PERSONAL SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE AND ITS IMPACT ON ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY: AN EXPLORATION OF...

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATION THEORY AND BEHAVIOR, 15 (4), 469-495 WINTER 2012

PERSONAL SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE AND ITS IMPACT ON ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY: AN EXPLORATION OF THEORY

AND PRACTICE

Karabi C. Bezboruah and Martinella M. Dryburgh*

ABSTRACT. In the internet era, the boundaries between public and private lives of government employees are often blurred, resulting in enhanced concerns about administrative accountability and effectiveness. By adopting a multi-step qualitative methodology involving internet survey and analysis of illustrative examples, this research explores and examines how social media policies could assist in keeping the public and private lives of civil servants distinct. We find that very few public sector agencies have adopted social media policies in an attempt to regulate employee behavior. We conclude that social media sites, both private and official, could be an effective administrative tool if harnessed properly. We offer certain recommendations and strategies based on our findings that could assist in accomplishing the principles of ethical administration.

INTRODUCTION

In today’s cyber-networked world, access to and participation in social media sites has become immensely popular. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have the power to “significantly alter citizen engagement, to change the rules of the game” (Hand & Ching, 2011, p. 363) by providing citizens a higher level of contact with all levels of government. Members of the public -------------------------------- * Karabi C. Bezboruah, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor, School of Urban and Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Arlington. Her teaching and research interests include management of public and nonprofit organizations, strategic planning, organizational change, and organizational ethics. Martinella M. Dryburgh, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Instructor, Master of Liberal Studies program, Southern Methodist University. Her research interests include technology’s impact on society and ethics in public service.

Copyright © 2012 by Pracademics Press

470 BEZBORUAH & DRYBURGH

can use social media to learn about the political views of the men and women aspiring for elected offices, new legislation being enacted in their states, and any activities happening at their local government offices. While these forms of media can be very effective for information exchange between government and citizens resulting in enhanced citizen participation in the administrative processes, very little is known about government employees’ participation in personal social media sites and the resultant impact on the public image of bureaucracies. For example, Robert Henderson, an 18-year veteran of the Nebraska State troopers was fired from his job after it was discovered that he joined racist web sites and actively participated in discussions on the sites during his off-duty hours. Although Henderson, who is White, claimed he was only venting frustration about his wife leaving him for a Hispanic man, he was dismissed from his position. The state Attorney General claimed that Henderson’s actions as an individual during his off-duty hours brought negative attention to the entire force (“Supreme Court Rules,” 2009). Another example is that of East Palo Alto Detective Rod Tuason, who is being investigated by his superiors for comments he made on his Facebook page. Essentially, Tuason made several comments advocating that gun rights advocates who follow California’s open-carry law should be intimidated, harassed, and shot. The comments were noticed by a pro-gun blogger who also started a Facebook page calling for Tuason’s termination (Miller, 2010).

It is apparent that public servants have higher ethical expectations than private sector employees do because they represent the people and work for their benefit (Zajac, 1997). These expectations go beyond the limits of financial accountability to include respecting the rights and dignity of people and are meant for the benefit of all stakeholders. Codes of ethics, standards of conduct, and other internal agency guidelines serve as regulatory measures for channeling employee behavior. At a time when the importance of administrative accountability is increasing, the technological advancements in cyber communication have somewhat assaulted the image of the public sector due to the personal views and opinions expressed by public administrators in these forums. Specifically, citizens and employers may question the decisions that the public administrators make, and the manner in which they make their on-the-job decisions based on their opinions expressed on personal social media. These publicly accessible opinions or views can cast the

PERSONAL SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE AND ITS IMPACT ON ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY 471

public administrator as a risk to government services, or worse, as having the potential to reduce public trust in government. In order to explore these assaults on governance, this paper looks at participation in personal social media by public administrators and explores how administrative ethics can play a significant role in addressing this challenge. There are two specific research questions that drive this article: First, as social media allows the private lives of government employees to become public, how does this phenomenon affect principles of administrative ethics? And second, can the effective use of social media by public administrators enhance trust in government?

This research addresses the issue of ethical responsibilities of public administrators in a cyber-networked world at a time when accessing and using social media sites both on and off the job is as easy and popular as owning a mobile computer or a smart-phone. While several government agencies have adopted policies regarding the use of social media (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010), very little is known about the issue of the public sector’s image as a result of the use of personal social media by public administrators. Participation in such social media forums by public administrators results in heightened accountability concerns for the individuals as well as their employers. These accountability issues raise the possibility of potential backlash from stakeholders and might lead to the establishment of policies to address social media usage. Therefore, this article argues the effective use of personal social media based on a multi-step methodology by incorporating Dr. Terry Cooper’s (1998) principles of administrative ethics.

