Institutional Predictors of the Adoption of Employee Social Media Policies

Abstract

The importance of employee social media policies is recognized in today’s increasingly connected organizations. Yet these policies are adopted at varying rates in different sectors and geographical regions. In the present study, an institutional approach was employed to investigate the predictors of the adoption of employee social media policies by organizations. Six predictors were examined, namely, organizational size, industry, and the national culture dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. Results of a logistic regression analysis of 558 online survey responses from human resource professionals worldwide showed that all six predictors were associated with the adoption of employee social media policies. These findings have implications for multinational companies, as well as for policy makers in the legal, human resources, information technologies, and public relations departments who are the primary parties involved in establishing employee social media policies. Study limitations are presented and future research avenues are suggested.

Keywords

employee social media policies employee social media guidelines social media governance institutional theory national culture cultural dimensions theory

Introduction: Employee Social Media Policies

Social media have become an integral part of the 21st century’s workplace. These new media are highly interactive platforms that use mobile and web-based technologies (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011), and offer the possibility of reaching and involving large audiences (M. El Ouirdi, El Ouirdi, Segers, & Henderickx, 2014). Social media use in the workplace is complex and multifaceted because it can be intended for organizational or individual uses, targeted at internal or external crowds, or designed for professional or personal purposes (A. El Ouirdi, El Ouirdi, Segers, & Henderickx, 2014).

Several researchers and practitioners have examined the benefits and risks of social media use by employees. On the one hand, employees can be more creative when they use social media to create knowledge and seek information beyond organizational boundaries (Yan, Davison, & Mo, 2013). They become more satisfied with their jobs when they use these technologies in the workplace (Charoensukmongkol, 2014), and they can act as brand ambassadors on social media to convey corporate culture and attract new talent (Laick & Dean, 2011). Social media can also foster collaboration and trust among the members of an organization (Murthy, Hastings, & Mawrie, 2014). On the other hand, however, social media use by employees can give rise to privacy and reputation issues (Cain, 2011; Protiviti, 2013, 2014), and lead to legal ramifications and workplace disputes (Hidy & Mcdonald, 2013) as well as stress and information overload (Bucher, Fieseler, & Suphan, 2013). Therefore, organizational initiatives are needed to prevent potential issues related to social media use in the workplace while fully benefiting from these technologies.

This study is aimed at investigating the predictors of the adoption of employee social media policies, focusing on the role of organizational size, industry sector, and national culture dimensions. The cultural perspective, in particular, is useful for policy makers in multinational companies who need to adapt employee social media policies to different cultural contexts. This is all the more true in today’s globalized business world where there is a strategic need to understand how national culture influences behavior in organizational settings (Sagie & Aycan, 2003). The findings of this study will help provide guidance to policy makers in the legal, human resources, information technologies, and public relations departments who are the primary parties involved in establishing employee social media policies (Neill & Moody, 2015; Tufts, Jacobson, & Stevens, 2015). This study will also contribute to the underresearched topic of employee social media policies (A. El Ouirdi et al., 2014; Fast, Sørensen, Brand, & Suggs, 2015) by providing preliminary empirical results on how institutional factors affect the adoption of these policies.

This article is structured as follows: First, employee social media policies are defined and their importance is highlighted, followed by a brief literature review on the small corpus of research on the topic. Second, based on an institutional approach, hypotheses are advanced on the role of organizational size, industry sector, and the four national culture dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance in predicting the adoption of employee social media policies. Third, the study methods, results, and limitations are presented, and future research avenues are suggested.

Research Background and Literature Review

Organizational measures regarding social media use by employees can take the form of either social media policies or guidelines. The difference between these two types of documents is that policies provide official positions governing social media use by employees, while guidelines provide advice on best practices (Hrdinová, Helbig, & Peters, 2010). Furthermore, these policies or guidelines can be either separate documents, or integrated within existing information technology policies (Jacobson & Tufts, 2013). Throughout this article, “employee social media policies” will be used as an umbrella term. This choice is based on the general definition of an organizational policy as “a communication document from management, as management attempts to convey a specific message to various parties” (Von Solms & Von Solms, 2004, p. 275), without necessarily entailing official positions or any mentions of conduct consequences.

