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

• Author: Sun Kyong Lee,Michael W. Kramer,Yijia Guo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12147
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Date: 01 November 2019

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

244 New Technology, Work and Employment

New Technology, Work and Employment 34:3

ISSN 1468-005X

Social media affordances in entry‐level

employees’ socialization: employee agency

in the management of their professional

impressions and vulnerability during early

stages of socialization

Sun Kyong Lee , Michael W. Kramer and Yijia Guo

This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted

with social media during three stages of organizational so-

cialization. They navigated between four different media af-

fordances (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 ap-

plicants realized visibility and persistence in relation to insti-

tutional 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 under-

Sun Kyong Lee (sunklee@ou.edu), Department of Communication, The University of Oklahoma. Sun

Kyong (Sunny) Lee is an Associate Professor of the Department of Communication at the University

of Oklahoma. She studies socio‐cultural implications of new communication technologies such as mo-

bile phones, social media, and articial intelligence operating system. Her published work related to

technology issues can be found in Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, New Media & So-

ciety, Computers in Human Behavior and Management Communication Quarterly. She also examines

socio‐cultural dynamics of organizational communication networks in the context of various ethnic

and religious immigrant communities and related work can be found in Communication Research,

International Journal of Intercultural Relations, and Asian Journal of Communication.

Michael W. Kramer, The University of Oklahoma. Michael W. Kramer is professor and chair of the

Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma, USA. His organizational research pri-

marily focuses on employee transitions as part of the assimilation/socialization process such as new-

comer entry, transfers, exit, and corporate mergers. His group research focuses on decision making,

membership, and leadership. His research has appeared in leading communication journals such as

Human Communication, Research, Communication Monographs, Journal of Applied Communication

Research, and Management Communication Quarterly, as well as other related journals, such as Acad-

emy of Management Journal, Small Group Research, and Human Relations. He has written books on

uncertainty management and socialization, and recently has coedited three books on volunteers and

nonprot organizations.

Yijia Guo, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Yijia Guo is an Assistant

Professor at the University of Southern California, Department of Business Communication. Her re-

search interests include identity development and strategic negotiation in various international orga-

nizational contexts. She investigates identity in organizational culture, conict management, emotion

management, communication technology use in business (e.g. social media, mobile) and leadership

framing. Her research appears in Human Relations,International Journal of Conict Management, and

Western Journal of Communication. She also co‐edited a book, with Gail Fairhurst, The Power of Fram-

ing (Chinese edition) (Henan: The Elephant Press).

Media affordances and employee socialization 245

standing coworkers and company culture, during metamorphosis,

most interviewees adopted passive information seeking strat-

egies and experienced a paradoxical tension between the en-

abling 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.

Keywords: social media affordance, organizational socialization, impression manage-

ment, entry‐level employees, communication technology, paradoxical tension.Work-

place socialization is the communicative process through which individuals join

organizations, develop expectations, and adopt organizational roles (Jablin, 2001).

Various social interactions, including those with coworkers and supervisors, provide

opportunities for employees to learn power dynamics and inuential actors in the or-

ganization. While early research focused primarily on employees’ face‐to‐face interac-

tions during organizational socialization (Van Maanen and Schein, 1979; Miller and

Jablin, 1991), computer‐mediated communication, including email, instant messaging,

or social media, greatly inuences socialization simply because so much workplace

communication is now mediated through technologies.

Communication via social media particularly allows employees to create, consume,

and share content with colleagues (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Many companies have

adopted social media for both internal and external communication (DiMicco etal.,

2008; Farrell etal., 2008; Leonardi and Treem, 2012). Although social media research in

employment contexts has ourished, how entry‐level employees, given their lower

power positions in the workplace, interact with social media during socialization is

relatively unknown.

Treem and Leonardi (2012) suggested social media’s essential roles in three broad

organizational processes: workplace socialization, knowledge sharing, and power dy-

namics. Few studies have focused on social media use during organizational socializa-

tion (Gonzalez etal., 2015), whereas studies on knowledge sharing via social media are

abundant (Majchrzak etal., 2013; Ellison etal., 2015; Leonardi, 2015). Most studies fo-

cused on enterprise social media (ESM) that is designed for internal‐only communica-

tion within large corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, or HP (see Leonardi etal., 2013

for a comprehensive review). Employees working for small‐ and mid‐size companies

still do not have access to ESM, and how entry‐level employees in smaller, and/or

non‐IT focused organizations use public social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and

LinkedIn, as part of their organizational socialization is understudied.

Media affordance (Gibson, 1986; Hutchby, 2001) provides a conceptual tool for ex-

amining employees’ social media interactions and their potential consequences. Social

media foster the constitution and distribution of metaknowledge (i.e. who knows what

or whom within the organization) and facilitate collaborations (Leonardi etal., 2013).

Scholars note, however, that social media can be a double‐edge sword since increasing

opportunities for information sharing across boundaries (e.g. status, hierarchy, per-

sonal and professional) creates additional impression management issues (Skeels and

Grudin,2009; Gibbs etal., 2013). To enhance understanding of social media affordances

in both their enabling and constraining aspects (Gibson, 1986; Hutchby, 2001), this

study analyzed entry‐level employees’ interactions with social media during three

stages of socialization (anticipatory, encounter, and metamorphosis).

Four distinct social media affordances (visibility, editability, persistence, and associ-

ation) are expected to be closely linked to various socialization processes and outcomes

(Treem and Leonardi, 2012). This study explored the role of these affordances across

the rst three stages of organizational socialization. Entry‐level employees from vari-

ous types and sizes of organizations shared their experiences through interviews, and

our analyses showed how each affordance was realized, sometimes contradictory to

each other, in various socialization stages.