Social media affordances and governance in the workplace

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Social media affordances and governance in theworkplace: An examination of organizationalpolicies

Emmanuelle Vaast

McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke Street, W Montreal, QC H3A 1G5, Canada

Evgeny Kaganer

IESE, Avenida Pearson, 21 08034 Barcelona, Spain

This paper examines how organizations perceive affordances of social media and how they react to theiremployees’ use of social media through policies, a key means of organizational governance. Existingliterature identified 4 affordances - visibility, persistence, editability, and association (between peopleand between people and information) - as action potentials of social media in organizations. Contentanalysis of a sample of organizational social media policies reveals that organizations especiallyreacted to the affordances of visibility and persistence much more than to the affordance of editability.It also discovers a third type of association (between employees and organization). It shows howorganizations’ reactions to social media evolved from being solely concerned with risk management toalso considering its value-generating potential.

Key words: Social media, affordances, policies, governance, Web 2.0, visibility, persistence, editability,association.

doi:10.1111/jcc4.12032

Introduction

Social media, enabled by powerful, easily accessible and user-friendly Information Technology (IT)applications, have spread across organizations in all industries (Bernoff & Schadler, 2010; Curtis et al.,2010; Stolley, 2009). Social media have pervaded many aspects of organizing, and have generated newways of connecting with customers, collaborating, and innovating (Cisco, 2010; Dunn, 2010; Wilson,Guinan, Parise, & Weinberg, 2011). Social media are ‘‘Internet-based applications that build on theideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange ofuser-generated content’’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Common social media include blogs, microblogs,social networking sites, wikis, and video- or content-sharing sites (Piskorki & McCall, 2010; Vaast,Davidson, & Mattson, forth coming).

Social media present simultaneously opportunities and challenges for organizations. With socialmedia, employees can mobilize resources, implement, and test out new ideas quickly and in abottom-up fashion (Vaast, 2010). This offers an opportunity to make organizations more agile andresponsive to the demands of customers, who today are also equipped with powerful social media

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(Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010). Management, however, faces a number of challenges as it standsto lose some of its traditional control over what IT initiatives and applications are being implementedand used in the organization (Kane, Fichman, Gallaugher, & Glaser, 2009; Safko & Brake, 2009; Stolley,2009). Indeed, employees, rather than formal business or IT leadership, frequently spearhead socialmedia initiatives (Treem & Leonardi, 2012; Vaast, 2010).

Employee use of social media may thus have diverse impacts upon organizations, both internally (e.g.related to culture, innovation processes; McAfee, 2006) as well as externally (e.g. what organizationalimage employees might project on public social networking sites; Kane et al., 2009). Organizations, ontheir part, might seek to encourage certain uses of social media and limit others, which justifies theneed for governance. In this regard, organizational policies constitute one of the main vehicles for socialmedia governance available to organizations.

Organizational policies are documents that present guiding principles on a particular topic (e.g.human resources, IT use) and that are established by senior management to shape employees’ actionsand perceptions in regard to this topic (Foote, Seipel, Johnson, & Duffy, 2005; Six & Sorge, 2008).Policies have long been one of the key tools of IT governance as they can shape employees’ perceptionof IT and contribute to the emergence of shared understandings of what new IT can and cannot doand what uses are appropriate or not (Huang, Zmud, & Price, 2010). Policies have also turned out tobe one of the most prevalent tools of social media governance (Guerin, 2011; Kane et al., 2009). Incontrast with traditional IT, social media applications are user-friendly and often are available for freeor at low cost. Therefore, employee use of social media does not require an allocated budget, training,or other traditional resources that organizations typically controlled via IT governance mechanisms(Sambamurthy & Zmud, 1999, 2000; Weill, 2004).

In this paper, we investigate how organizations perceive and respond to their employee use ofsocial media by examining social media policies. More specifically, we adopt an affordance approach(Leonardi, 2011; Majchrzak & Markus, 2013; Treem & Leonardi, 2012) that suggests that peopleassimilate and respond to social media based on perceived affordances rather than on a fixed set offeatures build into the underlying technologies. We thus examine policies to explore what they revealabout how organizations construct four affordances of social media in organizational contexts (Treem &Leonardi, 2012)—visibility, persistence, editability, and association—and how they attempt to governsocial media in the workplace.

In what follows, we first introduce an affordance perspective on social media and present four keyaffordances of social media in organizations. We explain why examining social media policies from anaffordance perspective is especially relevant and what it can reveal of social media in the workplace andits governance. We then detail our data collection and analysis procedures and detail our main findings.Next, we discuss implications of our research for the affordance perspective and for the understandingof social media governance in the workplace. We conclude by acknowledging limitations of this researchand suggesting several promising avenues for future studies.

Theoretical Foundations

An affordance approachThe ecological psychologist James Gibson (1977) introduced the concept of affordance to account forhow various users may perceive and therefore use the same object, such as a rock or a door handle,in widely different ways (Fayard & Weeks, 2007; Zammuto, Griffith, Majchrzak, Dougherty, & Faraj,2007). According to Gibson, users perceive affordances of an object rather than the material objectitself. These perceived affordances refer to the opportunities for action that the object enables the user

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to carry out. As such, affordances may vary across users depending on their context, competences,and objectives. The affordance perspective especially helps researchers better understand how new IT,including social media, becomes perceived and used in similar and different ways across various socialenvironments (Fayard & Weeks, 2011; Leonardi, 2011; Leonardi & Barley, 2010; Markus & Silver, 2008).

