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Constance Elizabeth Kampf, Aarhus U., Department of Management, [email protected] Haahr, Marjan Mohammadreza

Coordinating Social Media Management Interfaces Across the Organization

Authors

Constance Elizabeth Kampf, Aarhus U., Department of Management, [email protected] Haahr, Aarhus BSS, Aarhus U., [email protected] Mohammadreza, Aarhus BSS, Aarhus U., [email protected]


Coordinating Social Media Management Across the Organization 16846, p.

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Abstract: To establish a holistic framework for approaching social media

management that offers a way to approach new, amplified and emerging interfaces

affecting organizations. We apply Porter's historic value chain model as a scaffold to

approach a holistic understanding of social media management and organize highly

cited concepts related to social media management from the fields of IT and

Corporate Communication. We find that classifying current studies in relation to

secondary and primary activities from an historic value chain scaffold enables

researchers to define and classify interfaces that can inform our understanding of

social media management in a holistic manner. From an activity perspective, both

primary and secondary activities related to social media can be argued to have

interfaces with social media platforms, participants and audiences. In addition,

interfaces enabled by social media technology affordances can be classified as new,

amplified or emergent. Using a historic approach to organizational activities for

organizing social media research enables researchers and social media managers to

work with social media management strategies at a more detailed and nuanced level,

taking types of activities as well as types of activities into account. This paper offers

a cross disciplinary perspective connecting research from Corporate Communication

and IT fields--both fields that attend to organizations in holistic manners, yet focus on

different types of activities due to their disciplinary frames of reference. This

combined perspective enables a dynamic framework for developing holistic

approaches to social media management.

Keywords: social media management, Corporate Communication, IT

Paper Type: Conceptual paper



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1. Introduction

Emerging research on social media management points towards many

different directions, and does not establish itself in a holistic way. For example,

researchers tend to focus on concerns related to an internal focus, such as social media

governance (Zerfass, Fink, and Linke, 2011), or related to the nature of the

corporation to social media interface from a marketing perspective (Peters, Chen,

Kaplan, Ognibeni, and Pauwels, 2013). In their attempt at building a holistic

framework, Felix, Rauschnabel, and Hinsch (2017) integrate features of marketing on

social media with broader concepts of social media marketing as having four central

dimensions--scope, structure, culture and governance. By framing these dimensions

in a holistic way, Felix et al move towards a holistic model for social media

management from an organizational perspective, but their survey and interview data

still reflect disciplinary perspectives rooted in marketing. To go beyond the limits of

disciplinary perspectives, we need to connect social media research into a framework

that offers a holistic perspective across disciplines present in organizations which can

lead to identifying social media interfaces that are meaningful for business strategy.

Von Krogh discussed the potential of social media to disrupt company knowledge

management boundaries by serving as a substitute source of information to guarded

knowledge repositories (2012). This focus point addresses the organization as a

whole, but not the whole of the organization. To bring a focus to the whole of the

organization, our perspective enables researchers to leverage a cross-functional and

cross-disciplinary basis for connecting social media to business strategy. To do this,

we draw on Porter’s value chain (2001) as a holistic model for understanding social

media ”across” the firm because it includes value creating activities and structures

from across the different departments and structures inherent in business



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organizations that produce and sell goods and services. If we don’t have a model like

Porter’s that is built on 1). the connectedness of different value creating activities

across the organization, and 2). the premise that business activities are connected to

the external market and embedded in a larger world, we risk falling into disciplinary

perspectives that fragment our understanding of current social media activities and

relevant interfaces.

Looking at Porter’s (2001) model, each of the boxes across the bottom

represent historic interfaces to the context, and each of the internal boxes represent

historic internal interfaces. We posit that with social media technologies today,

internal interfaces are also functioning as external interfaces, so that we have an

expanded set of interfaces which researchers can map to each of the boxes across the

entire model. When we plot social media research findings across disciplines into the

Value Chain model, the model begins to deconstruct itself, so that the components

become a scaffolding for a new understanding based in an expanded notion of

interfaces.

