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The practice of frontline employees articulating their brand voice and posting work-related content on social media has emerged; however, employee brand equity (EBE) research has yet to be linked to employees’ social media activity. This paper aims to take a methods-based approach to better understand employees’ roles as influencers. As such, its objective is to operationalize and apply the three EBE dimensions – brand consistent behavior, brand endorsement and brand allegiance – using Instagram data.

This qualitative research uses a case study of employee influencers at SoulCycle, a leading North American fitness company and examines 100 Instagram images and 100 captions from these influential employees to assess the three EBE dimensions.

Brand consistent behavior (what employees do) was the most important EBE dimension indicating that employees’ social media activities align with their employer’s values. Brand allegiance (what employees intend to do in the future) whereby employees self-identify with their employer on social media, followed. Brand endorsement (what employees say) was the least influential of the three EBE dimensions, which may indicate a higher level of perceived authenticity from a consumer perspective.

This research makes three contributions. First, it presents a novel measure of EBE using public Instagram data. Second, it represents a unique expansion and an evolution of King et al.’s (2012) model. Third, it considers employees’ work-related content on social media to understand employees’ role as influencers and their co-creation of EBE, which is currently an under-represented perspective in the internal branding literature.

Given that an increasing number of social media platforms allow employees to share company-related information, the present study seeks to understand their complicated motivations for social media behaviors. Specifically, this study explores the antecedents of employees' positive and negative company-related information-sharing intentions on two distinctive social media platforms, personal (e.g. Facebook) and anonymous social networking sites (e.g. Glassdoor).

An online survey was conducted with 419 full-time employees in the United States from various industry sectors.

Individual (enjoyment, venting negative feelings, and self-enhancement), interpersonal (bonding and bridging ties), and organizational (organization–employee relationship and perceived external prestige) factors are considerably and distinctly associated with employees' behavioral intentions on different social media platforms.

This study is among the first to understand employees' communicative behaviors on social media (sECB) by linking diverse levels of motivational factors: individual, interpersonal, and organizational using a theoretical framework of socioecological model (SEM). This study also provides significant practical guidelines for organizational leaders and platform operators by explicating the dynamics of employee motives in engaging in a variety of social media platforms.

Many fresh graduates have unrealistic career expectations. When reality sets in after graduation, they may be disappointed. Due to factors such as the limited availability of feasible alternative career options, employees who have to stay in jobs they dislike may feel trapped. To alleviate the resulting stresses, they may engage in avoidance coping strategies, such as non-work-related social media use, to discharge their mental strains. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the perception of being trapped can result in the adoption of avoidance coping strategies, and how these strategies can influence individual performance and social media use.

Based on the literature on avoidance coping strategy, goal orientation theory, and performance theory, the authors proposed a theoretical model on how the avoidance coping strategy of an individual can influence their performance and workplace behavior.

The authors propose that when a fresh graduate feels “trapped” in a job, the stresses experienced may cause them to hide behind their defense mechanisms. An avoidance coping strategy may then be adopted, and this will influence the individual’s workplace behavior (in terms of non-work-related use of social media) and performance.

If an avoidance coping strategy is an antecedent to non-work-related use of social media, then controlling the use of social media in the workplace may only cause these employees to switch to other forms of self-distraction (for instance, spending more time chatting with colleagues). Under some circumstances, the use of such control mechanisms may even give cyberloafers stronger urges to use social media for non-work-related purposes. If this is the case, managers should reconsider their current approach in handling the related behavior.

If the cause of non-work-related use of social media in the workplace is an avoidance coping strategy, then the engagement of such workplace behaviors should not be considered “intentionally harmful actions”. One important criterion for workplace behavior to qualify as a type of counterproductive behavior is that such behavior must be conducted to be intentionally harmful. Given this, the resulting actions of an avoidance coping strategy should not be considered a form of counterproductive behavior, and the authors should reconsider the conceptualization of cyberloafing provided in the organizational literature.

The authors believe that this research represents one of the first attempts to bridge the gap between clinical and managerial literature. It attempts to explain non-work-related use of social media in the workplace from the perspective of trapped perception and avoidance coping strategy, and it argues that not all forms of non-work-related use of social media in the workplace are instances of cyberloafing.

The primary objective of this investigation was to explore how employees’ utilization of social media for work-related purposes impacts their service innovation behavior, both directly and through the intermediary mechanisms of knowledge management and employees’ risk-taking.

In developing its conceptual framework, this study has drawn upon the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory. To test its hypotheses, this study has surveyed 241 financial analysts from ten Iranian financial companies and has employed variance-based structural equation modeling (specifically, PLS-SEM) with the assistance of “WarpPLS 8.0 software.”

The findings revealed that employees’ work-related use of social media positively influences their service innovation behavior using knowledge management, encompassing knowledge sharing and acquisition capability as well as employee risk-taking. However, this influence is not directly significant.

To the best of our knowledge, this study marks the first instance in which the effect of work-related use of social media on employee service innovation behavior directly and through the mediating roles of knowledge management and risk-taking has been investigated through the lens of the SOR paradigm, especially in the financial sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of social media guidelines (SMGs), as well as their impact on control mutuality, a sub-dimension of the organization–employee relationship (OER). A total of two studies compare guidelines with a focus that is either predominantly incentive or restrictive. In addition, they investigate the moderating effect of guideline writing style and enforcement.