An affordance perspective highlights that the material features of social media do not vary acrosssocial environments. Instead, what varies is the perception of members of these environments concerningwhat opportunities for action these features afford. In this sense, affordances are not only perceptual butalso relational in nature (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). They are ‘‘action potentials’’ (Majchrzak & Markus,2013) constituted by the relationships between the technical (material) features of social media andthe people who perceive and use them. Hence, while the features of social media are fairly stable, theaffordances are socially constructed and may vary according to the context (Leonardi & Barley, 2010).

Four affordances of social mediaTreem and Leonardi (2012) adopted an affordance perspective in order to review current commu-nications literature on social media use in organizations. They identified four affordances of socialmedia that can help understand how social media affect organizational practices: visibility, persistence,editability, and association. Treem and Leonardi (2012) argued that these four affordances are associatedwith a wide range of features provided by social media (e.g. status updates, editing and commentingcapabilities) and that they contrast with other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC)technologies (e.g. e-mail, videoconferencing). In particular, these four affordances might be in partpresent in some other CMC technologies but their prevalence and combination characterizes socialmedia in the current organizational context.

Visibility refers to ‘‘the ability [of social media] to make [users’] behaviors, knowledge, preferences,and communication network connections that were once invisible (or very hard to see) visible toothers.’’ (Treem & Leonardi, 2012, p. 150) Other CMC technologies afford some degree of visibility,but not to the extent of social media that allow for activities to be made transparently visible to multipleaudiences. For instance, a status update on a social networking website can be made visible to part orthe whole of a member’s network (DiMicco, Geyer, Millen, Dugan, & Brownholtz, 2009).

With persistence, social media allow for content previously created and published to remainpermanently accessible (Wagner & Majchrzak, 2006). Once published on the Internet, content can bestored, circulated and accessed for an indeterminate amount of time.

Editability makes it possible for social media users to amend, add to, revise and change collaborativelycontent published on the Internet. Wikis are particular types of social media applications that clearlyillustrate this affordance (Majchrzak, Wagner, & Yates, 2006). As people use a wiki, they can jointlybuild new knowledge, consolidate their experiences, and innovate (Mejova, Schepper, Bergman, & Lu,2011; Ransbotham & Kane, 2011).

Finally, through association, social media can create and sustain relationships between entities.Treem and Leonardi (2012, p. 162) distinguished between two types associations. The first one relatespeople together (Steinfield, DiMicco, Ellison, & Lampe, 2009). For instance, social networking websitesare explicitly built upon the social ties of their members (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). The second one relatespeople with information (Freyne, Berkovsky, Daly, & Geyer, 2010). As someone adds an entry into awiki, a link between the author and the content is created and becomes available.

Organizations policies and social media affordancesTreem and Leonardi (2012) identified these four affordances based on an extensive review of theemerging literature. There has been growing research on the use and effects of social media in


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organizations (Gray, Parise, & Iyer, 2011; Raeth, Smolnik, Urbach, & Zimmer, 2009). Much of thisliterature so far has examined specific applications of various social media technologies in distinctorganizational contexts (Stolley, 2009). How organizations actually perceive and respond to employeeuse of social media, however, has received scarce attention. In particular, we still know little aboutthe governance mechanisms that organizations deploy to regulate employee use of social media.Considering that much of this use is bottom-up and employee-driven in nature, it is difficult fororganizations to rely upon traditional tools of IT governance, such as steering committees, budgetreviews, etc. (Sambamurthy & Zmud, 1999, 2000; Weill, 2004). Thus, given the widespread, andgrowing, prominence social media in the workplace and the governance challenges it brings about, itis theoretically and topically important to develop a better understanding of organizations’ attempts atsocial media governance.

This paper examines organizational governance of social media by focusing on established employeepolicies. Policies reflect the perceptions of social actors involved in their formulation. Organizationalpolicies reveal the prevalent comprehension held by decision makers (Bassellier, Reich, & Benbazat,2001; Merand, 2006). Social media policies can thus help uncover aspects of organizations’ perceptionsof social media affordances. Obviously, policies cannot encapsulate all organization members’ fulland nuanced understanding of a focal phenomenon such as social media. Policies are therefore not‘‘reality’’ and may not capture the organization’s underlying grasp of the affordances of social media.Nonetheless, they provide an expression of the organization’s espoused conception of the phenomenon(Argyris & Schon, 1978; Argyris & Schon, 1974) and contribute to its governance by articulating officialnorms regulating it.

What is more, social media policies have been one of the only governance vehicles available toorganizations as they respond to employee use of social media (Kane et al., 2009). Indeed, organizationsdo not only have to develop an understanding of the affordances of social media, but they also needto respond to it to shape employees’ use of social media in the workplace. Through social mediapolicies, organizations aim at guiding and directing employees’ practices. Such guidance concerns whatemployees can and cannot do with social media in the organizational context as well as whether andhow their use of social media should become part of what they do at work. The formulation of policieshas long been one of the most prevalent tools employed by managers to communicate the formalposition of an organization on a variety of matters, including IT and traditional media (e.g. Badaracco,1998; Johnson & Gelb, 2002; Sambamurthy & Zmud, 1999; Sonnenfeld, 1994; Sprague, 1995). In thissense, policies communicate organizations’ official perception of the affordances of social media. Theyalso aim at conditioning employees’ practices (Castro & Batel, 2008) as well as, implicitly, employees’own perception of what affordances of social media are appropriate in the workplace.

We examined empirically a sample of social media policies to deepen our understanding ofthe affordances of social media in the workplace and of organizational governance associated withthese affordances. In particular, we investigated if and how policies reflected and reacted to socialmedia affordances. We also wanted to understand how, over time, policies reflected changes in socialmedia affordances and in organizations’ response to them. Before turning to our findings, we presentour collected data and adopted methods.