Employee social media policies are different from other workplace directives, although they can be thought of as an extension of existing Internet and e-mail policies. Most organizations build employee social media policies on established and well-understood corporate communication policies in an attempt to integrate the new phenomenon of social media into existing knowledge (Kaganer & Vaast, 2010). Research has shown, however, that traditional organizational policy development processes are unsuitable for social media-related issues (Husin & Hanisch, 2011a, 2011b). The development of employee social media policies requires increased feedback from different management layers in order to face new social media issues that are not anticipated with more traditional tools such as e-mail (Husin & Hanisch, 2011a).

Employee social media policies are generally adopted in the framework of a larger organizational approach or strategy. These policies are considered as one of the main vehicles of social media governance (Linke & Zerfass, 2013; Vaast & Kaganer, 2013) defined as “the formal or informal frameworks which regulate the actions of the members of an organization within the social web” (Zerfass, Fink, & Linke, 2011, p. 1033). Employee social media policies represent only one step in an organization’s strategic management approach to the use of social media by employees (Dreher, 2014) and one of the strategic responsibilities associated with social media management in general (Neill & Moody, 2015). The broader framework that employee social media policies are part of may include employee training, a supporting corporate culture, and managerial commitment, among other aspects (Dreher, 2014; Linke & Zerfass, 2013). Additionally, the existence of social media policies may be considered as an indicator of organizational readiness toward a successful social media implementation (Geyer & Krumay, 2015).

In organizational contexts, employee social media policies are important for two main reasons. First, from an employees’ perspective, these policies can help preserve job security by educating employees about safe online conduct as well as critical online behaviors that might get them fired because information posted on online social networks can be used as the basis of disciplinary actions or even termination decisions by human resources managers (Davison, Maraist, & Bing, 2011; O’Brien, 2014). Employee social media policies are particularly important in countries where the legal frameworks protecting employee social media behaviors are not sufficiently developed yet.

Second, from an organizational perspective, employee social media policies can help organizations attract potential job candidates. For young job applicants, the existence of an employee social media policy is important. For example, according to a survey conducted by Cisco (2011), 24% of college students in a large cross-cultural sample stated that they would ask about an organization’s social media policy during a job interview. Furthermore, many young students reported that they would decide about job offers based on the content of the social media policies of potential employers (Cisco, 2011). Results from the same study showed that if offered a job from an organization that banned social media access during work hours and on corporate devices, 27% of the surveyed students would accept it but still access those platforms. In contrast, 29% would not accept the offer because they consider the hiring company in question to be behind the times in terms of social media use, and they believe that access to social media is part of the younger generation’s culture and a prerequisite for their work-life balance (Cisco, 2011). Other empirical evidence supported these results by showing that the Millennial generation perceived a better person-organization fit with companies whose policies supported employees’ use of social media than a fit with organizations that restricted such practices (Cho, Park, & Ordonez, 2013).

The investigation of the policy-related aspect of social media use by employees is therefore a timely endeavor, given the shifts that are currently marking the composition of the workforce worldwide (Barzilai-Nahon & Mason, 2010; Murphy, 2007). Workforce demographics are changing as younger workers are increasingly joining organizations, which gives rise to technology-related issues such as network overload and inefficient multitasking due to using new information and communication technologies at work (Barzilai-Nahon & Mason, 2010).

While the importance of employee social media policies is clearly established, practitioner reports show that organizations are still divided on their adoption. Between 2009 and 2015, the rate of organizational adoption of these policies varied between 20% and 63% in different sectors and geographical regions (Deloitte, 2009; ERC, 2012; Macnamara, 2011; Manpower, 2010; Neill & Moody, 2015; Proskauer, 2011; Protiviti, 2013, 2014; Tufts et al., 2015; William Fry, 2013).