In total, two online experiments were conducted among Belgian employees. Participants read a social media policy manipulated in terms of focus (restrictive vs incentive) and style (conversational vs corporate; Study 1) or enforcement (signature requested vs not requested; Study 2).

Incentive guidelines increase employee branding behavior more than their restrictive counterparts, while also safeguarding employees' perceived control mutuality. However, solid SMGs will not compensate for an organization's bad reputation among employees. The guidelines' style and manner of enforcement did not seem to matter.

Communication executives can use our findings to draft SMGs in a way that increases opportunities (e.g. ambassadorship) and reduces risks (e.g. criticism) associated with employee social media use.

Prior research on SMGs is predominantly descriptive and focused on the organizational perspective. This research paper contributes to both theory and practice by studying the causal impact of these guidelines on employees.

Over the past decade, the rapid evolution of social media has impacted the field of human resource management in numerous ways. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought to begin an investigation of the myriad of ways that social media impacts organizations. To date, research evidence on a range of HR-related topics are just beginning to emerge, but are scattered across a range of diverse literatures. The principal aim of this chapter is to review the current literature on the study of social media in HRM and to integrate these disparate emerging literatures. During our review, we discuss the existent research, describe the theoretical foundations of such work, and summarize key research findings and themes into a coherent social media framework relevant to HRM. Finally, we offer recommendations for future work that can enhance knowledge of social media’s impact in organizations.

To advance the theoretical understanding of employees' advocacy on social media, this study aims to propose and test an integrative model that incorporates individual and organizational antecedents. Drawing from the relationship management theory in public relations and online behavior literature, the model specifically examines the collective impacts of the social media-related behavioral motivations of individuals and the quality of employee–organization relationship (EOR) on their positive information-sharing intentions about their company on personal social media.

An online survey was conducted with 419 full-time employees in the USA who use social media.

The results of an online survey with full-time employees in the USA showed that the EOR influenced by symmetrical internal communication significantly increases employees' advocacy intentions and social media-related motivations. Considerable and distinct effects of individuals' positive behavioral motivations on social media (i.e. self-enhancement, altruism, enjoyment) on advocacy intentions are also found.

This study is among the first attempts to test the value of strategic internal communication and relationship management approach in enhancing employee advocacy on the digital environment, social media and their motives of using such channel for benefiting their company.

Situated between the literature on internal branding and user-generated content, this study aims to demonstrate the effect of employee-generated content (EGC) on consumers’ purchase intentions and positive word of mouth (WOM).

The conceptual model was empirically tested using structural equation modeling based on a sample of 442 participants.

The findings support a sequential mediation model in which employee-created social media content impacts perceptions of brand citizenship behavior (BCB) and perceptions of expertise, which in turn increases purchase intention and WOM.

Based on the findings, this research suggests that employee ambassador programs can work to attract employees with an interest in brand-related social media content creation. Facilitating EGC through support, empowerment and reinforcement rather than traditional control mechanisms is recommended.

This research introduces the concept of EGC and employee content creators while extending the literature on perceived BCB by empirically demonstrating its relationship with perceived expertise and positive consumer behavior outcomes.

This study aims to investigate the antecedents and outcomes of excessive use of personal social media at work. The prevalence of personal social media in the work environment can easily lead to excessive use and negative consequences. Understanding the predictive factors and negative consequences of employees' excessive use of personal social media at work is important to develop their appropriate use of social media and improve their job performance.

Based on dual-system theory and the person-environment fit model, this study develops a research model to examine the effect of habit and self-regulation on excessive use of personal social media at work and that of the outcomes of excessive use on employee job performance through strain. This study conducts a questionnaire survey on 408 employees to test the research model and hypotheses empirically.

Results suggest that the imbalance between habit and self-regulation drives excessive personal social media use of employees at work. Furthermore, excessive use of personal social media has a strong impact on employee strain, which can significantly decrease job performance.

First, this study considers excessive use of personal social media at work as a result of two different cognitive systems, that is, an automatic system and a controlled system, thereby extending the dual-system theory to explain excessive use of personal social media in the work context. Second, unlike previous studies that focused on the outcomes or explored the antecedents of excessive social media use at work respectively, the study employs the person-environment fit model and examines the systematic influence of excessive social media use at work from a broad perspective by linking its antecedents and outcomes.

This study examines the effects of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online engagement and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions about a company. Specifically, it investigates how employee post characteristics including valence and content and employer reputation jointly influence publics' online and offline behaviors.

A 2 (post valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (post content: organization-related vs. job-related) × 2 (employer reputation: good vs. bad) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to view a stimulus social media post created by a fictitious company employee, reflecting one of the eight experimental conditions on a random basis. After viewing, they were requested to report their online engagement intentions (i.e., “like,” “share” and “comment”) with the post and offline WOM intentions about the company.

The experimental results showed that participants expressed more “like” intentions when they viewed a positive post than a negative post. Further, they were more likely to “comment” on a job-related post as opposed to an organization-related post. In addition, a significant interaction effect between post valence and employer reputation on publics' online engagement was found, which in turn influenced their offline WOM intentions about the company.

This study is among the first empirical attempts to examine the effectiveness of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online and offline behaviors. The experimental findings highlight the importance of managing employee relations from a corporate reputation perspective.