Methods

Data collectionWe collected 74 corporate policy documents concerning the use of public social media sites byemployees (e.g. social networking websites such as Facebook, microblogging platforms such as Twitter).


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We obtained these documents from an online public database of social media governance documents(www.socialmediagovernance.com). From this database containing more than 200 documents as ofMarch 2013, we selected the aforementioned 74 based on the following criteria. First, we were interestedin analyzing comprehensive policy documents that covered a wide range of publicly available socialmedia tools and uses, instead of those focusing on a particular application, such as for example a‘‘blogging policy.’’ Second, in order to ensure a fairly representative nature of the sample we reviewedthe entire database of policies and selected organizations from a variety of industries and sectors.Appendix A lists the organizations included in the sample, along with their industry affiliations andpolicy enactment date, whenever available.

Data analysisOur empirical analyses focused on identifying and exploring manifestations of the social mediaaffordances and organizational governance principles present in the policies. To accomplish this goaland consistent with the qualitative character of our research, we developed an iterative coding procedurethat combined deductive and inductive moments. We used Atlas.ti software to facilitate the codingprocess throughout the entire analysis.

As the first step of the analysis, we engaged in inductive open coding of the policy documents.We started by randomly drawing three successive subsamples of documents from the dataset and bycoding them individually. We did not rely on an a priori coding scheme and allowed for codes toemerge from the data. A coding unit was defined as a segment of text no smaller than a sentence andno bigger than a paragraph. A single segment of text could include several codes. We coded thesedocuments independently from each other. After each of the coding rounds, we reviewed our respectivecoding, fully reconciled discrepancies through discussions, and consolidated our findings. We used thecoding scheme from preceding rounds to code documents in subsequent rounds, while simultaneouslymodifying and extending the scheme to capture new emerging themes and concepts, as recommendedin (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000), (Miles & Huberman, 1994), and (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). After thethird round, no further modifications were deemed necessary. The resulting coding scheme included17 codes—‘policy elements’—defined and illustrated in Table 1.

We applied this coding scheme to the entire sample. We also recoded the documents used forthe development of the coding protocol to accomplish consistency. To ensure reliability of the codingprocess, we randomly drew 23 documents—approximately 30% of our sample—double-coded them,and then compared our independent coding. Our agreement rate based on the presence/absence ofcodes in each document was 81% suggesting an acceptable level of intercoder reliability (Kassarjian,1977; Kolbe & Burnett, 1991). Appendix B details the agreement rate for each code.

The next step of our analysis involved interpreting policies in relation to social media affordances.We engaged in an iterative interpretive process whereby we carefully reviewed our codes, their empiricalmanifestations (i.e., quotes) and related them to different facets of the affordances. We also investigatedpolicies to search for possible additional affordances not yet highlighted in the existing literature. Ingoing through this exercise, we realized that some of the policy elements went beyond acknowledging(making sense of) a particular facet or characteristic of social media and were aimed, quite explicitly,at shaping employee behavior in relation to that facet or social media use in general. We felt thatthese elements represented organizational responses to social media or, in other words, governancemechanisms organizations sought to deploy.

Refining the connections between our inductive coding scheme and concepts associated withaffordances and organizational governance helped us better understand the relationships amongaffordances as well as between affordances and governance principles. We examined which facets


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Tab

le1

Cod

es,d

efin

itio

ns,

and

exam

ples

from

polic

ies

Cod

es(S

alie

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Scor

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nit

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ples

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desc

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(s=3

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nit

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and

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vere

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hat

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cial

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alm

edia

can

bero

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tool

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ople

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are

thei

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and

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mpl

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tes,

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lurr

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Tab

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Tab

le1

Con

tin

ued

Cod

es(S

alie

nce

Scor

es)*

Defi

nit

ion

sE

xam

ples

En

forc

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tan

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scip

linar

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tion

(s=4

2%)

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cuss

ion

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nse

quen

ces

ofn

onco

mpl

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Table 2 Social Media Affordances, Governance Principles and Related Policy Elements (Saliencescores in parenthesis),

Social Media Affordances Related Policy Elements

Visibility Misrepresentation and Disclosure of Information (84%)What Not To Post (69%)Persistence (61%)What To Post (31%)

Persistence Misrepresentation and Disclosure of Information (84%)What Not To Post (69%)Persistence (61%)

Editability Editorial Style Recommendations (89%)Misrepresentation and Disclosure of Information (84%)Persistence (61%)

Association Blurring of Personal/Professional Boundary (91%)Foster Community (35%)

Governance Principles Related Policy Elements

Leverage Established GovernanceMechanisms

Editorial Style Recommendations (89%)Follow Established (Generic) Rules (76%)

Establish New GovernanceMechanisms

Identify Yourself (62%)What Not To Post (69%)What To Post (31%)

Rely on hierarchy and personalresponsibility

Employee Responsibility (59%)If Uncertain, Ask Authority (57%)Management Approval of Initiatives (45%)

of social media affordances were especially prominent, and explored whether policies revealed newaffordances or unanticipated facets of social media affordances in the workplace. We also examinedwhich governance principles were offered in response to these affordances as well as identified thegeneral approaches organizations employed with respect to social media governance. Table 2 presentsa high-level summary of our findings.

