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

This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted with social media during three stages of organizational socialization. They navigated between four different media affordances (persistence, editability, visibility, and association) while experiencing them as both enabling and constraining in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New technology, work, and employment work, and employment, 2019-11, Vol.34 (3), p.244-261
Main Authors: Lee, Sun Kyong, Kramer, Michael W., Guo, Yijia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boundaries
Colleagues
communication technology
Coping strategies
Corporate culture
Employees
entry‐level employees
impression management
Impressions
Information seeking behavior
Interviews
Job applicants
Mass media
Organizational socialization
paradoxical tension
Social media
social media affordance
Social networks
Socialization
Uncertainty
Visibility
Vulnerability
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Summary:This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted with social media during three stages of organizational socialization. They navigated between four different media affordances (persistence, editability, visibility, and association) while experiencing them as both enabling and constraining in different socialization stages. Qualitative interview data analysis revealed during anticipatory socialization, job applicants realized visibility and persistence in relation to institutional and individualized socialization. During encounter, new employees managed personal and professional life boundaries carefully against the association and visibility affordances. Although some participants used both public and enterprise social media for obtaining job‐related information and understanding coworkers and company culture, during metamorphosis, most interviewees adopted passive information seeking strategies and experienced a paradoxical tension between the enabling and constraining affordances of social media. Findings are discussed with regards to employees’ exertion of agency in managing their professional impressions and coping with high levels of uncertainty and vulnerability during early stages of socialization.
ISSN:0268-1072
1468-005X
DOI:10.1111/ntwe.12147