the literature review.
This kind of results presentation increases also construct validity of the research, while
empirical data‟s concepts and theoretical backgrounds concepts are discussed and/or
connected together (Berg 2001, Ely et.al. 2001, Locke et. al., 1998 p. 24-27, Luukka
2007). Internal validity refers to explanatory and causal studies relationships, whereby
certain conditions are shown to lead certain conditions (Gray, 2009 p. 156, Yin, 2003 p.
34). In this descriptive case study with action research approach there was no aim to
study causal relationships and therefore internal validity of the research in not
evaluated. External validity establishes the domain to which a study‟s findings can be
generalized (Gray, 2009 p. 156, Yin, 2003 p. 34). The aim of the research was not to
generalize research outcomes. The aim of the research was to study, whether
managers‟ experiences of the use of social media as part of their leadership can be
related to theory of open leadership (Li 2010) and this has been evaluated in this
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35. research. Reliability demonstrating the operations of a study such as the data
collection procedures can be repeated with the same results (Gray, 2009 p. 158, Yin,
2003 p. 34). The research data collection and analysis have been described detailed
enough in previous chapters so that another researcher could follow and repeat the
research. The same results outcomes could be expected if the new research will be
done to same research participants. It is possible that the participants have learnt from
the first research and therefore the second research could conduct more deeper data of
the research issues or it is of course possible that people change their thinking of the
research issue as time goes by.
Online research’s validity; constructing credibility and authenticity
The researcher acts as an instrument in qualitative research (Tuckett 2005) and
therefore researcher‟s reflexivity voice involves the realization that the researcher is not
a neutral observer, and is implicated in the construction of knowledge (Gray, 2009 p.
498).The previous validity criteria refers to the research which is done reality/offline
study designs. James and Buster (2009 p. 71- 82) suggest that constructing credibility
and authenticity need to look through online research, which has a different kind of
research design than offline studies. People can present different kind of identities while
acting online in social networks like blogs and Facebook (James and Buster, 2009 p.
71). In this study the researcher has met four of the six participants face-to-face. The
researcher has talked on the phone and on Skype with the two participants, whom she
has not met. There is no reason to doubt that the participants aren‟t presenting
authentically their discussion on Facebook group. Everyone wanted to use their real
identity with their own Facebook profile and they knew that their anonymity will be
secured in the research report.
After data collection on Facebook group the researcher has evaluated her skills to lead
online discussion group for data collection. She realized that she should have ensured
that all participants can use Facebook’s group options. Therefore some participants lost
the first week’s discussion opportunity, because they had difficulties to find Facebook’s
group discussion site. Facebook group discussion site gave an opportunity for
participants to discuss asynchronously, non-real-time (James and Buster, 2009 p. 14),
which means that the researcher must also be active, motivate and give feedback to
participants. The researcher of this research noticed that in the middle of data
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36. collection and she stated to participate more in discussions. During online data
collection discussions, the researcher is also a “participant researcher” (James and
Buster, 2009 p. 79).
While using focus groups, the researcher has a list of topics that make up the focus
group‟s agenda (Davies, 2007 p. 202). In this research eight topics were based on Li‟s
(2010) open leadership theory and rest were based on other theoretical background and
researcher‟s own experiences of the use of social media as part of leadership. One
reason why James didn‟t take part in Facebook‟s discussion group was because he was
expecting more open discussion than structured topics of focus group.
James: “Why it was like this, was due to the fact that I had expected an open
discussion, with only the titles given. Instead of that, this had background for each
of the titles, and despite of the stories being relatively short, I didn't find the time to
read them thoroughly enough to participate to the discussions. I'm not stating, that
background information or guidelines for discussions would be bad, especially
when trying to get answers to research topics, but that requires that the
participants read the guidelines first and discuss after that only on those topics.