As a final step of our analysis, we explored temporal patterns in the evolution of various facets ofsocial media affordances and governance principles. To this end, we identified a subset of 45 policiesin our sample for which the policy enactment date was known. We then grouped these policies intofour time periods and calculated ‘‘emphasis scores1’’ for each code in each time period. Based on thesescores, we constructed a graph (see Figure 1) reflecting changes in code emphasis over time. We usedthe graph to guide our qualitative exploration of whether and how the way organizations in our samplerepresented social media affordances and responded to them via governance principles shifted over time.

In line with the tenets of interpretive research (Klein & Myers, 1999), we also looked for alternativeexplanations to our emerging interpretations. In this regard, we checked for meaningful differencesin organizational policies according to industry. To do so, we combined policies of organizationsthat belonged to similar industries (e.g. government, IT, media, retail) and constructed radar chartsreflecting policy profiles of each of the industry groupings. This exercise, however, did not reveal anyclear-cut cross-industry patterns and, hence, we continued our analysis of the entire sample of policies.


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Figure 1 Evolution of codes emphasis over time

Findings

Our analysis revealed that the sampled policy documents contained elements representative of orga-nizations’ perceptions of social media affordances as well as of the governance principles put forth byorganizations in response to these affordances. Overall, the organizations did indeed acknowledge thefour affordances of visibility, persistence, editability, and association in the policies. Yet, they placeduneven emphasis on different affordances as well as highlighted certain unanticipated facets for someof the affordances. Our analyses also unexpectedly found relationships among the four affordances aswell as between affordances and governance principles. This section discusses these findings in moredetail as well as looks at how affordances and governance principles shifted over time.

Visibility and PersistencePolicies in our sample often contained references to visibility and persistence. Policies also usuallyconsidered the two affordances jointly, within a single policy element, and responded to them as one.For instance, statements highlighting the public nature of any contribution an employee might post insocial media reflected visibility:

‘‘You will probably be read or heard by people who know you. Post as if everyone you know readsor hears every word.’’ (Plaxo).

Similarly, the affordance of persistence appeared in policies through statements that directlyacknowledged that everything that employees did in social media would remain accessible for anextended period:

‘‘Remember that whatever you post may live for many years in the Web, even after you delete yourcopy of it.’’ (Gartner)


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The quote above suggests that organizations considered persistence as contributing to a loss ofcontrol over the use and dissemination of content published through social media. It also reveals anintricate relationship between the affordances of visibility and persistence. Policies revealed that socialmedia could make potentially damaging information not only visible to everybody (i.e., visibility),but also discoverable and accessible for an unlimited period of time (i.e., persistence). Policies thusemphasized potentially damaging consequences of these two affordances and presented them as jointlymaking it more difficult for employees and the organization to maintain control over information,image, and reputation:

‘‘Remember that the Internet is not anonymous, nor does it forget’’ (Baker Daniels)

‘‘Once you publish something through social media, you lose a degree of control of your message.Be certain before you post something that you are prepared to share it with a potential audience ofmillions’’ (Tuft University)

Governance principles responded to this portrayal of these two affordances as closely connectedand as significant sources of risk. The frequently displayed element of Misrepresentation and Disclosureof Information2 revealed a preoccupation that social media possessed material capabilities to helpdistribute information widely and durably to external audiences. These statements emphasized theadverse consequences of such capabilities and provided explicit advice on how to avoid them:

‘‘Confidential or proprietary company information or similar information of third parties whohave shared such information with ESPN, should not be shared’’ (ESPN).

Acknowledgement of the affordances of visibility and persistence also led to instructions aboutWhat To Post as well as What Not To Post, as illustrated in the quotes below:

‘‘Write about what you know. The best way to be interesting is to write about what you know. Ifyou have a deep understanding of something, talk about the challenges and issues around it.’’ (Hill& Knowlton)

‘‘Do not post material that is harassing, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, hateful, orembarrassing to any person or entity. Do not post words, jokes, or comments based on anindividual’s gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or religion.’’ (Razorfish)

Guidelines related to What Not To Post were more frequent and specific than those concerningWhat To Post. This observation again highlights that policies were more concerned with mitigatingpotential risks associated with visibility and persistence rather than with promoting them as a potentialsource of value for the organization.

EditabilityPolicies recognized but put less emphasis on editability. More precisely, editability seemed to be placed inopposition to persistence and visibility. Further, policies highlighted a particular facet of editability - thatrelated to the ability of ‘‘others’’ (outside the organizations) to amend and manipulate social mediacontent - leading to expressions of risks of losing control over information and risk-managementgovernance principles. What follows details these findings.


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First, policies provided limited account of employees’ ability to correct and improve their contribu-tions to social media over time, a key aspect of editability. Statements, like the one below, acknowledgingthat employees could use social media to change what they had already published online, a featureunique to social media, were very rare:

‘‘Be sure to correct any mistake you make immediately and make it clear what you’ve done to fixit.’’ (Nordstrom)

Instead, policies provided a range of editorial recommendations aimed at helping employees masterthe style and tone of their social media contributions. To this end, policies offered relatively standard‘‘good writing’’ advice, as seen in the following quote:

‘‘Good Writing Basics. The value of your great idea suffers to the extent that you allow misspelledwords and bad grammar.’’ (American Institute of Architects).

Statements like the one above were very common. Their focus was on helping employees craft contentto prepare it for publication rather than on recognizing employees’ ability to edit/change/improvecontent after it had been published. Such observation suggests that organizations viewed social mediaas just another traditional broadcast communication channel—a channel not inherently different fromother media.

Consistent with the view of social media as a broadcast channel, policies made frequent referencesto existing rules (Follow Established (Generic) Rules) and public relations best practices, implying thatthe availability of social media merely afforded organizations new ways to manage traditional publicrelations messages. Additionally, policies usually targeted employees as content producers in isolationand did not address the possibility for them to use social media to develop content in conjunction withothers.

