The Importance Of Social Media In The Workplace

A brief background to the research will be provided. Here, the importance social media has on leadership has been identified. The background of the research was followed by the research problem statement, research question, proposition, research objective, research analysis and the importance/significance of the research and the structure of the report.

This study evaluates the impact of social media in leadership in the workplace, the prevalence of the tool. A further evaluation of the impact of social media on how leaders perceive it as a communication channel within the workplace and their engagement with their employees using the tool. Five organisations from private and public sector were used in Cape Town and Johannesburg, in the

Mayfield (2008) mentioned that the discerning characteristics of social media involve contribution, accessibility, dialogues, groups and linkage as compared to traditional media which only delivers content.

Russo, Watkins, Kelly & Chan (2008) define social media as the promotion of internet conversation with associated participation. Kent (2010) define social media as a collective conversational platform that allows for reactional exchanges between two people or groups, the author also mentioned the contemporary ways that social media facilitates like the actual time and proximity that it can be accessed at any suitable time and space of the users

Even though there had been studies conducted on social media impact in leadership. Lee (2012) revealed that social media was pervasive and that corporate leaders had used it in different tools for communicating in the workplace. The author found that there was a widespread of social media usage in different organisations which not only showed the relationship between leaders and employees but also an intensive use of the different tools for different reasons like external interactions, formal and informal

For example, the woolworths saga where a customer posted on facebook, Youtube and twitter and alleged that they found a rat inside their pie. This went viral on social media and the leadership of Woolworths had to respond quickly with crisis management. Therefore the research seeks to further emphasise the impact of social media in leadership.

1.4 Research question

RQ1: How prevalent and what types of social media are used by corporate leaders for communication with the employees in the workplace?

RQ2: What are the purposes of use for each type of social media utilised in the workplace?

RQ3: What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in the workplace?

RQ4: To what extent do corporate leaders perceive the use of social media as an effective internal communication