To build a holistic, cross-disciplinary model for understanding social media

management "across" the organization, we look at current research which addresses

social media and the new interfaces it brings to organizations. Our overall research

question is: How do the uses of social media platforms for communication practices

affect the quality and quantity of interfaces across the organization related to both

internal and external communication practices? We break this down through mapping

concepts that define interfaces across Porter's value chain model (2001).

In the literature review, we set the stage for why these historic business

models are needed as a scaffold for understanding social media interfaces, practices,

and potential effects "across" the organization by examining literature from both the



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Corporate Communication and IT disciplines--demonstrating the current external

interface perspectives, internal interface perspectives, and early efforts to coordinate

between the two. Then, we discuss our methodology for finding and selecting

literature demonstrating Porter's historic value chain model. Next, we discuss our

findings at the concept level, examining how concepts used to understand social

media and social media management illuminate both historic and new interfaces

between organizations and their contexts.

2. Literature Review: From External and Internal Perspectives on Social Media

to Coordinating Social Media Uses across the Organization

Both the Corporate Communication and IT literatures are relevant for

understanding historic and new interfaces between the organization and its' context

because the fields core content touches on all disciplines and structures in the

organization. As organizations are connected through IT systems, they are also

connected through communication practices by people using IT systems. In this

section, we begin by examining the gap in connecting external and internal

communication perspectives in social media studies in both literatures. This

framework can be seen as a holistic approach to understanding how social media

technologies permeate organizations, create new interfaces and affect historic

interfaces across the organization in Porter's historic model for industry structures, as

well as supporting and primary activities.

Key social media concepts from an external communication perspective

Historic interfaces between companies and their publics are addressed in

external communication perspectives across both literatures. In the IT literature,

external perspectives related to social media interfaces focus on customer dialog



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management (Gallagher and Ransbotham 2010); stakeholder enagement (Huang,

Baptista, and Gallier, 2013; Maxwell and Carboni, 2016), and service co-creation

(Jarvenpaa and Tuunainen, 2013).

In the field of Corporate Communications, which overlaps with Marketing and

Public Relations (PR), responsibility for social media campaigns is a contested area,

with PR scholars claiming ownership of the area, and placing marketing as a subset of

PR. Four key trajectories for understanding social media interfaces emerge from this

field: Tensions between management practices and the openness in social media

platform affordances; Social media governance; Stakeholder Relationship

Management; and Corporate Reputation and Crisis Management.

Macnamara and Zerfass (2012) point out the inherent tensions between

management practices and the openness of social media based on Web 2.0

technology. They point out that PR and Corporate Communications as fields both

overlap and oscillate between 1) understandings of communication as an open

interaction with publics versus 2) a goal based interaction design to manage public

responses. They lay out the issue of control as troublesome for strategic approaches

to communication, inferring a focus on external communication due to their survey

sample with a PR bias. In their survey of German and Australian PR managers, key

findings include a lack of systematic approach to social media governance.

This definition of social media governance is elaborated by Linke and Zerfass

in 2013 as having a basis in regulatory and broader regulatory frameworks.

Regulatory frameworks include guidelines and social media policy towards ways in

which employees use social media platforms, inferring an external communication

focus. Broader regulatory frameworks begin to focus inside the organization

including budgeting, training employees, organizational structures and organizational



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cultures supporting emergent social media. In 2015, Zerfass and Sherzada develop

the notion further to include a survey of German CEOs and their attitudes towards

social media, finding that they prioritized their personal communication activities in

the public sphere to professional communication activities at the organizational level.

They also found that 70% of CEOs surveyed prioritized traditional media over social

media as affecting reputation. This research trajectory for social media governance

demonstrates tensions and issues within the organization related to external social

media presences.

Stakeholder Relationship Management becomes a strategy focus for Corporate

Communication in social media contexts. For example, Tsai and Men (2013) assume

that the purpose of strategic communication is to manage stakeholder relations

through building long term relationships with stakeholders—relationships that start

when corporate-community interactions have consequences for either party. From

this vantage point, Tsai and Men focus on antecedents to social media engagement

with corporate content, defined as social media dependency, parasocial interaction,

and community identification. They also focus on shared areas where

communications professionals can interact socially with stakeholders in social media

to build long-term relationships, which they claim will contribute to corporate

strategy. This stakeholder management approach does not directly address tensions

between the participation and the openness of social media technology and the

corporate need to represent their organizational perspective. Instead, it focuses on

antecedents to stakeholder engagement on corporate social networking site pages, as

well as types of engagement. This research focus has implications for internal

organizational actions, but highlights external communication practices as well as

understanding stakeholder motivations for engaging with companies in social media.