Unfortunately, in the given time line, I couldn't fine the time to do this, so I dropped
out of the discussions”. On the other hand timing was also bad for James. “I was
a volunteer to join the discussion, but the timing was bad. Not in a sense, that it
would have had anything to do with the organiser, but my workload exploded in my
daily work and I had to try to push forward my own dissertation as well”.
Research Ethics
The high research ethical issues have been followed during the whole research process
from data collection to analyzing data and reporting the research. The researcher has
observed the rights of the participants while doing research. The participant‟s rights like
e.g. privacy and anonymity, voluntary, honest and confidential treatment while collecting
data (Fowler, 2009 p. 163, Saunders et. al., 2009 p. 185). Gaiser and Shneider (2009 p.
26-27) argue that traditional research ethics are a useful starting point while doing
online research. The online environment represents new ethical aspects for researchers
such as informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, privacy (private and public
spaces), virtual personae and copyrights (Gaiser and Shneider, 2009 p. 26-27).The
researcher has described her own thinking of the social media leadership research
issue by writing blogs during the research project. The research report was written in
detailed way that the reader can follow and do the research in the same way, if she/he
would like to. In this research the data was collected in Facebook discussion group. The
participants took part in discussion group voluntarily with his/her real name and in
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37. research report participants‟ were named with new created names, which ensured the
privacy of the participants. The participants didn‟t get any benefit of participation for the
research. Researcher promised to send a copy of the final research report to the
participants, which didn‟t undermine the principle that research participation was a
voluntary act (Fowler, 2009 p. 167).
Research data should be retained to serve future uses (National Academies, 2009 p.
109). On the other hand, data should be used for the purposes for which it has been
collected and the purposes of the clearly explained to participants (James and Bushner,
2009 p. 117). The data of this research has been shown to researcher‟s supervisor after
the data collection ended. The data will be destroyed after the adoption of research,
because participants have not been asked permission for the use of the material for
later research purposes.
4 RESULTS
The results chapter gives answers to the research questions in the following order: 1)
manager‟s use of social media as part of their work now, 2) managers‟ experiences
related to the open leadership theory, 3) managers‟ experiences of the negative issues,
feelings and face-to-face leading in social media leadership, 4) social media as part of
managers‟ leadership in the future and 5) researcher‟s experiences and use of social
media as a result of research project. All results are written in the same format: first
primary data results, then secondary data results and finally primary data and
secondary data results are linked to the literature review. At the end of the chapter there
is a discussion of findings.
4.1 Managers’ Use of Social Media as Part of Their Work Now
Primary data results
Harry can be described as a social media “middle active practical user”.
I work at the University in Italy. It all began with using moodle at work, as a learning platform for
my students. After having used communication platforms during project work and with partners
from all over Europe it became clear, that social media had its advantages and I was going to
use it as a means for communication on a wider scale.
Then there came myspace, which was the missing counterpart for virtual communication in
private life. As it was very US-centered, after 1 year or so I quit and moved to FB. The feeling
was the same as it was for Katri (the researcher) in the beginning: what am I supposed to do
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38. with it. So, a new learning process started and it becomes more and more important to have
certain skills in what I call social media literacy. This means, that you need to learn how to use
those tools and the potential danger they bring along. The internet never forgets, as they
say...And now, slowly but certainly, after having used Facebook for a couple of years, I ask
myself the same question again: what am I supposed to do with it? It bores me more and more,
although it is a very good tool for keeping in touch with friends. And probably - as I prefer to
spend time with real people in the real world - for me it is going to be just that: a tool for keeping
in touch...
Social media plays a lesser part in my work. In countries like Italy (where I live) in Germany
there is actually an ongoing discussion about using for example facebook during working hours.
The reason most likely is, that FB is being mostly used for private purposes and networking,
although it is becoming more and more commercial. Everybody (or almost) at work has a profile
on here, even my employer (as an institution). The administrators of that profile are allowed to
access the platform and they use it mostly for communication. I have reasons to doubt that the
communication (i.e. chat) happening on facebook during working hours is work related.