The organization of this paper is as follows: First, we present the theoretical framework followed by a review of the pertinent literature. The next segment describes in detail the multi-step mixed methodology applied in the data collection process that leads to the illustrative examples and analysis sections. Next, we discuss the findings and the conclusions derived from the analysis.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The role of public administrators is constantly evolving as society moves from a modern to a post-modern paradigm (Cooper, 1998). This change in perspective is important, as it is crucial, Cooper (1998) argued, for describing ethically questionable situations as well


as for developing realistic and contextually appropriate solutions to these problems. The clash between the modern foundations of public administration and the postmodern worldview leads to confusion when contending with ethical issues.

Administrative Ethics in the Postmodern Society

Cooper’s (1998) principles of administrative ethics guide this research. His approach to administrative ethics focuses on the factors that guide proper decision-making within the individual’s role as a public administrator. This research focuses on one factor in particular, that of role multiplicity. Cooper (1998) stated that as society moves towards a more complex postmodern worldview, the individual’s roles in society also become more complex. Both social and personal identities become more complex as individuals are identified by the many different roles they play in society. In a postmodern world, individuals are expected to constantly prioritize their professional and personal roles, as well as professional and personal ethics (Cooper, 1998). This is especially difficult when the two roles are in conflict (Cooper, 1998). This research suggests that the individual’s online role as a cybercitizen can also be in conflict with the individual’s professional and personal roles.

As Cooper (1998) stated, technological advances in the postmodern society have blurred the distinction between the public administrator as a professional and as an individual private citizen. This means that the public administrator’s decision-making may be strongly affected by his role as a private citizen. According to Cooper (1998), the lack of separation between private life and work life has contributed to shifts in the understanding of ethics in public life. Specifically, the citizenry is increasingly intolerant of the idea that unethical conduct in private life will not affect the individual’s public service role (Cooper, 1998).

Technology has greatly impacted the environment in which administrative professionals work. Organizations are less vertical and more horizontal, employees are dispersed across a greater geographical distance, and they are required to make use of the latest advancements in information technology (Lynch & Lynch, 2002; Macaulay & Lawton, 2006). Organizational relationships are based more on information and knowledge instead of hierarchy and control. Employees across organizations, including lower-level


employees are expected to work independently and make more ethical decisions than before (Lynch & Lynch, 2002). Additionally, government employees are working with a wide range of stakeholders both inside and outside their organizations. In a postmodern public organization, there is a high degree of emphasis on building partnerships, forming strong coalitions, and managing various networks (Macaulay & Lawton, 2006). This reliance on information and independent decision-making by employees at all levels of public organizations makes the availability of employee’s personal information online particularly problematic. When details of a public administrator’s private life can be found online, the information can be used to question whether the individual’s professional decision-making is affected by these private thoughts and actions. The nature of how private information affects public decision-making is a direct reflection of society’s changing attitudes towards what is considered private and what is considered public, especially when information is publicly available online.

The Changing Nature of Public vs. Private in a Digital World

Attempting to define privacy for an individual is difficult as the notion of privacy varies across individuals, societies and cultures. It is especially difficult in the postmodern age when technology has made it possible for previously private actions to make their way onto public forums. According to Schauer (2000), information is private if a general belief arises that it is inappropriate for the public at large to have knowledge of an individual’s activities, behaviors, or personal characteristics. Dobel (1999) stated that privacy is the ability of an individual to protect certain areas of his life from examination by others. Where privacy becomes questionable is when individuals place information on the internet; the information may be considered private by some and public by others. This is especially true now that sharing information via social media, blogs, and other web sites has become a part of everyday life for many individuals, including government employees.

Public administrators, like other individuals, may choose to actively participate in online social media during their time away from work. These individuals have the option to mark social media as private when they set up accounts using personal email, make full use of the account’s privacy settings, and protect the account with personal passwords (Bussing, 2011). On the other hand, there are


individuals, public employees included, who want their social media sites accessible to others and do not use privacy measures. For example, a public administrator may run an online blog during off-work hours that is not password protected and is easily viewed by anyone online. In other words, privacy online may be thought of in terms of accessibility, or as Moshirnia (2009) stated, the only protection between private comments and public viewing is a password.

The changing nature of privacy is causing society to question how private information can relate to professional actions and how judgments are made about individuals based on the appearance of wrongdoing online. As this research asserts, the image that a government employee presents online can have a profound effect on an individual’s roles as a citizen and government employee. The information the individual shares with others can cause great embarrassment to the individual as well as to the employee’s organization when the public learns the details of the intimate information. In addition, the individual can face disciplinary action, up to and including termination, if it is deemed that the personal information can greatly affect the professional role.