With respect to interdependencies among affordances, policies displayed an intriguing tensionbetween editability, on the one hand, and persistence and visibility, on the other. Considerations ofpersistence and visibility eclipsed, to a certain extent, the affordance of editability. Policies were notablymore preoccupied with the ability of social media to make content permanently accessible and visibleto diverse audiences than with the possibility for employees to amend and improve upon the contentover time. As the quotes below illustrate, a number of policies explicitly put editability in opposition tovisibility and persistence:

‘‘Know that the Internet is permanent. Once information is published online, it is part of apermanent record, even if you ‘‘remove/delete’’ it later or attempt to make it anonymous.’’ (Cocacola)

‘‘Once online material is in the public domain, there is little control or influence over how it mightbe used or modified’’ (Australian Government)

Policies brought up another implication of editability for organizations: social media made itpossible for people who were not a part of the organization to circulate and edit information about theorganization after it had been first published by the employees. The policies presented this facet of theaffordance of editability as a source of risk of loss of control over information and image. To addressthis risk, policies referred to the same governance mechanisms deployed to counter potential negative


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consequences of visibility and persistence—that is, taking great care to minimize the likelihood ofinappropriate content being published in the first place (What To Post and What Not To Post guidelines).

AssociationPolicies contained elements related to the two main types of association discussed by Treem andLeonardi’s (2012) - association between people and association between people and information. Inaddition, we identified a third type of association—that between employees and organization.

Several policies included statements encouraging employees to use social media to Foster Community,that is, to develop connections between themselves and others. This observation relates to the associationamong individuals:

‘‘Build a Following: Promote yourself by finding and sharing information that will be interesting toyour friends and followers and useful for them to share.’’ (AMP3)

Policies also often encouraged employees to become aware of the association between them and theinformation they published in social media - the second type of association according to Treem andLeonardi (2012). Moreover, as illustrated in the above quote, policies often jointly tackled both types ofassociation. Fostering community was at times presented as potentially adding value to employees, theorganization, and others:

‘‘Social communication from RightNow should help our customers, partners, and co-workers. Itshould be thought-provoking and build a sense of community. If it helps people improveknowledge or skills, build their businesses, do their jobs, solve problems, or understand RightNowbetter—then it’s adding value.’’ (Right Now)

In addition to these two types of association, we also discovered that policies hinted at another typeof association, between employees and the organization as a whole. This third type of association wasparticularly visible in a highly prevalent policy element, emphasizing the role of social media in Blurringof the Personal and the Professional:

‘‘Because they blur the lines between personal voice and institutional voice, Ball State Universityhas crafted the following policy to help clarify how best to enhance and protect personal andprofessional reputations when participating in social media.’’ (Ball State University)

Establishing the association between employees and their organization usually came with statementsasking employees to post disclaimers (Identify Yourself policy element):

‘‘When you discuss Group-related information online, be transparent by giving your name androle and mentioning that you work for the Group. If you have an individual site that refers to orhas an impact on the Group, use a disclaimer such as ‘‘The views expressed on this site are my ownand not those of Cap Gemini.’’ (Cap Gemini)

References to disclaimers further suggest that organizations focused on risk mitigation. Moreover,in asking for explicit disclaimers, policies related the affordance of association to that of visibility. In thisregard, a number of policies displayed a sophisticated perspective on the implications of social media for


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the public/private, and the individual/organizational boundaries, suggesting interdependencies betweenassociation and visibility:

‘‘Perception is reality. In online social networks, the lines between public and private, personal andprofessional are blurred. Just by identifying yourself as an Intel employee, you are creatingperceptions about your expertise and about Intel by our shareholders, customers, and the generalpublic-and perceptions about you by your colleagues and managers.’’ (Intel)

Governance principlesThe previous paragraphs started examining how organizations attempted to respond to the perceivedaffordances of social media via governance. Here, we broaden this perspective and investigate thegeneral patterns of social media governance. Our analysis uncovered policy elements aimed at shapingemployees use of social media. We view these elements as governance mechanisms and argue thatorganizations in our sample followed three general approaches.

Leverage established governance mechanismsFirst, in a context where organizations were still in the process of making sense of the key affordancesof social media and their implications, they often opted to rely on the known mechanisms that hadproven to work in the past, albeit in a different context. The prominence of such policy elements asEditorial Style Recommendations and Follow Established (Generic) Rules corroborates this point. Theformer element often directly borrowed from existing communications policies, providing genericadvice rather than accounting for specificities of the social media environment, such as for instanceeditability. The latter element provided long lists of rules and regulations employees needed to complywith. As if organizations were unsure as to which rules would be most pertinent, they included manythey had already implemented for other purposes.

Establish new governance mechanismsPolices also attempted to establish a number of new principles specifically tailored for the social mediaenvironment. For example, the Identify Yourself policy element addressed the facet of the affordance ofassociation—association between employee and organization—that had become important with therise of social media. Similarly, What To Post and What Not To Post elements provided specific guidanceto employees to tackle the affordances of visibility and persistence. It is interesting to note, however,that the highly prevalent element What Not To Post often consisted of extensive lists of items borrowedfrom preexisting communications policies. On the other hand, the What To Post statements were muchmore specific but fairly infrequent.

