The LinkedIn Endorsement Game: Why and How Professionals Attribute Skills to Others

Literature Review

“Endorsement” is “a public or official statement of support or approval” (Endorsement, n.d.). There are many factors that might be associated with virtual endorsement acts—endorsements that take place online—including psychological, technological, and motivational factors (Lee, Hansen, & Lee, 2016). In a study focused on Facebook,extraversionandagreeablenesswere among the psychological factors positively related to virtual endorsement acts, whereasopenness to experiencehad a negative association (Lee et al., 2016). The same study showed that the use of the “like” button is more prompt to function as a response action rather than a thoughtful behavior. The ease of use behind this act of a “quick and simple click” also applied to the “endorse” button function on sites such as LinkedIn. Moreover, on LinkedIn the user may suggest the list of skills for which he or she would like to be endorsed. For this reason, virtual endorsement on LinkedIn is considered a way of self-presentation through which the job seekers brand themselves for the potential recruiters to see (Chiang & Suen, 2015).

In addition to the aforementioned factors, skills endorsement on LinkedIn may also be considered as an act of a mutual attribution of knowledge authority (i.e., the endorser publicly accepts that the endorsee has the skill that he or she is assumed to have, and the endorsee, through accepting the endorsement, approves the endorser’s position to know about the attributed skills. This game of mutually attributing epistemic authority through the function of virtual endorsement has not yet been an object of research, to our knowledge. However, as part of our effort to investigate whether the phenomenon of endorsement is more of a social act or has some epistemic weight, we will hereby explain some main notions related to the act of knowledge attribution, namely epistemic authority and source credibility. In continuation, we will describe how these concepts have generally been treated in the social media literature.

The assignment of epistemic authority involves the joint influence of informational and motivational factors (Kruglanski et al., 2005). This means that in addition to the information being “given,” one would need to be motivated to “take it”—that is, to use that information in order to form such an impression. Such motivation is influenced by both the expertise and the trustworthiness of the source itself. However, research shows that the latter (i.e., the communicator’s intent to give valid information) may be considered as more persuasive than the former (i.e., their position to judge whether this information is true;Mercier & Sperber, 2011). The concept of trust thus becomes an epistemic concept, very much related to knowledge through testimony: If A believesp, then B has reasons to also believepbased on A’s epistemic character, meaning her or his honesty and competence (Origgi, 2004). AsRaviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv, Biran, and Sela (2003)explained, “individuals trust information dispensed by epistemic authorities, assimilate it into their own repertoire and rely on it” (p. 17). This renders epistemic authority dangerous, as it can influence exclusively on the formation of one’s knowledge (Kruglanski, 1989). Moreover, as suggested by the so-called lay epistemic theory (Kruglanski, 1989,1990), any source is a potential epistemic authority to the degree that it is perceived as such and gains trust from others.

In this sense, epistemic attributions are formed on the basis of epistemic authority beliefs, and they should be treated as beliefs. As expected, such beliefs gain more credibility when they agree with one’s self-perception as an epistemic authority (Kruglanski et al., 2005). The issue of Web credibility and its perceived value—on the basis of social necessities or cognitive heuristics rather than on “traditional” ways of assessing authority—has been extensively discussed in the literature (Metzger, Flanagin, & Medders, 2010). The power of social media to create communities in which individuals support each other in various ways, including the mutual trust attribution as cognitive authorities (i.e., people who really know what they are talking about), has undermined the role of an epistemic authority (i.e., a person accredited as being in a position to know based on credentials).

As a result, cognitive or epistemic authority becomes a social concept, as it is a matter of social perception and recognition of someone being an authority on something (Wilson, 1991). Defining cognitive authority in social media has become a quite complex task, as the function of knowledge coconstruction among peers who put together their forces to construct one “truth” is more and more evident on the Internet. An example is Wikipedia (Tapscott & Williams, 2008). This collectivity of knowledge, also known as “commons knowledge” (Lievrouw, 2011), has created an unclear scenery regarding the notion of expertise as knowledge possession. If knowledge belongs to everyone and can be created by everyone, then everyone is a potential expert. AsLievrouw (2014)explained, “Commons knowledge can be seen as a dynamic, organic, bottom-up process that provides a grassroots alternative to expert consensus, with all the advantages and risks that that implies” (p. 2634). Tapscott and Williams, as cited inLievrouw (2014), have argued that what participants in projects like Wikipedia oppose is not expertise per se but claims of privilege or priority based solely on professional or institutional status. Another concept linked to the definition of knowledge authority in relation to social media isreputation, or the extent to which users can identify the standing of others, including themselves, in a social media setting (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011;Marchiori & Cantoni, 2012).