Furthermore, the corpus of research on social media policies is limited and focused on a few topics. One of the aspects examined in the literature on social media policies is their legal framework, especially in the United States. Several researchers discussed employee social media policies in relation to American laws such as the National Labor Relations Act, and presented several illustrations of court cases involving employees’ use of social media (e.g., Berkowitz, Downes, & Burdick, 2012; Brice, Fifer, & Naron, 2012; Cavico, Mujtaba, Muffler, & Samuel, 2013; Elefant, 2011; Hudson & Roberts, 2011; Kennedy, 2013; Kirby & Raphan, 2014; National Labor Relations Board, 2012; Neal, 2012; O’Brien, 2014; Thornthwaite, 2013; Younkins, 2013). Nevertheless, while social media are evolving quickly, legal frameworks are progressing at a slower pace, leaving employers struggling with the adoption of proper policies that allow them to benefit from social media all the while avoiding legal and ethical issues (Kaupins & Park, 2011). Several researchers have focused their efforts on analyzing the content of social media policies with the objective of identifying recurrent themes and guiding policy development (e.g., Fast et al., 2015; Hrdinová et al., 2010; Jacobson & Tufts, 2013; Johnston, 2015; Krüger, Brockmann, & Stieglitz, 2013).

Another aspect noted in the literature on social media policies is its focus on the health care sector, with attention divided between physicians (Decamp, 2013; Greysen, Kind, & Chretien, 2010) and medical students (Chretien, Greysen, Chretien, & Kind, 2009; Kind, Genrich, Sodhi, & Chretien, 2010). This interest can be explained by the sensitivity of the current and future jobs of these users, especially with regard to patient privacy and confidentiality that might be at risk of violation on social media, especially with the increasing adoption of social technologies in the medical profession, also called “Medicine 2.0” (Eysenbach, 2008). This interest is further accentuated by the contribution of the American Medical Association to the topic by issuing a policy titled “Professionalism in the Use of Social Media,” designed to provide advice for physicians and medical students on how to use social media (Oakley & Spallek, 2012).

Predictors of the Adoption of Employee Social Media Policies

In this study, the adoption of employee social media policies is examined in relation to the organizational boundary of company size and extended beyond it to the institutional factors of industry and national culture dimensions. This choice is motivated by the evolving attention regarding potential influences on human resources policies and practices from organizational and internal factors to environmental ones based on an institutional approach (Paauwe & Boselie, 2003).

Employee social media policies can be considered as part of human resources management policies. Their adoption can also be examined from two perspectives: formalization, defined as “the degree to which decisions and working relationships are governed by formal rules, standard policies, and procedures” (Rapert & Wren, 1998, p. 288); and risk aversion or avoidance defined as the tendency to avoid risks in uncertain situations, and considered as a preventive risk management technique (Adler, Leonard, & Nordgren, 1999). In this regard, information technology experts consider the adoption of employee social media policies or guidelines as a risk mitigation technique (ISACA, 2010).

Organizational Size

According to Mintzberg’s (1981) theory on organization design, the larger an organization, the more formalized its procedures and rules. A significant body of research supports this positive relationship between organizational size and formalization (Zeffane, 1989). In other words, the greater the number of employees, the lesser the ability of managers to directly supervise each individual and the greater the reliance on formalization through written policies, procedures, and rules (Chandler, 1990; Freeman, 1999). Also, in small organizations, communication is mostly direct and verbal, whereas in bigger organizations this direct communication channel is difficult to use mainly due to the large number of employees, hence the need to resort to policies that establish procedures to communicate formal company directives and rules (Von Solms & Von Solms, 2004).