Rely on hierarchy and personal responsibilityFinally, the policies invoked a range of governance principles whose main objective seemed to hedgeagainst or reduce unforeseen risks of social media. These principles did not provide specific guidanceon what to do or not to do in social media but rather required employees double-check their actionswith formal organizational authority. The If Uncertain Ask Authority and Management Approval ofSocial Media Initiatives policy elements illustrated this reaction. This approach allowed organizationsto deal with social media on a ‘‘case-by-case basis,’’ helping them adjust to the changing technologicalenvironment. In a similar vein, policies that introduced the Employee Responsibility element emphasizedthat employees would ultimately be held accountable for their use of social media.


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Temporal evolution of social media affordances and governanceThe previous paragraphs analyzed manifestations of social media affordances and governance principlesin our entire sample of policies, regardless of when the policies were put in place. We now turn ourattention to the subset of 45 policies for which the enactment date was known. The main objective isto better understand whether, and how, the way organizations perceived social media affordances andresponded to them via governance principles shifted over time. Figure 1 displays changes in emphasisscores for each policy element across four time periods. We used this figure to guide and inform ourqualitative exploration of the temporal patterns present in the data. The following paragraphs providedetails on the two key trends we identified.

A first notable trend had to do with organizations’ growing recognition of social media andprofessionalization of their response to them. For example, we found that the policies enacted earlierin the observation period often provided statements explicitly defining their scope and detailing theactivities and tools the policy covered. In this sense, many of the earlier policies included an openingparagraph defining and Describing Social Media applications.

In addition to delimiting the perimeter of their authority, these definitions and descriptions of socialmedia offered a pedagogical dimension as they informed employees about social media, suggesting anacknowledgement of the new, and still rather unknown, character of social media in the organizationalcontext.

We also noted that even though the element Follow Established (Generic) Rules was prevalent amongall sampled policies regardless of their enactment date, there were notable qualitative differences inwhat these established rules covered over time. Policies enacted early in our observation period (from2005 to 2009) usually invoked existing rules and regulations that were not specific to social media andcame from broad general areas of organizational activity, such as human resources, communication,and public relations:

‘‘The social media policy closely follows the Gibraltar Ethics Policy outlined in the officialemployee handbook’’ (Gibraltar).

‘‘Consult Human Resources and the church’s confidentiality policies for guidance about whatconstitutes ‘‘confidential’’ or ‘‘proprietary’’ information.’’ (Fellowship Church).

Policies enacted later in the observation period still referred to these generic organizational rules butthey also brought up instructions and guidelines that addressed the specific affordances of social mediain the workplace. This observation, in our view, reveals a professionalization of the organizationalgovernance of social media.

The trend towards professionalization of governance was also evident in policies increasinglyreferring to resources and positions specifically dedicated to deal with social media. Relatedly, we noteda qualitative shift in the If uncertain, ask authority element. While the element stayed highly salientthroughout the observation period, the ‘‘authority’’ in question changed over time. In earlier policies,employees were usually expected to contact their direct supervisor or manager; in later documents,however, the role of social media manager started to emerge as an authority to oversee and adviseemployees on issues related to social media.

The requirement for employee-driven social media initiatives to be approved by management alsogained importance in policies enacted later in the observation period:

‘‘A number of Navitas employees are asked to use social media to meet the requirements of theirRoles or to represent Navitas. All staff that use social media professionally on behalf of Navitas


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must be authorised to do so and must enrol on the Social Media Register via [email protected].’’(Navitas)

This growing demand for Management approval of social media initiatives was consistent with thetrend toward professionalization of social media. As social media were becoming more widespread andfamiliar, organizations started to devote more human, technological, and financial resources to theirmanagement in the organizational context. Later policies therefore indicated the launch of additional,dedicated organizational governance mechanisms for social media.

A second temporal trend encompassed a shift in organizations’ interpretations of social mediaaffordances and a corresponding change in governance to account not only for risks but also foropportunities associated with social media. In particular, overall, organizations’ reaction to socialmedia was predominantly focused on limiting the risks associated with the affordances of visibilityand persistence. This was seen in the prevalence of the Misrepresentation and Disclosure of Informationas well as What Not To Post policy elements in the overall sample. The former element retained itsprevalence throughout the observation period. The emphasis on the latter element—What Not ToPost —however, diminished in policies enacted later in the observation period, while recommendationsregarding What To Post remained stable.

We interpret these changes as reflecting increasing sophistication and maturity of the way organiza-tions perceived social media affordances and devised governance principles over time. Mitigating risksremained at the forefront of governance, but the emphasis started to switch towards building uponmore positive implications of social media as possibly generating value. Policies thus increasingly statedthat Organizations [Saw] Value in social media and presented Organizational Support of Social Media:

‘‘Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services has embraced social media as a meansto improve openness, accessibility and transparency. Strategic use of social media helps the agencyfoster positive relationships with key audiences such as customers, social service partners,taxpayers/voters, overseers, government peers and employees.’’ (Hamilton County)

‘‘If the hospital professionals want or need to start social networking (blogs, Facebook group,Twitter profile, etc.) about any topic related to the activity of the centre, HSJD encourages them inthis initiative, and offers support and recognition through the HSJD social networks.’’ (HospitalSan Jao)

Policies enacted at different dates therefore suggested a transformation in organizations’ perceptionof and reaction to social media affordances over time. While the emphasis on risk managementassociated with the affordances of visibility and persistence remained dominant, a theme suggestingthat organizations could benefit from their employees’ use of social media became more perceptible.

This change in organizational understanding of social media was especially visible in changingreactions to the affordance of association. As noted earlier, policies in our sample revealed theaffordance of association between employees using social media and their respective organizations.This facet of association was captured in the policy element with the highest prevalence in the sample,Blurring the Personal and the Professional Boundary. The emphasis score of this policy element, whilegenerally remaining high, decreased towards the end of the observation period. At the same time, theemphasis of the policy element related to Foster Community showed a marked increase over time. Thistrend suggests a growing organizational recognition of the affordance of association not only as thatbetween employees and organization, but also between employees and organization, on the one hand,and other parties, on the other.