A survey of 170 U.S. university students showed that the endorsement of collectivist values by users of an SNS results in higher levels of satisfaction, which relates to independent self-construal, or the adoption of individualist values (Kuss & Griffiths, 2011). In other words, if an SNS user does what others do, she or he feels better defined as an individual. This paradox has its origins in the so-calledsocial identitypsychological concept. According toBrewer (1991), social identities are “categorizations of the self into more inclusive social units that de-personalize the self-concept, whereIbecomeswe” (p. 476). This is especially risky when the communication process of mass self-communication is also encouraged, which is the case with social media. Mass self-communication refers to the mass distribution of a one-way message from one to many (Castells, 2007). When the message refers to an individual value (like in the case of self-nomination regarding a particular skill or position), but the process is based on interdependent construction (like in the case of social media), there is the risk that self-values are biased from the so-called wisdom of crowds. AsMetzger et al. (2010)commented, “The result may be a shift from a model of single authority based on scarcity and hierarchy to a model of multiple distributed authorities based on information abundance and networks of peers” (p. 415).

AsKietzmann et al. (2011)have argued, online reputation is a matter of trust, but “since information technologies are not yet good at determining such highly qualitative criteria, social media sites rely on ‘mechanical Turks’: tools that automatically aggregate user-generated information to determine trustworthiness” (p. 247). In the case of LinkedIn, reputation is built based on endorsements from others. The fact that endorsements are more interactive, less time-consuming, and less informative than the recommendations provides an easy way of defining someone’s qualities through a system of self-and-others nomination. Users are able to suggest a set of skills for themselves, and then their connections can endorse them for these skills or add other skills to their profile. Moreover, when LinkedIn members present themselves as experts in certain skills areas and then they are also endorsed for them, their epistemic authority grows as a result of people’s trust that what they say is true. The question is whether such an authority should be taken as a formal indication of expertise.

The phenomenon of social identity creation is present in this function mainly for two reasons. First, a person’s connections often know them from common activities and workplaces where they demonstrated the skills they were endorsed for. Second, which applies also when the former is not the case, endorsement itself is part of a social game in which at the time Person A endorses B, B is defined by A as more qualified than before (at least in the LinkedIn profile) and B is perceived by A as a person with authority to nominate others as skillful professionals in one or more particular area(s). In other words, LinkedIn endorsement function appears to be a knowledge authority attribution game, in which a peer assigns another peer as an expert and, at the same time, is also considered an expert from the mere action of attributing authority.

Research Goals and Questions

The goal of this article is to identify the motivation behind professionals’ endorsement behavior using LinkedIn, and, second, to make connections between participants’ drivers and their expressed perception of knowledge authority. More precisely, we aim to identify whether the phenomenon of skills endorsement is based on criteria of proven expertise or on other factors, such as the social aspect of peer-to-peer favoritism, the ease of using the endorsement button, or feelings of satisfaction created as a result of receiving an endorsement.

To study this unexplored issue, we focus on the following questions:

Method

As aforementioned, the goal of the present article is exploratory, given that no studies on the particular issue have been observed thus far. Since no existing instruments were found, we constructed our own survey questionnaire following the guidelines provided byDe Vaus (2013)in regard to the type, content, and order of questions. More precisely, we included five types of questions concerning (a) what people do, (b) what people believe, (c) what people know, (d) people’s attitudes, and (e) participants’ attributes. This order was considered as the most adequate, as it was expected to increase the level of difficulty and also the interest of the participants. In this way, more sincere answers were expected.

Our survey consisted of 16 questions, with 9 related to our research questions and the other 7 asking for information regarding participants’ demographics. All of the nine content-related items were closed-ended questions; seven of them asked for rating on a five-level Likert-type scale, whereas five of them were also multi-item questions. The survey items covered several aspects of the phenomenon of LinkedIn endorsement, in accordance with our research questions, such as (a) behavioral (e.g., “Have you checked your skills section on LinkedIn?” “Have you ever endorsed any of your contacts on LinkedIn?” etc.); (b) motivational (e.g., “I endorse someone because he or she is really good at a particular skill and I know it from personal experience [e.g., we worked together, we went to the same school/university, etc.],” “Receiving an endorsement from someone on LinkedIn makes/would make me feel more satisfied/recognized/respected/networked than before,” etc.); and (c) attitudinal (e.g., “The more qualified the endorser is, the better for the endorsee,” “Everyone who wants to maintain a good professional network should do and accept endorsements,” etc.). The internal scale reliability for the nine content-related items was above the satisfying level (α = .731 > .7).