The same idea discussed above arguably applies to social media use by employees. While it might be possible in small organizations to informally communicate to employees the organization’s recommendations on online conduct, a similar procedure would be challenging in bigger organizations with larger numbers of employees. Additionally, “institutional theory suggests that larger organizations should adopt more sophisticated and socially responsive (human resources management) activities because these more visible organizations are under more pressure to gain legitimacy” (Jackson & Schuler, 1995, p. 246). In this regard, employee social media policies can be thought of as sophisticated human resources management related practices showcasing an organization’s awareness of the technological challenges presented by these new media and its sensitivity to its corporate online image and the behaviors of its employees. Therefore, the first hypothesis of this study states that the bigger an organization, the more likely it will have an employee social media policy.

Hypothesis 1: Larger organizations are more likely to have employee social media policies.

Industry

Despite its importance, industry had received scarce attention in research on information systems and technologies (Chiasson & Davidson, 2005). Commonly studied industries included financial services, retailing, and manufacturing because they were among the first industries to adopt information technologies, thus providing an optimal setting for research (Chiasson & Davidson, 2005). With the diffusion of information technologies to other industries, new opportunities have opened up for research (Chiasson & Davidson, 2005) and it has become possible to extend scholarship to a wider variety of industries. Industry was not widely researched in the human resources management literature despite its potential far-reaching implications in the field (Jackson & Schuler, 1995).

In this study, a high-level categorization of industries is employed, distinguishing between the manufacturing and service sectors. This distinction is usually made in the literature because manufacturing industries and service companies differ in several dynamics (Audretsch, Klomp, & Thurik, 1997) including innovation patterns (Sheehan, 2006). Furthermore, compared with the manufacturing industries, service firms are more labor-intensive because they rely more on human capital and less on physical infrastructure and machines (Amin, 2010). Given these specificities, human resources management may be more important in the service sector compared with manufacturing industries (Bartel, 2004). It can also be argued that because companies in the service sector are more knowledge-intensive, they may have more knowledge workers using new information technologies in their daily jobs. Consequently, companies in the service sector will be more likely to be exposed to social media use by employees, and will therefore be more sensitive to either possible issues that might arise from such use or potential opportunities that can be harnessed from guiding employee practices. Such awareness might result in larger adoption of employee social media policies. Consequently, the second hypothesis is presented as follows:

Hypothesis 2: Compared to manufacturing firms, service sector organizations are more likely to have employee social media policies.

National Culture

National culture can influence organizational practices and outcomes. A number of existing theoretical frameworks attribute differences in human resources management practices to different internal and external factors without explicitly discussing the role of the sociocultural context (Aycan, 2005). According to the cultural perspective, however, national culture can influence a number of organizational practices (Aycan, 2005). National culture can have influences at the macro level and also affect individual and corporate decision making at the micro-level (Mihet, 2013) and shape human resources policies (Tayeb, 1995). An extensive body of research examined the association between national culture and various organizational outcomes such as job performance, citizenship behavior, and organizational commitment (for a review, see Taras, Kirkman, & Steel, 2010). Since it is difficult to separate human resources management from national contexts (Tenhiala et al., 2014), and because national culture may play a stronger role in the face of corporate culture, organizations need to take into account national culture differences in the development of human resource policies (Schneider, 1988). The consideration of the external influence of national culture in this study also derives its theoretical relevance from the institutional theory according to which organizations are embedded in a variety of social-institutional influences (Chiasson & Davidson, 2005; Dimaggio & Powell, 1983; Senge, 2013).

Hofstede’s (1983) conceptualization of national culture dimensions, which is one of the widely used frameworks to examine cross-cultural differences, is used in this study. Hoftsede’s work on culture has been subjected to several criticisms such as doubts about the representativeness of the IBM population on which he based his research (McSweeney, 2002), and the potential obsolescence of the data he used and insufficiency of four or five dimensions to define culture (Baskerville-Morley, 2005). However, Hofstede (2002) responded to criticism indicating that several replications supported the validity of his research. Indeed, reviews of research that incorporated Hofstede’s work found that such research supported rather than contradicted Hofstede’s conclusions (Kirkman, Lowe, & Gibson, 2006). Therefore, the cultural dimensions of Hofstede were retained for this study.