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Corporate Reputation and Crisis Management is the fourth category. Here,

Floreddu, Cabiddu, and Evaristo (2014) focus on optimizing online corporate

reputation by examining the link between social media communication strategy and

online reputation. They define communication strategy in terms of types of external

communication used in social media contexts (i.e. informal, customer engagement).

Their definition of optimization rests on deployment patterns of these types of

external communication. Other general external focuses include case and multiple

studies of online crises with reflections on strategic risks and responses (Guidry, Jin,

Haddad, Yang, and Smith, 2016; Etter and Vestergaard, 2015; Romenti, Murtarelli,

and Valentini, 2014) and practitioners’ experiences of the Internet in crisis

communication (Fjeld and Molesworth, 2006). Haigh, Brubaker and Whiteside

(2013) examine Facebook as a public relations tool focusing on corporate presentation

of information and effects on stakeholders. Dekay (2012) performs a cross-industry

analysis of corporate reactions to negative comments on Facebook, discussing a

general lack of corporate strategy in responses, and finding general negative fan

reactions to explicit marketing postings. Zhang and Vos (2014) focus on reviewing

the literature about monitoring social media to protect corporate reputation,

demonstrating three key areas—aims, methods and challenges in monitoring social

media—laying a basis for developing social media data competencies.

These key scholars describe social media contexts and demonstrate tensions

inherent in diverse understandings of how the field of strategic communication

addresses issues related to communication on social media. These tensions can be

seen as related to control and the effects of long term relationship building on

corporate strategy. These tensions point to an internal control issue within the

organization regarding how companies can strategize across the organization for



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social media and its’ role in the production of corporate reputation. However, only

Zerfass directly connects external social media to internal communication practices,

laying groundwork for conceptualizing social media across the organization in a

broad manner that can go beyond traditional PR and Marketing.

Key social media concepts from an internal communication perspective

Acknowledging the limits of the external communication perspective, scholars

have called for exploring implications of internal communication perspectives as a

means of moving beyond the limits inherent in an external focus for social media use.

IT scholars have focused on organizational perspectives for user-generated content

(Kurian 2016; Baym, 2013), Knowledge Management related to social media (Sigala

and Chalkiti 2015; Von Krogh 2013), and a more recent trajectory of social media

adoption strategy and approaches (Miranda, Kim, and Summers, 2015; Siamagka,

Christodoulides, Michaelidou, and Valvi, 2015; Chung, Andreev, Benyoucef, Duane,

and O’Reilly, 2017; Felix et al, 2017). In addition, Deans (2011) examined the

impact of social media on C-level roles, exploring different configurations of social

media strategy ownership in the organization, whereas Huang, Baptista and Newell

(2015) focused on developing the notion of communicational ambidexterity for

managing social media communications from an internal perspective.

In the Corporate Communication area, Arora and Predmore (2013) argue for

social media beyond the marketing function and consumer orientation, but they move

to internal social media and democratizing leadership within the organization rather

than looking at different ways that social media is employed to interface with publics

and organizations outside the firm in relation to different organizational functions

beyond marketing and PR. Agerdal-Hjermind (2014) focuses on the employee



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experiences of bloggers inside an organization, and how it affects their social media

communication strategies through focus group interviews and thematic analysis of the

responses. Key findings include discursive behaviors in blogging related to

experiences inside the organization rather than in response to external stakeholders.

Hearn, Foth and Gray (2009) use an action research approach in an organization,

leading to a model for understanding new media production as co-evolving with

social content and technology layers. They argue for approaching social and new

media as a communication tool in line with fax, phone and corporate intranets—

suggesting that social and new media competences should be developed inside and

across the organization.