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Discussion

This section elaborates on the implications of this research for organizational governance of socialmedia as well as for the affordance perspective on social media.

Organizational governance of social mediaPart of our motivation to study social media policies stemmed from the aforementioned observationthat social media use in organizational contexts is often end-user driven (Stolley, 2009; Vaast, 2010).Social media have therefore rendered traditional managerial and technical tools of IT governance, suchas budgets, technical investments, human resources, and training, etc. (Sambamurthy & Zmud, 1999;Weill, 2000), less effective. Policies, in this sense, have offered organizations one a few levers to governsocial media use in the workplace (Guerin, 2011; Kane et al. 2009).

Our analysis of social media policies revealed that organizations tended to perceive and portrayaffordances of social media primarily as a source of risk rather than value. In particular, policies presentedvisibility, persistence, and editability, as factors increasing the probability for sensitive organizationalinformation to become accessible to and manipulable by diverse external audiences. Accordingly,governance principles offered in response were aimed at shaping workplace use of social media in waysthat would mitigate these risks and reduce their potential damage. With regard to association, while thepolicies acknowledged association among people and association between people and content, the mainemphasis was placed on the connection between employees using social media and the organizationthey belonged to. Policies again portrayed this unanticipated facet of association as a potentialrisk and suggested dealing with it through personal disclaimers and other controls over publishedcontent.

It was not surprising per se that our analyses showed that policies portrayed the affordances ofsocial media primarily as ‘‘constraints’’ rather than ‘‘enablers’’ (Majchrzak & Markus, 2013). Afterall, organizational policies by nature are focused more on delimiting what not to do and less onsuggesting what to do. Our findings concerning the responses offered by the policies to tackle these newsocial media risks, however, were more intriguing. Many of the governance mechanisms articulated inthe policies stemmed from preexisting governance practices rooted in other organizational domains,including human resources, communications, and public relations. Thus, in order to deal with thenew risks generated by employee use of social media, policies tended to rely heavily on generic rulesand regulations that organizations already had in place. For risks that fell outside of the scope of theexisting guidelines, organizations sought to enlist managers and supervisors to deal with social mediaon a case-by-case basis. The issue of whether or how these people were qualified for the task was rarelyaddressed.

Amending this point somewhat, we noted temporal evolution in organizational responses to socialmedia. References to existing governance principles remained dominant in the policies throughout theentire observation period. However, policies enacted later tended not only to articulate constraintsthat social media brought about for organizations, but also to highlight capabilities that they enabled(Majchrzak & Markus, 2013). Furthermore, these later policies also started to refer to resourcesspecifically dedicated to governing social media in the organization, for instance through mentions ofpersonnel whose primary role was to guide employees in their organizational use of social media.

Taking these findings into consideration, it is important to ponder how policies may shape andbe shaped by social media affordances and, ultimately, employee use of social media. Our researchdesign did not allow us to directly examine these aspects empirically, but our findings lead us to maketwo conjectures in this regard. First, for those employees who had not been exposed to social mediabefore and, therefore, did not yet have established perceptions of social media affordances, the portrayal


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of social media provided by the policies would likely shape their perceptions of the affordances and,hence, use of social media in a certain restrictive way. For example, exposed to policies suggestingthat editability concerned primarily those outside of the organization, employees might not perceivefeatures of social media that made it possible for them to change and improve published content on anongoing basis.

Second, the impact of policies on social media affordances and use most likely was not unidirectional.As employees gained more exposure and experience with social media, so did the organizations. As aresult, the affordances of social media in the organizational context and their reflection in the policieschanged over time. The two temporal trends revealed by our analysis—the shift from focusing on riskonly to focusing both on risk and value and the professionalization of social media governance—offersigns of this ongoing mutual interrelationship among social media governance, affordances, and use.

Relationships among affordances of social mediaOur findings revealed that the affordances of visibility and persistence were tightly connected and, byand large, jointly dominated the policies in our sample. The prevalence of visibility and persistenceand the close connection between them also seemed to affect the other affordances. Editability wasmostly framed in terms of ‘‘editability by others,’’ while the focus of association was on the connectionbetween employee and organization. Policies, thus, at times both uncovered and fashioned implicitoppositions among the social media affordances. Theoretically, this finding reveals that affordancesare not independent and that in order to better understand how affordances are constructed and howthey shape use, researchers need to consider not only individual affordances in isolation but also thecomplex interrelations among the affordances as technically and socially constructed.

Furthermore, our research adds to the affordance perspective by showing that affordances of socialmedia may not only vary across organizations (Leonardi & Barley 2010), but also evolve over time.We noted specific temporal trends in how organizations perceived and responded to the affordances ofsocial media. Early policies associated social media affordances with potential risks for the organization(e.g. legal concerns, issues with image control). Later policies still articulated risks in connection to socialmedia affordances, but also referred to broader, more positive potential for social media to generatevalue for the organization (e.g. generating value, building a community). This finding is significantfrom a conceptual standpoint and calls for further investigation of the factors that shape and reshapeaffordances over time as well as of the nature of the dual relationship between affordances and use ofsocial media.