Findings

In relation to Research Question 1, we found that the majority of respondents had checked and/or managed their skills section on LinkedIn before, at least once. AsTable 1shows, 71.7% (cumulative percentage) reported checking their skillsalways, frequently, orsometimes, while 62.4% (cumulative percentage) said they manage their skills section accordingly. Another 77.5% have endorsed another person at least once for her skills (seeTable 2).

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Table 1.

Distribution of Participants Who Checked/Managed Their Skills Section on LinkedIn.

	Checked skills		Managed skills
	Frequency	%	Frequency	%
Always	3	2.5	4	3.3
Frequently	24	20	13	10.8
Sometimes	59	49.2	58	48.3
Almost never	30	25	34	28.3
Never	4	3.3	11	9.2
Total	120	100	120	99.9 a

a

The total percentage does not equal 100 due to rounding.

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Table 2.

Percent of Participants Who Endorsed Others on LinkedIn.

	Endorsed others
	Frequency	%
No	27	22.5
Yes	93	77.5
Total	120	100

In addition, more than 50 participants declared that they have endorsed 10 or more other people, but only 3 of them recalled having added new skills to the endorsees’ profile.Figure 1shows the percentage distribution of the number of contacts endorsed by the participants who had endorsed someone on LinkedIn at least once (n= 93).

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Figure 1.

Number of contacts endorsed per person.

As far as the reasons for endorsement were concerned (Research Question 2), the most common reason was the endorsee’s skills, followed by the LinkedIn prompts as the second most frequently cited reason (through ad hoc messages, LinkedIn invites users to endorse people in their network). When participants were asked to express general reasons why they endorsed someone on LinkedIn, the endorser’s knowledge of the endorsee’s skills through direct experience was the most common reason, followed by the case that they were already endorsed by that person (thus, they felt the “duty” to endorse them back).Figure 2shows the distribution of reasons on a five-grade scale of agreement. We inferred the two most common reasons from the sum ofalways, frequently, andsometimesanswers for the same reason.

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Figure 2.

Distribution of expressed reasons for endorsement.

Participants reported positive feelings associated with being endorsed by someone else, ranging from feeling satisfied (56.8% for all agreement statements) and networked (55.9% for the same type of responses as above) to feeling recognized (51.4%) and respected (35.1%). Such positive feelings grow when the endorser is an expert in their field, a work colleague, or someone in a higher position, as shown inFigure 3; conversely, positive feelings remain neutral when the endorser is a friend, relative, or someone who has not been endorsed before by the same contact. The percentages of disagreement increase when the endorser is someone who does not know the endorsee personally, meaning that participants feel more satisfaction when the endorsement is formed on the basis of some type of personal relationship (e.g., work).

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Figure 3.

Distribution of levels of satisfaction according to endorser’s characteristics.

Regarding Research Question 3 (beliefs and attitudes toward endorsement), the following items were taken into consideration:

Table 3shows the means, medians, and standard deviations of the six items for 107 responses (13 participants did not respond) ranging from 1 to 5 levels of agreement (1 =totally agree, 5 =totally disagree). The item nearest to the Level 2 of agreement is Item 3, which establishes a relation between the endorser’s qualifications and the value of the act of endorsement. The items answered as nearest todisagreeare Items 5 and 6, coded as “endorser skilled” and “value network,” correspondingly.

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Table 3.

Descriptive Statistics of Beliefs and Attitudes Toward Endorsement (N= 107).

	Knowledge authority	Career opportunities	Endorser qualified	Endorser endorsed	Endorser skilled	Value network
M	2.9	2.89	2.28	2.86	3.01	3.05
Mdn	3	3	2	3	3	3
SD	0.96	0.97	0.93	0.93	1.06	1.15

At a second level of analysis, we were interested in identifying any factors related to the endorsement behavior. For this, we performed several cross-tabulations, combining variables such as (a) endorse someone (yes/no) with age, gender, experience level, and education; (b) reason for endorsement with beliefs about the act of endorsing and its epistemic power; (c) how the endorsee feels related to who the endorser is; and (d) recommend LinkedIn (yes/no) with reasons for endorsement. For Points (c) and (d), we did not find any particular tendency; hereby, we will present the main findings for Points (a) and (b).

Regarding age, asTable 4shows, there are no major differences among age intervals, with the only exception of people in the middle-career phase (33-49 years old), who have the greatest number of nonendorsers compared with the other two major age groups. A special mention needs to be made for the 40- to 49-year-old people, whose relative percentage of endorsing others is the lowest in the sample (of the 20 participants in this age category, almost half had never endorsed others). Fourteen of the participants did not give any information about their age, reducing the number of respondents ton= 106.