How does a public employee’s role as a private citizen on the Internet affect his professional role as a public administrator? This is where the intersection between privacy and civil service careers is affected due to appearance and relevance standards. According to Thompson (1992), the appearance standard can be summed up in one line: “Appearing to do wrong while doing right is really doing wrong” (p. 257). When government employees share private information on the internet, they may give the appearance that they are engaging in activities that contradict the ethics of their profession. For example, the public may question a police officer’s ability to uphold the law if he shares pictures of himself engaging in illegal activities on a social media site.

While appearances can be subjective, there is also a question of how relevant an employee’s private actions are to his or her professional conduct. As Thompson (2006) and Schauer (2000) asserted, while there are aspects of a government employee’s private life that are relevant to how they will perform their job, the degree of relevance between private conduct and professional duties is debatable. It is so debatable that, in fact, members of the public can


have very different reactions to whether details of a public administrator’s private life can affect job performance. However, regardless of the public’s reaction to learning private information about a public employee, the organization must consider its overall reputation and the relationships it wants to establish or maintain with the public when deciding how to handle these issues when they arise. As the use of social media by both individuals and organizations becomes more and more common, public organizations will face these issues more often.

Role Multiplicity and Privacy

As previously stated, today’s postmodern world requires that individuals move between their roles as private citizens and public administrators while they are on and off the job. Additionally, the changing nature of public and private information, along with advances in communications and Internet technology, make it possible for individuals to blur the boundary lines between these roles. Therefore, this article proposes that there are four specific scenarios that affect public administrators and the way in which they choose to use social media sites.

First, social media is confined to web sites, software, and applications that are designed to share information with others quickly. This includes YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. These technologies are so commonplace in the postmodern world that they are easily accessible to even the least computer-savvy individuals and can be accessed via desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or smart-phone. For the purpose of this research, the scope is limited to government social media sites and the personal web sites of individual public administrators.

Next, this article focuses on two specific roles of the individual: first, there is the Professional role, or that of the public administrator when they are carrying out the duties of their chosen profession. In order to limit the scope of this research, the Professional role will be confined to how the individuals share information on their employer’s social media sites. Alternately, there is the role of the individual as a Citizen, that is, this is the primary role and the individual is acting outside the confines of his or her profession. When the individuals are in the Citizen role, their social media interactions are limited to their personal sites.


This article also proposes that two types of information can be placed on social media sites: Private and Public. Private information can be defined, as Schauer (2000) and Dobel (1999) proposed, as information that an individual or organization may want restricted in some manner. On the other hand, Public information may be freely shared with anyone and may not be considered restricted.

Given the specific roles of the individual and the types of information that can be shared on social media sites, there are four ways that they can intersect. Figure 1 depicts the intersection and role multiplicity of a public employee, with the descriptions of the four quadrants that explain a public sector employee’s role in the context of information sharing.

FIGURE 1 Public Employee’s Role Multiplicity Demonstrated across Four

Quadrants

Public Information

Prof

essi

onal

Rol

e

A Sharing public/unrestricted

information Organization’s social media

site

B Sharing public /unrestricted

information Personal social media sites

Citizen Role

C Sharing private/ restricted

information Organization's social media site

D Sharing private/ restricted

information Personal social media sites

Private Information

Legends: A: Professional Role Sharing Public Information: In this instance, the individual is

acting in a Professional Role and is sharing Public, unrestricted information on their employer’s social media site.

B: Citizen Role Sharing Public Information: When this occurs, the individual is acting as a Citizen and shares unrestricted information with others who are accessing their personal social media sites.

C: Professional Role Sharing Private Information: For this scenario, the individual is acting in a Professional role and may be, with or without intent, sharing Private or restricted information on their government organization’s social media site.

D: Citizen Role Sharing Private Information: In this instance, the individual acts as a Citizen and places Private information on a personal social media site. This may include evidence of behaviors or opinions that may compromise the individual’s Professional role.


This research proposes, and will show in the following sections, that as the postmodern environment and technological advancements have allowed for the seamless melding of the Professional and Citizen roles, government organizations are actively looking for ways to define boundaries around these roles. The manner in which the agencies are attempting to define how the Professional shares information and interacts with others on employer social media sites is through the use of social media policies. This article seeks to determine if currently existing employer social media policies can be used to make recommendations as to how government agencies can guide individuals in sharing Public and Private information when they are acting in their roles as Citizens. As the examples used in this research will show, when public administrators act in their Citizen roles and place information on their personal web sites, the information can be used to negatively affect their Professional roles and the government organization.