The four dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance are posited to be related to the adoption of employee social media policies. First, power distance refers to “the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally” (Hofstede, 2011, p. 9). In large power distance countries, subordinates are expected to be told what to do (Hofstede, 2011), whereas in low distance countries work designs provide more freedom and discretion (Stahl & Björkman, 2006). Extensive research has found evidence of the link between power distance and a number of work-related outcomes, such as human resources management practices, leadership, and innovation (Daniels & Greguras, 2014; Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). Evidence also indicates that in societies that feature a high level of power distance, organizations will tend to take fewer risks (Mihet, 2013). Therefore, in high power distance countries, organizations will be more likely to establish social media policies as both a means to tell employees how to behave on social media and as a risk mitigation tool.

Second, individualism “describes the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups” (Hofstede & Bond, 1988, p. 10) and refers to the strength of ties people have with their families, tribes, or villages within a society (Hofstede, 1983). A high score on the individualism index means that the members of the culture in question have loose ties, while a low score indicates a collectivist society where members maintain close ties. Individualistic cultures have a higher preference for risk compared with collectivist cultures (Kim & Park, 2010; Li, Grif, Yue, & Zhao, 2013; Mihet, 2013) and offer a large amount of freedom to individuals (Hofstede, 1983). Therefore, it is expected that organizations in individualistic cultures will be less likely to adopt employee social media policies thus offering individuals the freedom of assessing their own behaviors on social media, whereas organizations in collectivist cultures will be more likely to adopt these policies as a form of risk avoidance.

Third, masculinity is a cultural dimension that is germane to the extent to which roles are divided between genders in a society (Hofstede, 1983) and the degree to which masculine values such as assertiveness are dominant (Hofstede, 1980). Masculine societies place great value on performance and achievement (Hofstede, 1983). In this type of goal-oriented society, organizations will arguably place higher importance on employee performance and will therefore be more likely to keep a tight grip on social media use in the workplace, on the grounds that it can be a distraction from productivity. This control can be manifested through employee social media policies. Additionally, high levels of masculinity are associated with formalization (Sivakumar & Nakata, 1996). Therefore, organizations in masculine societies are expected to be more likely to have employee social media policies.

Finally, uncertainty avoidance is related to the way societies deal with uncertain situations (Hofstede, 1983). In countries with high uncertainty avoidance, organizations tend to have greater formalization manifested in more written rules and policies (Alkhafaji, 1994; Hofstede, 1980; Schneider & Barsoux, 2003). In terms of human resources policies, organizations in high uncertainty avoidance cultures favor clear job descriptions and specific rules and policies (Stahl & Björkman, 2006). Furthermore, organizations in countries with high uncertainty avoidance take fewer risks (Li et al., 2013; Mihet, 2013), and conversely, societies with weak uncertainty avoidance take risks more easily (Hofstede, 1983). In the context of this study, the adoption of employee social media policies can be an organization’s way of avoiding ambiguities and risks linked to the use of social technologies. Therefore, organizations in countries that score high on uncertainty avoidance are expected to be more likely to adopt employee social media policies.

In summary, the research hypotheses related to national culture dimensions are as follows:

Hypothesis 3: Organizations from countries with high scores on power distance are more likely to have employee social media policies.

Hypothesis 4: Organizations from countries with high scores on individualism are less likely to have employee social media policies.

Hypothesis 5: Organizations from countries with high scores on masculinity are more likely to have employee social media policies.

Hypothesis 6: Organizations from countries with high scores on uncertainty avoidance are more likely to have employee social media policies.

Method

Data collection for this study was conducted as part of a large research project on organizational social media practices in recruitment. An online survey was distributed through the network of an international human resources agency between March and June 2014. This multinational agency disseminated the survey to its subsidiaries in different countries around the world, which subsequently distributed it on various social media channels and through mailing lists. The full survey for human resources managers and recruiters contained several sections, and as response was voluntary, survey responses missing answers in the sections relevant for this study were removed. A total of 558 complete answers were retained for this study.