Concluding Remarks

As we conclude this paper, we acknowledge its limitations that warrant further investigations. Oursample was not random as it included policies available through a public online database. While wemade a concerted effort to include a wide range of industries and types of organizations in our sample,we do not make claims of wide generalizability of our findings. We encourage researchers to examinesocial media policies from other organizations in particular from non-English-speaking countries. Suchexamination might help bring about cultural and societal distinctions in social media governance in theworkplace. Next, our analyses uncovered several trends within the entire sample of organizations westudied. We did not uncover meaningful differences in how particular industries or industry groupingsperceived and responded to social media affordances, but it would be fascinating to analyze this at adeeper level to be able to identify and interpret emerging cross-industry patterns. Finally, this paperexamined policies that targeted employee use of social media outside the organization. Future studies


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should compare and contrast these findings to organization’s reactions to employee use of social mediainside the enterprise.

Overall, this research yielded several theoretical contributions to the affordance perspective onsocial media and to our understanding of the organizational governance of social media. This researchadded to the affordance perspective by providing an empirical examination of how organizationalpolicies reflect and contribute to the shaping of social media affordances in the workplace. This researchalso added to an affordance perspective by showing the importance of considering not only individualaffordances but also the complex interrelations among them as technically and socially constructed overtime. Finally, this research contributed to the understanding of the implications of social media in theworkplace by examining key organizational responses aimed at guiding employee use of social media.

Notes

1 Emphasis score for code x in time period y was calculated as the average of (1/total number of codesin policy document z) for all policy documents in time period y in which code x was present.

2 Italics indicate the policy elements that emerged from our inductive coding.3 The connection between policy elements and social media affordances was established qualitatively

via a thorough iterative review of the constitutive quotes for each policy elements. One policyelement, thus, could be linked to several affordances.

4 Policy elements are shown in the decreasing order of salience.

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About the Authors

Emmanuelle Vaast (Ph.D., Ecole Polytechnique) is an Associate Professor of Information Systemsat the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University. She studies the affordances of newtechnologies, and, in particular, of social media, and their realization in the practices of individuals,communities, and organizations.

Postal address: 1001 Sherbrooke Street W Montreal QC H3A 1G5 Canada

email: [email protected]

Evgeny Kaganer (Ph.D., Louisiana State University) is an Associate Professor of Information Systemsat IESE Business School. His research focuses on social and mobile technologies and their impact onindividuals, organizations, and business models. His recent work traces the evolution of crowdsourcingand its growing impact on business.

Postal address: Avenida Pearson, 21 08034 Barcelona Spain

email: [email protected]

Appendix

Appendix A List of sampled policies

Organization Industry Enactment date

American Institute of Architects Non-profit n/aAMP3 Public Relations 2010Apple Information Technology 12 2001Australian Government Government 08/2008Baker & Daniels Legal services n/aBallState University Higher Education 11/2009Banco Sadabell Banking 01 2011Basque Government Government 04 2011BBC Media 10/2010Best Buy Retail 01/2010Bread for the World Non-profit 10/2009British Telecom Telecommunications n/aCap Gemini Consulting n/aCity of Hampton, VA Government 08/2009Cleveland Clinic Healthcare n/aCoca-Cola Consumer goods n/aDaimler AG Manufacturing n/aDell Information Technology n/aDePaul University Education n/a


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Appendix A Continued


Eastern University Education 04 2010ESPN Media n/aeWay Direct Online marketing n/aE.W. Scripps Media 07 2011Fellowship Church Church 04/2005Ford Automotive 08 2010Gartner Consulting n/aGibraltar Public Relations 12/2009Government of Catalonia Government 06/2010Greteman Group Consulting 01/2009GSA Government 07/2009Hamilton College Higher Education n/aHamilton County Government 02 2010Harvard Law School Higher Education n/aHeadset Brothers E-tail n/aHill & Knowlton Public Relations 05/2005Hospital San Jao Healthcare 02/2012IBM Information Technology n/aIcrossing Public relations 04/2012Intel Information Technology 03/2010IOC Vancouver Government 02/2010Kaiser Permanente Health Insurance 04/2009Kodak Hardware n/aLiveworld Public Relations n/aMayo Clinic Healthcare n/aMicrosoft Information Technologies n/aNavitas Organic foods 06/2012Nordstrom Retail 11/2009Nova Scotia Government Government n/aNPR Media 10/2009Oce Hardware 10/2009Ogilvy Advertising Public Relations 02/2010Ohio State University Medical Center Healthcare 12/2009Opera Information Technology n/aOracle Information Technology n/aPlaxo Information Technology 03/2005Porter Novelli Public Relations 07/2008Powerhouse museum Non-profit 04/007Razorfish Marketing 07/2009Reuteurs Media n/aRightNow Marketing n/aRoche Healthcare n/a


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Appendix A Continued


SAP Information Technology 06/2009Scouts of London Non-profit 02/2011State of Delaware Government 04/2009Sutter Health Healthcare 08/2009Telstra Telecommunications 04/2009Tuft University Higher Education n/aUK Civil Service Government 01/2009UK Department of Defence Government 08/2009Unic Information Technology 10/2009University of Michigan Higher Education 07/2010ViaRail Canada Public transport. 06/2011Washington Post Media 09/2009Webtrends Information Technology n/a

Appendix B Inter-coder agreement rates by code

Code Agreement Rate

Social media description 78%Blurring of personal/professional boundary 78%What to post 80%What not to post 80%Foster community 74%Editorial style recommendations 87%Identify yourself 87%Employee responsibility 100%Persistence 80%Misrepresentation & disclosure of information 87%Organization sees value in SM 74%Organizational support of SM 70%Enforcement and disciplinary action 87%Follow established (generic) rules 96%If uncertain, ask authority 78%Management approval of SM initiatives 66%Avoid work interference 74%Average for all codes: 81%


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Social media affordances and governance in the workplace

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