The Need for Social Media Policies

Today, 66 percent of all adults online in America are actively using social media sites (Anker, 2011). Similar to individuals, government organizations are looking to establish an online presence. Furthermore, public agencies want to maintain a positive Internet presence in order to use social media to increase their level of efficiency. Organizations use social media to build productive partnerships and to keep their constituencies informed and engaged. As technology has increased access to government information via laptops, tablets, and smart-phones, social media has emerged as a tool that government agencies use to share information with both employees and the public. This high level of information exchange means that government agencies want to cultivate a positive image of both the organization and its employees. Unfortunately, they are not always successful in this endeavor, especially when employees act in their roles as Citizens and share information that can bring unwanted attention to the organization.

Governments’ growing use of social media means that public administrators need to consider how and why they should exercise control over these sites. Much like the use of computers, the Internet, and cellular phones previously ushered in the need for acceptable use guidelines for employees, today social media policies are also needed. In order to support the organization’s goals for accountability


and openness towards the public and maintain an atmosphere of productivity among employees, many public agencies have adopted social media policies.

Ongoing research into the use of social media for e-governance or commerce has found several compelling reasons that employers need social media policies. First, the organization needs social media guidelines so that it can protect itself against assaults that might ruin its reputation (Bussing, 2011; Hilfer, 2011; QuickCounsel, 2010). Because social networking sites allow for the almost instantaneous sharing of information, it is very difficult to correct wrong information once it is disseminated throughout cyberspace. Once the wrong information is on the Internet, it can easily be shared with vast amounts of people and will stay online, where it may be easily found, for an extended period of time (Bussing, 2011). In the case of government organizations, the community the agency serves can make harsh judgments about the organizations and its employees based on incorrect information. With the click of a mouse, the reputation that an organization spent years building may be irrevocably damaged.

Another important reason for establishing social media guidelines is the need for the organization to protect confidential information (Hilfer, 2011; QuickCounsel, 2010). Social networking users may, inadvertently or with intent, share confidential information with others. Just as private businesses want policies that help them maintain their competitive advantage and protect consumer data, public organizations also want to protect customer data and control the manner in which information is shared with the public. Government agencies want to share timely information with the public, but they want to make sure it is not private or confidential data, as required by law.

Social media policies also help to define acceptable use for each government organization’s sites (Zaehringer, 2010). For example, organizations want to put their best face forward when communicating with others. Therefore, they want to ensure that comments and exchanges between public employees and members of the community are productive and not reduced to flame wars or name-calling. In other words, acceptable use of social media helps prevent assaults on organizations and individuals, and helps the agency maintain an air of professionalism online.


Social media policies also help users determine a reasonable expectation of privacy when using these online resources. When employees and community members use government social media sites, they are told exactly the kind of privacy they can expect on each site. Their comments are reviewed for appropriate content by a moderator and may be removed if found to be inappropriate. Additionally, information on social networking sites is subject to retention rules and may be archived for specific periods of time. These rules make it unreasonable to expect that a high level of privacy on government social media sites will be achieved.

Research by Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters (2010) focused on how to create social media policies specifically for government organizations. Their research found eight elements that are essential for an effective government social media policy.

1. Employee Access – This area focuses on which types of employees can access social media and how they access these web sites. Government organizations may limit the types of social media sites the employee can access during work hours (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

2. Employee Conduct – Social media guidelines generally state that an employee is expected to communicate professionally when participating in social media sites. The policy may provide specific examples of unprofessional conduct or refer the employee to existing ethical or other professional code of conduct (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

3. Social Media Content – This area specifies how the content of social media sites will be created as well as how content is managed (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

4. Security of Social Media Sites – Security concerns for public organizations focus on both technological and behavioral security. Technological security includes securing passwords and ensuring the secure functionality of web sites. Behavioral security focuses on employee’s online behavior that may threaten the organization, other employees or the public (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

5. Legal Issues – Social media policies often include language that reminds employees of their legal duties when engaged on social media sites. For example, employees must adhere to copyright


and privacy laws. This section of the policy also covers records management as well as retention rules (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

6. Citizen Conduct on Social Media Sites – This section reminds citizens that there are rules of conduct when they participate in government media sites. These rules generally include restrictions on offensive language or the promotion of illegal activities (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

7. Account Management – “Account management encompasses the creation, maintenance, and destruction of social media accounts” (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010, p. 6). This part of the policy allows government agencies to control the message they are sending to others by clearly defining how social media accounts are created, maintained, and destroyed (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

8. Acceptable Use of Social Media – Acceptable use wording explains an agency’s position on how its resources will be used when accessing social media. Some agencies may allow employees to access social media and some may not (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010).