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Table 4.

Cross-Tabulation Between Endorse Others (Yes/No) and Age.

		Age
		Early career			Middle career			Late career
		18-25	26-32	Total	33-39	40-49	Total	50-59	60<	Total
Endorse others	No	1	3	4	9	8	17	2	0	2
	Yes	7	30	37	19	12	31	12	3	15
	Total	8	33	41	28	20	48	14	3	17

Investigating further the profile of the participants who had never endorsed anyone on LinkedIn, we confirmed the fact that people in the middle of their careers tend to endorse less than others. Moreover, holding a PhD increased the relative percentage of nonendorsers against endorsers, asTable 5shows (the number of respondents for experience level wasn= 101, and for education leveln= 103). In terms of gender, the distribution of people who endorse rather than not endorse was homogeneous for males and females.

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Table 5.

Cross-Tabulation Between Endorse Others (Yes/No), Professional Experience (n= 101), and Education Level (n= 103).

		Experience				Education
		Beginner	Medium	Senior	Total	<Secondary	Professional/technical	University	Postgraduate	PhD	Total
Endorse others	No	3	13	6	22	0	0	1	8	11	20
	Yes	22	31	26	79	1	2	9	35	36	83
	Total	25	44	32	101	1	2	10	43	47	103

Finally, we focused on the reasons for endorsement, as expressed by the participants who did endorse at least one person, and their beliefs about the epistemic power of their act. Among the epistemological statements checked, only two were found to have a strong relation with two of the stated reasons for endorsement. The more participants stated that LinkedIn endorsement increases either a person’s knowledge authority or career opportunities, the more they tended to agree that a person’s skills are the main reason behind their endorsement behavior. The opposite tendency appeared in relation to staying in good terms with the endorsee as a main reason for endorsement. In other words, participants tend to believe that LinkedIn increases a person’s knowledge authority or career opportunities due to her or his skills and not due to her or his social networking status.Table 6shows the contingency between these four variables forn= 82 (the number of participants who answered the corresponding questions).

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Table 6.

Cross-Tabulation Between Reason Skills, Good Terms, Knowledge Authority, and Career Opportunities.

		Knowledge authority						Career opportunities
		Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree	Total	Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree	Total
Reason skills	Strongly agree	1	17	12	6	1	37	3	13	16	4	1	37
	Agree	—	13	13	3	—	29	1	8	15	5	0	29
	Neutral	—	1	3	4	1	9	0	3	1	4	1	9
	Disagree	—	1	1	—	1	3	0	1	0	1	1	3
	Strongly disagree	—	1	—	1	2	4	0	1	1	0	2	4
	Total	1	33	29	14	5	82	4	26	33	14	5	82
Good terms	Strongly agree	0	5	1	0	0	6	2	2	2	0	0	6
	Agree	0	9	2	0	0	11	2	2	5	2	0	11
	Neutral	0	3	8	2	1	14	0	3	6	4	1	14
	Disagree	0	6	12	4	0	22	0	10	9	3	0	22
	Strongly disagree	1	9	6	9	4	29	0	9	11	5	4	29
	Total	1	32	29	15	5	82	4	26	33	14	5	82

Note.For “Reason skills × Knowledge authority,” thepvalue is .0047 (significant atp< .05); for the pair “Reason skills × Career opportunities,” thepvalue is .0116 (significant atp< .05); for the pair “Good terms × Knowledge authority,” thepvalue is .1409 (significant atp< .05); finally, for “Good terms × Career opportunities,” thepvalue is .0388 (significant atp< .05).

To summarize, the majority of the participants were active users of their skills section on LinkedIn, and they had endorsed others at least once. The most common scenario behind endorsement was that the person knew about the endorsee’s skills through his or her personal experience. The second most common scenario was that LinkedIn prompts were the reason behind someone endorsing others, especially when they did it as a reply to a previous endorsement of themselves. These findings are not in full accordance with two main tendencies observed in terms of epistemological beliefs of the participants regarding LinkedIn. A first tendency relates to perceiving LinkedIn as a skills-based tool that can be used to increase epistemic authority, including their own. Doing this, a person’s career opportunities might also increase, as perceived by the participants. Nonetheless, being endorsed by a stranger does not seem to raise participants’ satisfaction as much as in the case of being endorsed by a real expert in the field. Personal relations seem to matter, but they refer to workplace-based relations and not to relationships with friends or relatives. At the same time, staying on good terms is not something that people who perceive LinkedIn as a tool for increasing knowledge authority and career opportunities aim to achieve when they endorse someone.