A more or less official tool at work is Skype, especially its chat function, and a lot of people use
it. Interesting: people who don't know each other so well use e-mails to communicate, people
who know each other better use Skype. Of course there are video conferences, e-learning
environments and the like. The first I don't consider a social media, but technology based
communication tools. The second has most of the time functions like a profile, etc., which would
make it a social media, but is hardly ever used for that, as the alternatives (facebook, myspace,
etc.) are better fitting.
Tony can be described as a social media long time “high active expert user”.
The first touch of social media came to me back in 1999, when I was involved in a mobile
marketing start-up. The concept back then was somethng that would clearly be called social
media nowadays, though the concept came much, much later. The company was dissolved in
2000, and nothing much came out of it in the end.
The real use of social media for me started early 2004 when I was invited to a network called
OpenBC, nowadays better known as Xing. Soon after I was invited to LinkedIn, and started
using those two very actively the same year, and have been ever since.
Facebook and MySpace came in much later, and in between I had been using (seldomly)
several social networks such as Plaxo, Bebo, Ryze, Tagged, Hi5, WAYN, Viadeo, etc. So far
I've identified roughly 2500 different social networks and have a personal profile in about 180-
200. Semi-actively using a couple of dozen and almost daily c. 10 networks.
Other social media tools, such as forums, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, VoIPs, etc. I've used quite a
lot during years and still use many on a daily basis. My current company is more or less built on
using the best of social media in our daily work. And, of course, as management tools as well ;-)
I guess I'm more or less an oddity here, well, not just here. In general I use social media in very
different ways to 99% of other people. Since 1999 (it was not yet called social media, but still)
I've used social networks and social media tools in sales, marketing, document mngmt/file
sharing, virtual workspaces, recruitment, general management, advertising, job hunting and
what not. I've even been hired based on online CV, online referrals (one vague real-life referral),
Interviewed via Skype (not video call) and group chats and ending up working remotely using
social media tools and hosted online remote desktop. I never met anyone in the company
before leaving them a 1,5 years later due to taxation issues. The company was in the UK, I was
in Finland.
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39. In the daily work I use currently 5-20 social networks and social media tools, and 10-60
specialist forums and specialist discussion groups. The numbers have actually quite recently
gone down, I used to use much more social media before. So social media has changed my
work (and life) quite significantly during years, but mostly already in the mid 2000's, it has been
quite stable for the past 3 or so years.
As I've been living abroad for a couple of years, the best means to keep in contact with friends
and family have been social media, and then again the people that I befriended in Denmark and
in the UK are best reached online these days. I guess Katri (the researcher) has found keeping
in touch with her family via Skype and Facebook very useful in the recent years as well, right?
What comes to work as such, social media has since 2004 been the backbone of my working
life success, couldn't have made it without it. It is been a source of business contacts, sales
leads, marketing tool, a place to keep and share files and folders, to communicate via, and so
on. So the impact has been huge. It is hard to imagine where I would be and what I would do
(as work) if I had never got acquainted with social media like I did. A big thank you goes to a
friend who came back to Finland from Silicon Valley after 6-7 years around 1998-1999. He
introduced me to many of these ways of working back in the day.
Pamela can be described as a social media “high active practical user”.
I think the first social media tool for me was LinkedIn where I was invited I don‟t remember how
many years ago…it was unused for quite a while until I activated it again about year ago.
But the real SOCIAL side of social media for me began during my two pregnancies and
maternity leaves 2004-2008. :) I started to follow and comment different discussion groups
dealing with pregnancy, giving birth, raising children, renovating the house etc. And they were
really active!!! How could I capture that activity into my professional communities today? It is the
question of demand and necessity to share.
Then on 2008 I started to work in a project dealing with entrepreneurship training for the
creative field. I signed in Facebook and started a group for people who are somehow involved in
creative entrepreneurship. In one week we had over 50 members and it started to grow and
grow (at the moment 405 members).