This research into employers’ social media policies focuses on how employers share information on government social media sites when they are in their Professional roles. Unfortunately, the policies neglect to address what happens when an employee shares Public or Private information on a personal web site. Whether the employee means harm or not, their revelations can seriously affect their Professional roles and ruin the reputation of their employer. The next section of this article determines if the rules for employer social media guidelines can be used to guide Citizen information-sharing on personal social media sites.

METHODOLOGY

In order to address the issues discussed above, this paper will use Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters’s (2010) elements of social media policies to describe how some cities have put social media policies in place to direct employee behavior on their employer’s social media sites. Next, the elements of the social media policies are used to direct how government agencies can enhance their current social


media policies to direct employees on how to safely share information on their personal social media sites. The recommendations made in this article will be illustrated with examples of current events found in the media.

Existing Social Media Policies

Social media policy makers in many city governments are actively taking steps to separate their employee’s personal roles from their professional roles in the online world. That is, they are attempting to mitigate the problems of employee role multiplicity. This study found 20 social media usage policies of city governments online and studied them to determine if and how they have taken steps to create a separation between the organization’s social media presence and the employee’s personal social media presence. The social media policies that are part of the research are listed in Table 1. We found that some policies expand on Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters’s (2010) eight elements of social media use policies.

By analyzing the policies of the cities listed in Table 1, we found the following. First, several social media policies state whether an employee can or cannot access personal social media sites during work hours. The cities of Bothell, Seattle, and Bloomington state that employees are free to access personal social media sites from work if the access is limited and does not interfere with productivity. However, personal social media access is strictly denied to employees in the cities of Arlington, Cottage Grove, and Yakima.

Second, several policies are separating the employee’s personal social media site from city social media sites by prohibiting personal data to be used for account management. That is, the cities of Diamond Bar, Orlando, Bloomington, and Seattle do not allow employees to create web sites that represent the city by using personal email. Because personal email can easily be used to create private social media sites, these city governments want to maintain a strict separation between the two. Further, by allowing only authorized users to create social media account using their work emails, cities are able to control the content of the sites. Finally, creating social networking accounts in the name of the city allows the government organization to keep the rights to the site even after an employee leaves his or her position with a particular city or agency.


TABLE 1 Social Media Policies of City Governments

Location Policy Name Online Source Bothell Social Media Policy http://www.ci.bothell.wa.us/CityService

s/Administration/CityManagersOffice/CityNews/socialmediapolicy.ashx?p=1717

Seattle Social Media Use Policy

http://www.mrsc.org/policyprocedures/s42socialmedia.pdf

Bloomington Employee Use of Social Media Policy

http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/cityhall/dept/commserv/commun/social_media/employ_use.htm

Arlington Social Media Policy http://www.arlingtontx.gov/ooc/pdf/Section%2010-1%20Social%20Media%20Personnel%20Policy.pdf

Cottage Grove

Social Media Policy http://www.cottage-grove.org/docs/administration/res_2010-016_social_nw_policy.pdf

Yakima Social Media Policy http://www.ci.yakima.wa.us/minutes/2010packets/08-23-2010%20City%20Council%20Retreat%20and%20Information%20Packet.pdf

Diamond Bar Social Media Policy http://www.ci.diamond-bar.ca.us/index.aspx?page=1187

Orlando City of Orlando Social Media Guides

http://www.ci.orlando.fl.us/socialmedia/index.htm

Austin Social Media Guidelines

http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/connect/downloads/smpolicy_032411.pdf

Fullerton Social Media Policy http://www.cityoffullerton.com/about/policy/social_media_policy.asp

Bonney Lake Administrative Policy and Procedure

http://www.mrsc.org/policyprocedures/b66socmed.pdf

Mount Airy Social Media Policy http://www.mrsc.org/policyprocedures/s42socialmedia.pdf


Third, several cities control the type of social media content that employees can place on government sites. Cities such as Diamond Bar, Cottage Grove, and Austin specifically state that employees should not use city social media to express personal opinions. In other words, their comments and interactions with the public should always represent the overall views of the city and the employee’s respective organization, not the employee’s personal opinion. Recall, Cooper (1998) stated that members of the public are increasingly aware that a government employee’s private actions may strongly influence actions at work. An employee who expresses personal opinions on social media that are in direct opposition to official employer views may lead the public to question the employee’s actions and motives.