Online surveys were chosen for their multiple advantages, namely fast data collection, cost-effectiveness, convenience, and simplicity (Sue & Ritter, 2007; Wright, 2005). However, this data collection method also has shortcomings because it was based on convenience sampling, which introduced a risk of self-selection bias which can inhibit the possibility of making generalizations from this study’s findings (Wright, 2005). Therefore, the results of this study should be considered in light of these methodological limitations and seen as a first empirical effort on the topic, thus requiring further research to support their validity.

Respondents were asked about their organization’s size, based on the number of employees (micro < 10 people, small < 50, medium < 250, and large ≥ 250), and whether their organizations had a social media policy or a set of guidelines for employees (yes/no). Respondents were also asked to choose one of twenty business areas, such as “automobiles and parts, “food and beverage,” “health care,” “media,” and “real estate.” After data collection, business areas were categorized as manufacturing or services. As respondents provided their organization’s country, the scores of the four national culture dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance were used as retrieved from the data dimension matrix published on Hofstede’s official website (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2015). All scores were within a 100-point range.

Results

Sample Characteristics

The characteristics of the 558 responding organizations are shown in Table 1. In terms of size, 55.9% of organizations had 250 employees or more, whereas the rest (44.1%) were medium, small, or micro companies with fewer than 250 employees. More than half of the responding organizations were members of the services sector (61.5%), whereas 38.5% were from manufacturing industries. The responding organizations were from 27 countries, including Italy (22.8%), Switzerland (20.1%), the Netherlands (16.5%), and Russia (6.1%). Regarding employee social media policies, 54.7% of the responding organizations reported having one. These numbers are in line with reported adoption rates that varied between 20% and 63% in recent years (Deloitte, 2009; ERC, 2012; Macnamara, 2011; Manpower, 2010; Neill & Moody, 2015; Proskauer, 2011; Protiviti, 2013, 2014; Tufts et al., 2015; William Fry, 2013).

Table 1.

Sample’s Characteristics.

	n	%
Size
Micro: <10 people	43	7.7
Small: <50	99	17.7
Medium: <250	104	18.6
Large: ≥250	312	55.9
Industry
Manufacturing	215	38.5
Services	343	61.5
Adoption of employee social media policies
No	253	45.3
Yes	305	54.7
Country
Italy	127	22.8
Switzerland	112	20.1
Netherlands	92	16.5
Russian Federation	34	6.1
Greece	33	5.9
Poland	26	4.7
Slovenia	25	4.5
Hungary	20	3.6
Slovakia	16	2.9
Turkey	13	2.3
Bulgaria	12	2.2
USA	9	1.6
Croatia	8	1.4
Czech Republic	6	1.1
Others (Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Morocco, Norway, Singapore, Spain)	25	4.3

The adoption of employee social media policies varied by sector and by organizational size (Table 2). Among the responding manufacturing firms only 35.3% had a social media policy, and among the responding services firms 66.8% had one. The adoption rate of employee social media policies was high among large companies of 250 employees or more (71.2%) whereas small and medium companies had an adoption rate of around 36%.

Table 2.

Adoption of Employee Social Media Policies by Sector and Organization Size.

	Do not have policies		Have policies		Total
	n	%	n	%	n	%
Sector
Manufacturing	139	64.7	76	35.3	215	100
Services	114	33.2	229	66.8	343	100
Size
Micro: <10 people	34	79.1	9	20.9	43	100
Small: <50	63	63.6	36	36.4	99	100
Medium: < 50	66	63.5	38	36.5	104	100
Large: ≥250	90	28.8	222	71.2	312	100

Data Analysis

Logistic regression was conducted to investigate the relationship between the independent variables and the adoption of employee social media policies. This technique is used to model the relationship between a categorical dependent variable and one or several explanatory variables (Hosmer & Lemeshow, 2004). In many fields, the logistic regression model has become the standard method of analysis when the outcome variable is discrete (Hosmer & Lemeshow, 2004). To run this analysis, two assumptions were verified. First, collinearity diagnostics were conducted and neither tolerance nor VIF measures displayed worrisome scores for any of the independent variables. Second, the number of events per variable in the examined sample was acceptable thus eliminating risks of bias (Peduzzi, Concato, Kemper, Holford, & Feinstein, 1996).