Discussion

Social media have become a main means for constructing one’s personal, professional, and social identity and reputation (Kietzmann et al., 2011). In the case of LinkedIn, the management of a member’s skills section where participants are prompted to identify the areas in which they want to be endorsed is an example of socially constructed online reputation. Moreover, since the coconstructed knowledge on LinkedIn mainly relates to someone’s experience and professional status, the reputation deals with an authority image perceived as such by someone’s network. What is interesting, though, is that at the same time a person’s reputation is being constructed through endorsements and additions of new skills, the same person can endorse others for the same or other skills. To identify who owns the expertise and who can be considered a “real” authority on the basis of such subjective attributions becomes a challenge, and, in our opinion, a social networking game.

Situated in a larger professional relations puzzle, the act of skills endorsement on LinkedIn may be perceived as a self-presentation effort, asChiang and Suen (2015)argued. However, one of the main findings of this study is that people would rather endorse because someone already endorsed them or just because LinkedIn prompted them to do so. Given that this is true, LinkedIn endorsement becomes a social networking action rather than an influential tool that leads to concrete results regarding somebody’s professional profile and authority. A contradiction in the results is also evident: Although participants tend to perceive LinkedIn endorsement as a skills-based action preferably performed by real experts or people in high positions, they also tend to be satisfied when they get endorsed by someone from their personal network (e.g., friend, relative, etc.). In combination, our study shows that when someone receives an endorsement from a current or previous colleague, it is highly likely that he or she is going to endorse the person back. In other words, everyone has the right to attribute knowledge authority to others as long as they more or less know what work these individuals are doing in their jobs.

What was previously described reveals an opportunistic rather than a strategic attitude adopted by the study participants when it concerns LinkedIn endorsement. Although they generally see it as way to increase their career opportunities, they do not systematically endorse others in professional areas similar to theirs in order to stay on good terms with them. They also seem to value a person’s skills before they endorse her. However, the fact that they prefer being endorsed by contacts who know them personally shows that LinkedIn possibly functions as an SNS without any particular effort from the members’ side to obtain more accurate expert recommendations on the mentioned skills. Following the Facebook “like” attitude, in which members just express their positive feeling toward an act or statement, LinkedIn apparently does the same with people’s professional skills. At the same time, the fact that members are encouraged to do it and also in a very easy way (just by a click) adds to the possibility of endorsement being a heuristic action.

Therefore, it is the responsibility of all LinkedIn members and of people managing the tool to guarantee that an ethical code is followed at all steps of the endorsement, from the moment of self-nomination to the final acceptance of others to give credit to the endorsee. At the same time, recruiting agencies should not give as much consideration to the quantity of a candidate’s endorsement, as it might not mean much about their actual professional performance (of course, this might convey other different meanings, like positive relationships). A more in-depth qualitative study—for example, using focus groups of different types of professionals, including hiring consultants—might shed more light on the breadth and risks of this widely spread phenomenon.

Last but not least, the fact that people who are in the middle of their career and in a very productive age phase of their lives (40-49 years old) do not tend to endorse others is probably a positive sign of reflective behavior from highly qualified people toward attributing epistemic authority to others, and a possible example to follow. Education in the use of social media and the distinctions between social and professional functions, as in the case of LinkedIn, is crucial, confirming what other researchers have also claimed (e.g.,Jennings et al., 2014;Meredith, 2012;Sacks & Graves, 2012).

Conclusion

The present study focused on the emerging phenomenon of virtual endorsement when used for scopes other than a manifestation of a personal “like” behavior, such as the one widely expressed on Facebook. We were concerned with whether the endorsement on LinkedIn regarding professional attributes and skills is based on criteria of epistemic validity or a heuristic action that forms part of an interpersonal relations game of mutuality and “face.” The results of a survey answered by professionals with different characteristics revealed that the majority of people make and receive endorsements without carefully calculating the epistemic weight of knowledge authority attribution that lies behind the phenomenon of attributing a particular skill to someone. This has direct implications for business educators, as the use of social media is becoming more and more evident in business. Introducing philosophical considerations related to concepts such as the ones discussed in this article (i.e., epistemic authority, source trustworthiness, social identity, etc.) as part of a social media ethics training may be helpful. Future research should pay particular attention to the formation of young adults’ beliefs regarding the value of evidence and source credibility at the time of judging their own and others’ levels of knowledge authority as part of their professional profiles.