Looking at effects of social media used as part of internal communication

practices, Huang et al (2013) examine social media effects on organizational

rhetorical practices, conceiving of social media as an extension of the intranet. In

their use of multiple case studies, they find that social media affects ways in which

employees communicate publicly with each other. They find that in internal

communication contexts, social media allows for multiple voices and targeted

communication together, simultaneous wider reach and richness, and combined

production and consumption of the rhetorical context. In their framework for internal

crisis communication, Frandsen and Johansen (2011) include employee roles as

ambassadors for the organization through their personal network connections in social

media. Although the ambassador role involves external communication, their

perspective on it focuses on internal communication processes, which take this social

media role into account. These internal perspectives offer useful insights into social

media as an internal communication tool, as well as content for internal



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communication. Finally, Madsen (2016) demonstrates how social media can be used

internally to engage with and co-construct organizational identity among employees.

Combining external and internal perspectives

In both the Corporate Communication and IT literatures, few scholars focus

on this combination which explicitly connects internal strategy with external

communication practices in social media contexts.

IT scholars focus on social media metrics in frameworks for managing social

media (Peters et al, 2013) and using social media platforms/tactics for business value

(Culnan, HcHugh, and Zubillaga, 2010). These use a data perspective on combining

internal and external perspectives, so that external data reflecting the social media

presence becomes a driver for internal strategy decisions. Bringing the connection to

a higher level of detail, Aral, Dellarocas, and Godes (2013) offer a framework for

social media research with three levels of analysis--users and society, platforms and

intermediaries, and firms and industries. These layers work together to offer a holistic

approach to social media research. Aral et al apply them to four kinds of activities

that organizations engage with via social media--design and features, strategy and

tactics, management and organizations, and measurement of value. This combination

offers an organizing framework that combines external and internal perspectivess for

social media research. However, they note a gap in research focusing on integrating

social media strategy with overall corporate strategy (p. 8).

In the Corporate Communication literature, Zerfass and his co-authors

implicitly approach this combination through their development of social media

governance guidelines and concepts; however, their focus remains within the realm of

PR as a field. (Linke and Zerfass, 2013; Macnamara and Zerfass, 2012; Zerfass and



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Sherzada, 2015). The combination of external and internal perspectives has been

approached explicitly by several social media scholars, who bring in discussions

about social media throughout the organization including cross-functional

perspectives. For example, Edosomwan, Prakasan, Kouame, Watson, and Seymour

(2011) discuss the history of social media in business contexts, and conceptualize the

importance of social media throughout the organization. At the same time, they focus

on dividing external communication of PR and marketing and internal communication

strategy into separate areas of social media use.

In contrast, Gur˘au (2008) focuses on a cross-functional approach to social

media through internal collaboration at the departmental level, arguing that all

employees are likely to communicate with a large range of stakeholders that could

inform social media communication practices. Breakenridge (2012) also investigates

different perspectives on cross-functional strategic roles through comparing human

resources and public relations practitioners’ understandings and visions for their use

of social media in their respective work areas leading to the identification of policing

and employee recruiter roles. Building on Breakenridge’s work, Neill and Moody

(2014) also explicitly address cross-functional social media practices through focus

groups of PR and Human Resources (HR) employees from across several

organizations. This study covers several departments including PR, Marketing,

Human Resources, Legal, IT, Sales and Customer Service. Here nine strategic roles

for social media communicators include internal collaborator, policy maker, policing,

technology tester, communication organizer, issues manager, relationship analyzer,

master of metrics and employee recruiter. From a more holistic perspective, Dreher

(2014) examines the risks of employee social media use and demonstrates an eight-

point strategy for encouraging social media use across an organization, based on a



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case of best practices from Domo—a business intelligence company. These eight

points are research, access, commitment, social media team, guidelines and policies,

training and education, integration, and goal setting and measurement. These points

are unpacked through a combination of literature and the Domo case. These themes

are useful in approaching social media across the organization, but they function as

guidelines to follow more than analytical tools for optimizing communication for

building corporate reputation in online and social media contexts. Although these

roles and themes offer a more holistic perspective on social media practices across the

organization, the overview of how they work together to produce reputation in

organizational and online settings still needs to be understood.