Fourth, government social media policies also attempt to legally distance themselves from employee personal social media. The cities of Bothell and Bloomington do not restrict their employees from identifying themselves as workers in a particular agency on their personal social media sites. However, these cities do ask that employees include a disclaimer on their personal sites that states that the views expressed on the site are personal and are not the views and opinions of their employer. Additionally, employees in Yakima and Seattle are barred from using personal equipment (such as cell phones and computers) to conduct city business on any social media sites. When employees use personal equipment to conduct city business online, the city may not have the ability to control the content as well as adhere to retention laws that they can easily adhere to when government resources are used.

Fifth, as a way of dealing with security on government social media sites, employees may be prohibited from sharing personal information on these sites. Employees in Fullerton, Bonney Lake, Mount Airy, and Diamond Bar are prohibited from sharing any personal information about themselves, other employees, or members of the public using any social media sites. This position helps the city governments protect data and keeps personal information about employees out of the public realm on public social media sites.

The fact that these cities enacted social media policies points to the growing importance of this medium as a governance tool. On the one hand, there are increasing calls for e-governance through such


modes of communication for information dissemination and service provision (Hand & Ching, 2011; Kingsley, 2010; Scott, 2006). On the other hand, these channels could limit the jurisdiction or control of the governments concerning the contents posted and discussed (Hand & Ching, 2011). This problem is further magnified when public employees share information about their jobs, colleagues, or clients in their personal social media profiles over which their employers have little to no control. Hence, the question that arises is whether a social media policy could address ethical concerns that evolve from such situations. The need for effective application of social media policies in the public sector workplace is further validated by the illustrative examples involving civil servants discussed in the next section. These examples capture the limelight with some escalating to potential litigation and some casting a shadow of disrepute on the public organizations.

Recommendations

As noted previously, the popularity of social networking sites has resulted in a new avenue that public organizations can use to increase efficiency. However, due to the blurring of boundaries between Citizen and Professional roles, an employee’s use of personal social media can also result in great scrutiny and embarrassment for the employer. Therefore, it is crucial that employers give their employees some guidance as to what may constitute inappropriate behavior when they are acting as Citizens and sharing information on personal social networking sites.

Recommendation 1

As Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters (2010) found, employee access is one of the crucial parts of an effective social media policy. Just as organizational social policies may choose to limit or prohibit social media during work hours when using employer communication technologies, employers may also ask employees to limit their access to social media during work hours even when they are using their personal communications technologies. When an employee steps out of the Professional role and accesses or updates a personal social media site, they may, with or without intent, share information that negatively affects the employer. Since accessibility of social media sites is very easy with the popularity of smart phones and other portable gadgets, organizations benefit from encouraging employees


to exercise good judgment and common sense when using personal social media sites whether at home or at work

For example, consider the situation of special-needs teacher Jeremy Hollinger. The second grade teacher in Mobile, Alabama, was disciplined by the school district because he used a personal cell phone to update his personal Facebook page in order to make fun of some of his students. He even took a photo of himself in the helmet that one of his special-needs students used to protect himself because he suffered from a seizure disorder. Of course, once the page, comments and photo were discovered, the Mobile public school system was forced to discipline Hollinger and deal with the embarrassment caused by the story once it was reported in media outlets (Huffington Post, 2011).

A similar situation occurred in the Chicago public school system when a teacher used her personal cell phone to take a photo of one of her second-grade students. The African-American girl came to school for picture day with Jolly Rancher candies in her hair. The teacher posted a photo of the girl on her personal Facebook page where she, and others, proceeded to mock the girl’s hairstyle. Although the teacher apologized to the girl’s mother, the mother considered suing the school district. The Chicago public school system was forced to react to the immediate situation and may face legal consequences due to the actions of one teacher (Golijan, 2011).

Exercise of good judgment by employees concerned in the above two examples could have avoided the disrepute brought to their organizations.

Recommendation 2

As Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters (2010) asserted, account management is also an important element in a social media policy. It is crucial to define who can create, maintain and destroy employees’ social media sites. Again, government agencies are focused on controlling their image in cyberspace, and this means controlling their social media sites and the identifying information about the organization. Therefore, public administrators should be cautioned against creating sites that may negatively affect the reputation of their employer. Furthermore, publicly acknowledging support for or displaying opposition to a particular group, policy, or any other issue could be misconstrued as organizational opinions or may cause


reputational problems for the employers. Hence, it is critical to raise awareness among employees that their social media interactions and conduct, however frivolous, could tarnish the reputations of the public organizations.