Logistic regression analysis was conducted to predict the adoption of employee social media policies based on the organization’s size and industry and the national culture dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. The dependent variable was the adoption of social media policies, coded as 1 if the organization had such a document, and 0 if it did not. The full model containing all predictors was statistically significant (χ²[8, N = 558] = 189.64, p < .001) indicating that it was able to distinguish between organizations that adopted employee social media policies and those that did not. The model as a whole explained between 28.8% (Cox and Snell R²) and 38.5% (Nagelkerke R²) of the variance in the organizational adoption of social media policies. The model’s prediction success overall was 73.1% (73.1% for non-adoption and 73.1% for adoption), which constituted an improvement compared with the constant only model (54.7 prediction success). The Wald criterion (Table 3) showed that size, industry, power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance all made a significant contribution to the model.

Table 3.

Variables in the Equation.

	B	SE	Wald	df	Sig.	Exp(B)	95% CI for Exp(B)
	B	SE	Wald	df	Sig.	Exp(B)	Lower	Upper
Step 1^a
Size			45.800	3	.000
Size(1)	1.422	0.510	7.773	1	.005	4.146	1.526	11.268
Size(2)	1.494	0.508	8.631	1	.003	4.453	1.644	12.063
Size(3)	2.545	0.477	28.411	1	.000	12.745	4.999	32.493
Industry(1)	0.784	0.215	13.285	1	.000	2.190	1.437	3.339
PDI	−0.021	0.010	4.623	1	.032	0.980	0.961	0.998
IDV	0.024	0.009	7.351	1	.007	1.024	1.007	1.042
MAS	−0.043	0.007	38.896	1	.000	0.957	0.944	0.971
UAI	0.018	0.008	5.087	1	.024	1.018	1.002	1.034
Constant	−1.456	1.059	1.888	1	.169	0.233

Note. CI = confidence interval; PDI = Power Distance Index; IDV = Individualism; MAS = Masculinity; UAI = Uncertainty Avoidance Index.

Variable(s) entered on Step 1: Size, Industry, PDI, IDV, MAS, and UAI.

Finally, the statistical model was checked for goodness of fit because failure to assess it on this ground may lead to incorrect or misleading conclusions (Hosmer, Taber, & Lemeshow, 1991). The Hosmer and Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test indicated that the logistic model’s estimate for the data was at an acceptable level (0.061). In summary, the results of the logistic regression analysis provided support for Hypotheses 1, 2, and 6, but not for Hypotheses 3, 4, and 5.

Discussion

Based on the theoretical foundations of the institutional approach, this study examined six determinants of social media policy adoption in a sample of 558 organizations. The examined factors were organizational size, industry, and the four national culture dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. The results of a logistic regression analysis showed that all six predictors were associated with the adoption of employee social media policies but not necessarily in the hypothesized directions.

The first hypothesis was supported with results showing that larger organizations were more likely to adopt employee social media policies. This finding goes in line with one of the ideas of organization design theory, which states that the larger an organization, the more employees to manage, and the more need for rules and policies to organize workplace behaviors.

The second hypothesis was also supported as service sector organizations were found to be more likely to have social media policies. This finding was expected due to the labor-intensive nature of the services sector and its heavy reliance on human capital, which entail the need for more human resource management efforts and accompanying workplace policies.

The third hypothesis was not supported because organizations from more power-distant countries were not found to be the most likely to have an employee social media policy but rather the least likely to do so. It is possible that in countries where people accept authority they also automatically recognize their boundaries and prefer to not take risks with social media use. In these power distant countries individuals might be readily prone to respond to the authority of those in power and thus act accordingly without necessarily requiring the adoption of policies.