To build on Dreher, Breakenridge as well as Neill and Moody’s work, we

propose also considering employee social media use in a holistic way, but suggest

moving beyond guidelines and roles to understanding social media and online

interfaces across the organization. These interfaces connect internal and external

communication by demonstrating how employees in support areas of the organization

use social media tools and knowledge in their daily work. The knowledge they gain

through social media can be understood as influencing both their external and internal

communication practices, as well as strategies for connecting external and internal

information and knowledge needed to perform their work. For employees in areas of

the organization that are not traditionally external communication-oriented, this

implies the emergence of a set of new interfaces for external and internal

communication. Over time, as social media competences are integrated in support

functions across organizations, this can lead to PR and Marketing no longer being the

gatekeeping external communication interfaces between the organization and publics

using social media.



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This idea of the emergence of new interfaces also enables employees to access

knowledge from social media sources that may be strategically communicated

internally to enable the support functions to work more effectively. These new

interfaces and enhanced access to knowledge via social media sources should be

examined as part of understanding how social media strategy can be integrated into

overall corporate strategies. To address this problem through a model for

understanding social media use across the organization from a broad perspective, we

suggest that the metaphor of Porter’s value chain can be fruitful. We came to this

metaphor after our initial data analysis, and then used it as a lens for first revisiting

the literature, and second, for digging deeper in our analysis of the data. We explain

it here to orient readers to key analytical constructs of the online reputation chain,

based on the value chain metaphor. The value chain is activity focused, and connects

primary activities around producing products to secondary activities that support the

value creation process. Using the value chain as a metaphor, we shift the focus from

activities for creating value through products to activities for creating reputation

through communication. This enables us to coordinate findings in the literature

around social media activities for the unified purpose of fulfilling corporate strategy.

3. Method: Looking back to move forward

In 2001, Porter revisited his five forces and value chain models for

organizations in light of the the emerging technology of the Internet. Through this

update, Porter rethought the implications of the value chain with respect to Internet

technology. He described the Internet as "an enabling technology" that could be used

as a part of any strategy in any industry. At the same time, he argued that the Internet

is most effectively cast as a compliment to traditional business strategies, rather than a



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new paradigm. (p.64). In arguing for a return to fundamentals, he reminded us that in

transition times, business rules appear to change and then return to the old ways under

the influence of market forces. Revisiting this position in 2017, requires us to consider

whether social media is part of a transition time? And whether it affects the "old

rules" of market forces?

Following the same logic, this would imply that "uses of social media" work

to create value, as opposed to social media creating value in and of itself. Thus,

Porter's framework can be used to organize and understand uses of social media from

an organizational perspective because it scaffolds primary and secondary activities

aimed at value creation from a holistic perspective. A parallel question to ask is, if

social media is complimentary to traditional business value, where should we focus to

understand how to leverage "uses of social media" for creating business value. Using

Porter's value chain to scaffold our perspective turns attention inherently towards an

organizational perspective which enables businesses to understand how social media

relates to their core processes, interfaces, and contexts from a holistic vantage point.

We draw on Porter (2001) to demonstrate how the historically framed support

structures and interfaces of organizations are still valid in this context of changing

social media technology. We also use this historic perspective as a basis for

examining emerging interfaces between organizations and their industry, as well as

society context. These emerging interfaces still connect to the fundamental elements

of business strategy, but they also compliment it by offering the opportunity for an

interplay between interface strategies and core business strategies.

We worked first from articles that we knew from prior work that highlighted

connections between technology and the value chain. Here we focused on two key

articles-- A Long Range Planning Article from 1995--Levi Strauss Across the Value



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Chain (Preece, Fleisher and Toccacelli, 1995) and Porter's 2001 rethinking of the

effects of the Internet on the value chain. To systematically find articles with

appropriate concepts for our holistic reflection on social media through value chain

elements, we began with Google Scholar, looking for highly cited articles on the

keywords "social media management," and "social media," in both the fields of

Corporate Communication and IT. Then we chose keywords specific to each field.