For example, a couple of officers of the Lawrence Police Department in Massachusetts created a MySpace site called “The Unofficial ‘Official’ Home of the LAWPD” that contained suggestive photos of young girls and one scantily clad female officer. The page prominently stated that it was created by individuals affiliated with the Lawrence Police Department. Both men were dismissed from their positions for violating departmental policies by creating an unauthorized site for the police department. The organization felt that the existence of the website “jeopardized the department’s reputation and public image” (Volger, 2007).

Similarly, police officers of the New York Police Department created a Facebook profile called "No More West Indian Day Detail," referring to police patrol for a raucous annual Brooklyn parade that celebrates the culture of the Caribbean islands, and is marked by violence. Several derogatory and offensive comments came from police officers. This page had more than a thousand supporters. Although taken offline after an internal departmental investigation was initiated, lawyers for a Brooklyn man arrested in 2010 just before the parade used the posts to argue that the arresting police officer may have been biased as he was a supporter of this page. Ultimately, the defendant was acquitted of all charges (Long, 2011).

As these examples show, government agencies are critically invested in maintaining a positive image online. This includes not allowing employees to misrepresent their employers or allowing the public to believe that government organizations are not committed to democratic principles of governance.

Recommendation 3

Reminding employees of their legal duties is another necessary social media policy element (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010). When employees participate in government social networking sites, they are required to follow the laws, especially laws that deal with software and copyrights. However, employers should also remind public employees that they should never post information regarding their involvement in illegal activities on personal social media sites. This


could be generalized to the organizational level, and the public might lose faith in the organizations whose mission is to serve them.

Such was the case with a Dallas police officer who used her personal Facebook page and shared details of her assault on a hospital worker. Additionally, the officer made jokes about planting evidence on suspects during the course of her work. The Dallas Police Department felt that the officer presented an image of a violent individual who broke the rules of policing. Members of the public may question the motives of this type of officer during both routine and controversial arrests and other interactions with the public (Eiserer, 2011).

Recommendation 4

Public administrators are cautioned to maintain an air of professionalism while using employer social media (Hrdinova, Helbig, & Peters, 2010). Further, as was described above, some organizational social media policies ask that public administrators add disclaimers to their personal web pages warning readers that opinions expressed are the individual’s, not the organization’s. However, even with disclaimers or if the employee does not specifically identify his or her employer, the details of the shared information can make the employee and employer easily identifiable. It is therefore suggested that even while using personal social media sites, a public employee should maintain professional integrity, an absence of which could potentially bring disrepute to not only the individuals concerned but to the whole organization. The public consistently judges public employees because of the nature of their job responsibilities, and therefore, they should be cognizant of their stature and conduct themselves appropriately.

For example, a supervisor in Nevada’s unemployment office’s anti-fraud unit found himself investigated after he used his personal Facebook page to complain about what he believed was one of his employee’s excessive use of sick days. Although he never identified the employee by name, the supervisor shared enough details about the employee that she was easily identified by some of the supervisor’s Facebook friends, who were also employees. The supervisor shared embarrassing and highly personal information about the employee in question. Once again, a government agency was forced to react to a negative situation that arises from personal


use of social media by an employee (Damon, 2011). Figure 2 summarizes the recommendations made in this article based on the elements of social media policies espoused by Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters (2010).

Although it is our position that government employers should take active steps to guide each employee’s participation in personal social media sites in a way that will not negatively affect their Professional role or the reputation of the employer, invading the privacy of employees is not encouraged. As evidenced by several news stories, the tactic of asking employees or potential employees for passwords to personal social media sites is quite unpopular. We assert that public administrators think carefully about the information they place on personal social media sites and determine if the information could negatively affect their state of employment if the information were disclosed to the general public.

FIGURE 2 Outline of Recommendations and Elements of Social Media Policies

Source: Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters (2010).

Elements of Social Media Policies

Employee Access Account

Management Acceptable Use Employee Conduct Content Security Legal Issues Citizen Conduct

Recommendations for Personal Social Media Usage by Public

Administrators Encourage the exercise of good

judgment while accessing personal social media.

Raise awareness about employee conduct and behavior while using social media.

Refrain from publicly acknowledging involvement in illegal/ unethical activities while serving the public.

Maintain professional integrity and conduct while using social media.