Today I use Twitter, Facebook, Google-tools, Ning.com, LinkedIn, Doodle, YouTube,
SlideShare…it is almost impossible to list them because they have become so solid part of my
work as a project manager and network coordinator during the past year. And this will be the
problem as well; there are people who don‟t see these tools as some “new future thing”
anymore and then there are the people who don‟t want to sign in Facebook because their
children are in there. And the both groups are working in the same workinglife that is changing
very fast.
This is the very question of leadership: how to make these people work together effectively, how
to motivate, how to understand the both sides. In business the fast change is necessary but in
public sector and in educational field it will probably be struggling in many ways.
Jane can be described as a social media “high active practical user”. In her
questionnaire (Appendix 1.), she has stated her social media use as follows: Oh, yes! It
has become a way of life, actually. It has taken the place of my morning paper: I start with yle.fi,
then proceed to my media list in Twitter, HBR and from there to my networks in FB and
LinkedIn. Can‟t live without it.. Should I worry..? Nope, not yet, I think.. For there are days, that I
don‟t have an opportunity to do the following “morning routine” and yet I live =).
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40. “ I work in Tax Administration (TA), and am in charge of marketing our eServices. Officially TA is
not yet participating in SOME, however we do have media surveillance on a few main
discussions sites (which, I guess, can be seen as SOME communities). My personal set of
SOME tools consists mainly of Blogger, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook; Delicious, Picasa and
YouTube”.
Mike can be described as a social media “high active expert user”.
Mike works as a General Manager and Owner in ICT- company. Facebook for show off the
human side to your customers, occasionally to advertise job openings to the companies I work
with. LinkedIn, it is very hot for people in IT industry and Marketing and Advertising, use it a lot
to get in touch with people from this areas. Skype as a communication tool… IP Phone, I also
follow some blogs where some Guru‟s share their opinions (Appendix 1.).
Secondary data results
The researcher can be described as a “high active practical user”. It was 2007, when I
started to use Skype to communicate with my daughter, who lives and study in San Francisco. It
was a huge experience to discuss and see her face with also non-verbal signs, if everything
was ok or not. 2008, I went to Facebook (FB). First I was very abashed. I didn't know, what to
do there and why be there. I went to FB because both of my daughters were there and FB was
everyday communication tool for them. I kept very strict openness policy, who I invited or
accepted to my "friend" in FB until middle of September 2010. During this MBA dissertation, I've
changed my SOME- openness policy more open. I've also learnt to use FB's group discussion
tool, where I can regulate my openness- policy as I want. I write/discuss in FB like on any web-
pages. Now FB is part of my everyday life :).
“I work as a vice principal in an adult eduction organisation. I decided to do my MBA
dissertation of the theme "managers use of social media in leadership", because in our
organisation managers don't use social media (SOME) in their work. The students are in
Facebook and quite many teachers use online platforms and also blogs as part of their
teaching. Our organisation's leadership culture is that we keep up face to face- meeting 80-90
% of the time we work. Quite often wrong people are in meetings and I feel that meetings are
mostly waist of time. I feel that I'm bored to this kind of leadership culture...”
Researcher has also written in her social media blog 8 December 2010 (Luukka 2011b):
Three months ago in August 2010, I used Facebook and Skype for my private online social
networking. After that I‟ve taught myself to use over 15 social media tools. I‟ve learnt that
Facebook has much more opportunities than just being a connection tool with my friends and
family. While I‟ve used these SOME- tools, I‟ve realised that the key question is not in the use of
SOME- tools. Instead, the question is, how to participate in the SOME- communities, that these
SOME- tools give me an opportunity.