The fourth hypothesis was also not supported because organizations from more individualistic countries were not found to be the least likely to have an employee social media policy but rather the most likely to do so. It is possible that because people in individualistic cultures tend to seek their own interests, organizations would be more sensitive to social media-related risks that might result from employees prioritizing their interests over those of their employers. As a consequence, organizations in individualistic cultures might prefer to establish rules for the online conduct for their employees.

The fifth hypothesis was not supported either because organizations from more masculine countries were not found to be the most likely to have an employee social media policy but rather the least likely to do so, This finding could be explained by the fact that feminine countries, scoring low on the masculinity index, strive more for harmony in society, which can be achieved through rules and guidelines.

As for the sixth hypothesis, as expected, the odds of adopting employee social media policies were larger for organizations located in countries that scored higher on uncertainty avoidance, which is arguably motivated by the general tendency of such societies to resort to rules and policies to confront situations marked by uncertainty. The use of social media in work contexts is indeed marked with uncertainty due to the proliferation of communication channels and the large audiences involved in exchanges (Bucher et al., 2013).

The findings of this study provide support to the widespread idea among practitioners stating that social media policies should not be considered as a one size fits all but rather as an effort to be tailored to each organization, depending on its size and industry as well as the cultural characteristics of the country where it is based. These findings are of particular importance to organizational policy makers because an organization’s policy can lose its effectiveness across different cultural environments (Hofstede, 1980). Organizational policies might work differently in different cultural contexts, and this is particularly relevant for multinational organizations for which subsidiaries and the mother company are established in different cultures (Hofstede, 1980).

Limitations and Future Research

The limitations of this study present numerous opportunities for future research. First, although social media policies adoption rates in the surveyed sample of organizations matched reported rates in practice, the survey dissemination approach may have presented a threat to the representativeness of the sample. Future research is thus required to employ more robust sampling techniques.

Second, the scope of examining employee social media policies was limited to adoption without distinguishing between the types and contents of these policies. Future research may take into account differences between restrictive policies that entail retributions and simple guidelines that provide recommendations. This distinction is important because the two types of policies might appeal to different organizational and cultural settings and may have different outcomes in terms of organizational attractiveness and employee retention.

Third, the investigation of the impact of national culture on a human resources management practice, without including the mediating role of internal work culture, might represent a shortcoming. A mediated model is theoretically superior to the nonmediated model (Aycan, Kanungo, & Sinha, 1999) and should thus be favored in future research.

Finally, measuring cultural differences using secondary data might represent a limitation, as it overlooks within-country variance (Taras et al., 2010). It may be more suitable to assess cultural values using primary data in future studies to ensure greater predictive power compared to secondary sources-based cultural dimensions (Taras et al., 2010).

The growing scholarship on employee social media policies offers many other avenues for future investigation. There is need to examine the implementation and outcomes of social media policies (Jacobson & Tufts, 2013) and to conduct a cross-cultural investigation of how Millennials perceive different social media policies (Cho et al., 2013).

Further research is also needed to study other organizational factors that can predict the adoption of employee social media policies and their level of openness or restrictiveness. Further examination of more external factors that might influence the adoption of social media policies can continue to use the institutional theory (Dimaggio & Powell, 1983). In this context, two factors can be of particular interest, namely the legal environment of organizations manifested in the strictness of employment laws, and the possibility that the adoption of employee social media policies is a mimetic behavior driven by the novelty of social media-related issues (Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013). Given the focus of existing legal scholarship related to employee social media policies on the American context (A. El Ouirdi, El Ouirdi, Segers, & Henderickx, 2015), future research may also investigate regulations in other geographical areas.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Asma El Ouirdi is a doctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her research interests revolve around the use of social technologies in organizational settings.

Mariam El Ouirdi is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Management, at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Jesse Segers is a professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior and the associate dean of Education, at Antwerp Management School Belgium.

Ivana Pais is an associate professor of Economic Sociology at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy. Her research interests focus on new ways of working through social media.

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