For Corporate Communication, keywords included "internal communication," and

"external communication," together with "social media strategy". For IT, keywords

included "social media" and "business value." Then, we examined the texts citing

these texts, and refined keywords to include the social media related titles we used to

describe elements of the value chain to scaffold social media management from a

holistic organizational perspective, using our institutional library search engine to

look for additional and related articles. We included mainly articles from peer

reviewed journals with at least 1 citation, and also some highly cited book chapters.

Where there were numerous articles on similar topics, we chose articles from

reputable journals from the perspective of each field, with the highest citation counts,

and which were cited for the concepts we included.

4. Mapping Social Media literature using Porter's Value Chain Model as a

Scaffold

Porter’s value chain offers a key management strategy conceptualization of

the organizational practices. Applying Porter’s strategic framework to current social

media practices offers a way of systematically analyzing value activities, supporting

structures in the organization, and interfaces between the organization and context. In

this section, we focus on the relation of the literature to concepts for understanding



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social media from the fields of IT and Corporate Communication. We map these

concepts to the elements and supporting structures in Porter's historic value chain

model. The purpose of this mapping is to begin with a respect for the fundamentals of

business strategy, and then examine how additional interfaces created by uses of

social media platforms compliment traditional business strategy. The aim of this

exercise is to demonstrate the complimentarity between traditional and new business

strategies influenced by uses of social media technology. In turn, we also bring

together IT literature on social media with communication literature on social media

to enable organizations to take a holistic perspective on understanding social media

management. Our rethinking of the value chain elements in the light of social media

is inspired by a combination of Porter (2001) and Preece et al (1995). We incorporate

both technology affordances as Porter did, and communication related to building

corporate reputation along the value chain following Preece et al. This combination

leads not to a new and better value chain necessarily, but rather focuses on building a

holistic framework for understanding how social media scholarship can contribute to

overall firm strategy. This framework for social media management, scaffolded by

the primary and secondary element categories from the value chain works to point out

possibilities for research that coordinates an organizational perspective on social

media management with business strategy, and what Preece et al call "opportunities to

manage corporate reputation." (1995, p. 89).

As Porter (2001) rethought production related actions in the value chain, his

content for each of the primary and secondary elements shifted to using technology to

widen the communication of information across the organization and enable self-

service and automated through what he called "Web distributed supply chain

management," encompassing activities across the first three aspects of the value



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chain--inbound logistics, operations and outbound logistics. In this exercise, he

argued that industry structure was still the key factor for strategy, although he foresaw

the Internet reducing one of the five forces, barriers to entry. In our re-mapping of the

value chain to demonstrate a holistic approach to social media management, we argue

that new interfaces lead to a meta-structure in which organizations are interacting

with their context on multiple levels--not just the industry level, but also at the

"shaping vision" level (Hagel III, Seely Brown and Davison, 2008), which can

include shaping visions related to the power of platforms, including but not limited to,

social media platforms connecting users across industries.

As Porter's 2001 version of value chain primary activities focuses on tighter

knowledge connections between organizations, their suppliers and throughout the

company, the social media version focuses on tighter connections between the

company and its' larger context of participants in social media platforms by rethinking

"Web distributed Supply Chain Management" (p.13) in terms of social media driven

interfaces. This shifts the level of analysis from the interfaces around materials and

inventory, production and distribution of products to an analysis at a more abstract

level related to knowledge. This level reflects the current affordances of social media

which relate to sharing ideas, building reputation, and amplifying perspectives

through the use of social media posts, networks, and content choices.

Preece et al (1995) construct a similar transformation of value chain activities

with a focus on supporting activities that, in the long term, can lead to establishing

corporate reputation. This long term thinking about corporate actions, information

sharing and cooperation as part of corporate reputation was visionary back in 1995.

Through social media, technical affordances of social media platforms both enable,

and could be considered to demand some of these visionary activities described by



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Preece et al over 20 years ago. This logic places social media scholarship in a

business strategy context, looking beyond the affordances of new platforms and

technologies to meaningful activities at new and emerging interfaces enabled by

social media technologies. Recasting key concepts from social media literature that

focus more narrowly on social media practices and outcomes in parts of the

organization offers a path to rethinking social media scholarship in terms of

coordinated organizational perspectives rather than limited disciplinary perspectives.

Value chain: How can the value chain demonstrate a holistic perspective on social

media use to begin to establish an organizational perspective on social media

management?