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41. Primary and secondary data results’ connections to literature review
Participants of the research and the researcher have been nominated with their activity
of use of social media as middle activity like Harry, who does not use social media
everyday and Tony, Pamela, Jane, Mike and researcher were high activity users, while
using social media tools everyday. Tony and Mike were nominated also as social
media expert users that because social media was a content of their work. The others
were social media practical users who used social media as a part of their work for
practical reasons to improve their work. Li (2010 p. 174-187) has named four open
leadership archetypes: 1) Cautious Tester, 2) Worried Skeptic, 3) Realist Optimist
and 4) Transparent Evangelist, which are based on four mind-sets: optimistic,
pessimistic, independent and collaborative. Tony and Mike instead of experts could also
be nominated as Transparent Evangelists, while they are “bitten by the technology bug”
and they have personally experienced a transformation and derive tremendous personal
satisfaction and joy from engaging with people through social technologies. (Li, 2010 p.
178.) The rest of the participants and the researcher instead of practical users
nomination could also be nominated as Realistic Optimists because of their attitudes
towards to social media were so realistic. The Realistic Optimists can see the benefits
of being open but also understand the barriers. They also can work through the tough
situations, have the collaborative mind-sets and skills, and most important, know how to
overcome organizational obstructions by showing doubters the genuine benefits of
being open and winning their trust. (Li, 2010 p. 175.) Two archetypes Cautious Tester
and Worried Skeptic are presented later in chapter 4.2.6.
4.2 Managers’ Experiences Related to Theory of Open Leadership
4.2.1 Sharing in Open Leadership
Primary data results
Three participants Jane, Tony and Pamela all from Finland took part in social media‟s
sharing/openness discussion. Jane said “This is a tough one.. perhaps a few thoughts
based on my personal experiments. The shade of tone can be explained with a lonely position
of marketing in public sector. When you are a lone ranger, not many colleagues share the
enthusiasm of your field of expertise. Thus, it has been a great help for me to share thoughts
and experiences within my peer network. Benchmarking and developing ideas together across
organizational borders has proven to be easier than I thought”. Tony continued: “I see the
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42. openness being a must if you decide to use social media in management. People must be given
the chance to express their thought and speak their minds if they want to be included in
decision-making or at least innovating. If social media is used 'just' as a way of tracking peoples
activities, then we're heading to the wrong direction for sure. Crowdsourcing is one of the best
and most interesting ways of benefiting from social media, and people love sharing their ideas
and participating these days.
Pamela was worried about her organization‟s situation where they have decided to use
new some-tool for extra- and intranet co-operation and said: “neither of our executive
directors has ever used social media tools as part of their work or free time! “ She continued:
“I am proud and happy that they gave us permission and possibility and trusted us to step
ahead to the new time of sharing and transparency. However, I am a little bit worried because I
think them as directors should be far more interested of this "new" tool and understand its'
possibilities as part of their leadership and cultural change of our whole organization”.
Secondary data results
The researcher argued in the SOME FB-group that “Although, I think that knowledge
sharing/openness might be the key issue, how social media will be or will not be succeed in
leadership. I assume public and private organisations have different kind of sharing/openness
policy and/or organisation cultures”. She continued: “Therein lays the challenge for me as a
representative of school organization. Teaching work culture has been based solely in alone
working culture and then some of these teachers are chosen to work as managers, who carry
out in their management this "alone working culture" again. A change from this alone working
culture to co-operative, sharing, open working culture by using social media is going to be the
"tough one" like Jane said earlier”.
Primary and secondary data results’ connections to literature review
Li (2010 p. 17-48) defines ten elements of the openness as follows: A. Open
Information Sharing: 1) Explaining, 2) Updating, 3) Conversing, 4) Open Mic, 5)
Crowdsourcing, 6) Platforms, B. Decision-making: 7) Centralized, 8) Democratic, 9)
Self-managing and 10) Distributed. Explaining and updating are the kind of information
that originate from within the organization. Conversing, Open Mic and crowdsourcing
mean the kind of information where information comes from outside the organization
back into it. Platforms offer technological solutions for openness in information sharing.
Decision-making four types 1) centralized, 2) democratic, 3) Self-managing
42