Organizational mission is critical to public sector agencies. As per Weiss and Piderit (1999), public sector employees who view their organization’s mission as salient and congruent with their personal values are more likely to identify with and incorporate their organizational goals, which makes the accomplishment of organiza-tional objectives personally meaningful. Hence, alignment of the employee personal social media policies and strategies with that of the organization’s mission could assist in harnessing the strengths of the social media sites. These policies need to take into account the role multiplicity and the blurring of roles of the public employee. As depicted in Figure 3 below, the social media strategy is based on and aligned with that of the organizational mission (demonstrated by the two-headed arrow). The strategies need to take into account the Professional and Citizen roles of the public administrator and the increasing blending and blurring of these roles. Furthermore, the policies that are derived from the overall strategy should be comprehensive in order to channel their effective usage. For example, the policies that direct employee behavior in personal social media sites could be linked to or aligned with the organization’s harassment policies because personal social media could be used for spreading gossip and/or harassing co-workers. The policies could include some of the items in the box (Figure 3), which could encourage effective use of both organizational and personal social media and enhance the reputation of the organization. In addition, periodic training and regular communication by top administrators on social media usage norms and policies in all respects of a public employee’s professional role and behavior could help uphold the standards of administrative ethics.

CONCLUSIONS

Social media sites provide “an interactive tool for developing and maintaining social relations and networks” (Austin & Callen, 2008, p. 325). This is evident because a growing number of people, including government officials and government organizations, maintain such sites for communicating and information sharing. A large body of the literature (Hand & Ching, 2011; Dryburgh, 2010; Kingsley, 2010; Dawes, 2008; Scott, 2006; Ghere & Young, 1998) discussed the evolution of information technologies, and the adaptation of social networking sites by governmental employees and agencies. These


FIGURE 3 Framework for Incorporating Organizational Social Media Policies

sites provide an effective vehicle for information dissemination and for facilitating public discourse. Our research also found the growing importance and use of social networking sites by individuals and organizations. Nevertheless, we found ethical concerns from the use of social media sites because of the blurring of the boundaries between Public and Private information exchange and the intersection of the Professional and Citizen roles of the public sector

M‐ Organizational

Mission

M Social MediaStrategy

M Social Media

Policies

M M Professional

Role

Citizen Role

• Information dissemination • Promote citizen participation • Organizational accountability • Transparency through communication • Upholds administrative ethics


employee. We began this research by arguing for the importance of adopting social media policies by government agencies for the effective utilization of this resource.

By adopting the principles of administrative ethics espoused by Cooper (1998), we explored the role multiplicity of public administrators. In particular, we examined the ethical questions that have arisen from a public administrator’s public (Professional) and private (Citizen) life in the social networking sites. The views and opinions expressed by public sector employees on agency profiles can be moderated by the organization. However, employers cannot control views expressed on personal social media sites by civil servants. Yet, any defamatory comment posted, abusive language used, and reproachable behavior demonstrated in these sites could easily be misconstrued to represent that of the organization and not the private individual who posted them. Furthermore, this could result in potential lawsuits, and the organization’s ability to deliver being questioned. Social media policies have been adopted by some cities, as mentioned previously, to address these ethical concerns. Such policies not only attempt to regulate employee behavior but also adopt procedures to reprimand employees if they abuse these procedures.

This study offers some recommendations based on Hrdinova, Helbig, and Peters’s (2010) research on effective social media policies. These recommendations take into account Cooper’s (1998) support for separating the employee’s public and private life to uphold the ethical standards of public administration. Yet, it is apparent from the illustrative examples provided that keeping the two roles separate does not necessarily lessen the ethical concerns. This is because a public sector worker is held to high ethical standards and upholding these standards requires these employees to behave accordingly in both their private and public life. These conclusions pave the way for further research into effective use of social media, both personal and official, by governmental agencies in light of the increased use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and blogs by public sector employees. Some strategies to begin with are first, that comments and updates on the official sites should strictly focus on information dissemination and promoting citizen discussions. Government employees that are part of such official sites through the “like,” “follow,” or “re-tweeting” functions could simply support the


updates or refrain from not supporting. That is, maintaining a supportive stance and demonstrating allegiance to their employer’s organizations will assist in upholding public confidence in public administrators and government services. Second, organizational social media strategy should be designed around the mission of the organization. This is because the organization’s mission should direct employee conduct and behavior whether in both Professional or Citizen role. Such a strategy should be created after much deliberation on its specific usage and impact that is directly related to the organizational mission. Organizations should be clear on social media site usage as a channel of communication or as a platform for public discourse. Furthermore, such a strategy should also specify the role of employees’ personal social media sites, including items on discussing work-related issues that could result in potential problems for the individual and the organization. Finally, in a networked world, social media can assist in making an organization transparent and accountable. While separation of personal and official social media assists in keeping certain information private, both media could be harnessed to maintain and uphold the ethical principles of transparency and accountability of a public organization. In essence, organizational mission and effectiveness can be accomplished by utilizing social media in a manner consistent with the principles of administrative ethics and by upholding the standards of public administration.

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