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Social media as a driver for new rhetorical practices in organisations

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Publication date7/01/2012
Host publicationProceedings of the 45th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS-45
Place of PublicationMaui, HI, USA
PublisherIEEE Computer Society Press
Pages3540-3549
Number of pages10
ISBN (electronic)978-0-7695-4525-7
ISBN (print)9780769545257
<mark>Original language</mark>English
Event2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2012 - Maui, HI, United States
Duration: 4/01/20127/01/2012

Conference

Conference2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMaui, HI
Period4/01/127/01/12

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
ISSN (Print)1530-1605

Conference

Conference2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMaui, HI
Period4/01/127/01/12

Abstract

Social media adoption within organisations enables wider employee participation in corporate communication and rhetoric. We study the impact of social media on rhetorical practices inside organisations, namely how social media reshapes senior management communication. We study the online communication environments of eight organisations and identify two contrasting approaches in dealing with social media adoption: the closed and open model. In the closed model, organisations maintain central control and their communication platforms remain mainly one-way. In the open model, organisations develop and foster two-way interaction. The study finds that in the "open model", governance and culture of the organisation changes in order to address the shift in control and tension between top-down and bottom-up communication. Our key contribution is in rethinking rhetorical practices in the context of modern open and fluid online communication environments in organisations - rhetorical diffusion - and characterising the changes in governance and culture that enable this transition - internal ambidexterity.1