Can organizations guide employees' social media behavior? The benefits of incentive rather than restrictive social media guidelines

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of social media guidelines (SMGs), as well as their impact on control mutuality, a sub-dimension of the organization–employee relationship (OER). A total of two studies compare guidelines with a focus that is either predominantly incentive or restrictive. In addition, they investigate the moderating effect of guideline writing style and enforcement.Design/methodology/approachIn total, two online experiments were conducted among Belgian employees. Participants read a social media policy manipulated in terms of focus (restrictive vs incentive) and style (conversational vs corporate; Study 1) or enforcement (signature requested vs not requested; Study 2).FindingsIncentive guidelines increase employee branding behavior more than their restrictive counterparts, while also safeguarding employees' perceived control mutuality. However, solid SMGs will not compensate for an organization's bad reputation among employees. The guidelines' style and manner of enforcement did not seem to matter.Practical implicationsCommunication executives can use our findings to draft SMGs in a way that increases opportunities (e.g. ambassadorship) and reduces risks (e.g. criticism) associated with employee social media use.Originality/valuePrior research on SMGs is predominantly descriptive and focused on the organizational perspective. This research paper contributes to both theory and practice by studying the causal impact of these guidelines on employees.

Exchange and Communal Strengths’ Associations With Relational Characteristics and Forgiveness

Clark and Mills (2012) proposed that communal norms characterize “healthy marriages,” whereas exchange norms indicate “troubled” ones. Using the actor–partner interdependence model, we consider this proposal. Heterosexual married partners’ exchange and communal strength are examined with several relational features including trust, commitment, relational satisfaction, and control mutuality, as well as partner-specific tendencies toward forgiveness. The findings indicate that one’s communal strength is associated with positive relational features for both oneself and one’s spouse, as well as a greater propensity to forgive and lesser tendencies toward negative forgiveness (retaliation). Exchange strength was generally associated with negative forgiveness. However, the relationship between exchange strength and relational features is more complicated. Lesser communal strength was generally associated with lower levels of the relational characteristics. Yet, exchange and communal strength interacted, indicating exchange may play a protective function by buffering against the ill effects of a lack of communal strength for some relational characteristics.

Factors Contributing the Effectiveness in Public Relation Practices

To achieve a big success, an organization must emphasis on effectiveness in its practices especially in significant areas such as public relations. To maintain the relationship between an organization and its public, many factors must be recognized. This study explores what factors will contribute in the process of gaining effectiveness in public relations practices. To collect primary data, the researcher had disseminated 384 sets of questionnaires to 384 respondents in Kuala Terengganu and used SPSS version 20 to analyze the data. The finding shows that 4 factors (attitude, trust, skills, and control mutuality) are closely related to effectiveness in public relations practices. However, only attitude and skills affect effectiveness in public relations practices.

Comparative analysis of perception of organization—public relationships in Chinese and Korean newspapers

We compared attitudes, dimensions, and perspectives related to organization–public relationships (OPR) as represented in articles published in major daily newspapers in China and South Korea. Content analysis showed more negative attitudes toward OPR for South Korean (17.4%) than for Chinese newspapers (3.4%). Control mutuality, trust, and satisfaction were found to be important dimensions. Face/favor was found to be an important dimension in Chinese OPR articles, where it appeared for three successive years (14.9%). In contrast, it did not appear at all in South Korean articles. The findings show that attitudes, dimensions, and perspectives related to OPR reporting in the press are subject to influence from sociocultural characteristics, suggesting that different results may be obtained for countries with different characteristics.

In Search of a Causal Model of the Organization–Public Relationship in Public Relations

I explored the underlying linkage structure between relational indicators in the organization–public relationship setting to establish which dimension takes precedence over the others, and whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship among the various dimensions. The results showed that control mutuality was the primary relationship indicator, affecting trust and satisfaction. As predicted, satisfaction affected trust. Finally, trust significantly affected commitment. In the university–student relationship setting, the results showed that trust and satisfaction played a mediating role among the dimensions. If it is accepted that the operative effect of relationship management is to initiate, maintain, and enhance the organization's relationship with the strategic public, then control mutuality might play an antecedent role in the development of satisfaction and trust. Thus, sharing the decision-making process with the public is more likely to increase the level of trust and satisfaction.

The Effectiveness of Strategic Relationship Marketing: Exploring Relationship Quality towards Customer Loyalty

This study examines customer satisfaction, trust, control mutuality and communication as determinants of relationship quality and customer loyalty in relationship marketing. The study focuses on Malaysian telecommunication industry in the business-to-customer context. The structural equation modelling technique is used to empirically test the proposed hypotheses based on the sample size of 405 customers collected by a questionnaire survey. Trust had the greatest positive influence on relationship quality, followed by satisfaction. Subsequently, there was no significant effect of control mutuality and communication on relationship quality. Customer loyalty was significantly affected by relationship quality. The contribution of this paper is twofold. From a theoretical perspective, the social exchange theory is validated and it offers both a conceptual foundation and empirical-based evaluation of customer loyalty through the context of relationship quality. In the practical perspective, the findings proposed useful information to the telecommunication service providers in developing more effective relationship marketing strategies to build better relationship quality and customer loyalty.