In this section, we rethink value chain elements in terms of the technological

affordances and reputation content from previous uses of the value chain to

coordinate holistic perspectives for understanding both technology and repution in an

organizational perspective. First, we describe the primary and secondary elements of

a version of the value chain for building a holistic perspective on social media

management. Then we use tables to demonstrate highly cited concepts that can be

useful for unpacking each element with respect to the social media research literatures

in Corporate Communication and IT perspectives.

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Figure 1 goes about here

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Porter's value chain model from Figure 1 includes supporting activities (A-D) and

primary activities (1-5). When looking at social media, we can see supporting

activities as focused on the support structures needed to maintain a social media

presence. Primary activities, on the other hand focus directly on social media

interfaces between corporations and their contexts. One key difference in using

Porter's value chain (2001) to address social media rather than the Internet in general

is that interfaces go beyond the limitations of the industry context, whereas Porter

casts Web based supply chain management in terms of using the Internet for

interfacing with the Industry context. Additional interfaces also can emerge between

support structures and social media directly, for example with Human Resources

using LinkedIn as a recruiting platform, or performing social media presence searches

as part of screening applicants.

In using Porter's value chain as an organizing structure for making sense of

what Van Looy (2016) refers to as the multi-disciplinary nature of social media

management, we label the primary activities of the value chain with numbers 1-5, and

the secondary or supporting activities as A, B, C, D. In Porter's rethinking of the

value chain for the Internet, primary activities are transformed into information

intensive actions rather than the actual production actions inherent in the historical

model. Following Porter's 2001 logic, each box is transformed to demonstrate

affordances and requirements of social media technology. Box 1 focuses on inbound

ideas and concepts that the firm can learn about from interactions on social media

platforms. These incude ideas that can be used to refine operations. In the same

light, Box 2, Operations, became availability of information about product production

processes related to promises to deliver. As we rethink the value chain for social

media affordances, information related to operations is not commonly communicated



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via social media channels. However, if we consider R&D to be an operations

function, Box 2 can refer to RandD operations that involve open innovation or co-

creation. Box 3, outbound logistics, can be understood to refer to logistics of dealing

with global distributors and their social media presences. The combination of boxes

1-3 as primary activities working together can be understood as activities related to

"Knowledge chain mangement." This is inspired by Porter's (2001) labelling of

primary activities 1-3 as Web based supply chain management. The structure is

parallel, but due to the current affordances of social media, activities 1-3 are

transformed from the concrete actions of supply chains to knowledge based actions.

In the model, E-commerce connects boxes 3 and 4, since, for example, crowdsourcing

platforms can be used for distribution and marketing together. Box 4, marketing and

sales, focuses on social media marketing efforts for products and e-commerce sites

where those products can be purchased. Finally, Box 5 centers on customer service

and related activities that can be fulfilled through social media channels.

In Figure 1, the supporting activities refer to activities that historically were

internal to the organization. Through the affordances of social media platforms, these

supporting activities are currently becoming part of newly mediated and in some

cases re-mediated interfaces between organizations and their contexts. The letters A,

B, C, D are used to demonstrate these activities. A refers to Firm Infrastructure related

to managing people, as social media is inherently a people-intensive technology at the

individual level due to affordances of personal profiles built into social media

platforms. This includes not only individuals, but how these individuals represent and

belong to organizational departments and management structures in the organization.

B refers to Human Resources activities such as hiring, policy development and

enforcement, training, employee engagement efforts, and employer branding.



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Although Porter envisioned the contribution of the Internet in terms of self-service

and access to information related to HR functions, in terms of Social Media, the box

B represents Human Resource related corporate engagement on platforms such as

LinkedIn for recruitment, and YouTube as well as TEDx for training. For C, Porter

uses the title of Technology Development to refer to the Internet opening up

collaborative product design across locations and among multiple "value system"

participants. This refers to Knowledge Management capabilities of IT systems

through naming "knowledge directories accessible from all parts of the organization"

and "real time access by R&D to online sales and service information." These

categories from a 2001 Internet technology point of view emphasize internal

interfaces between departments connected through data. However, they do not

include the interpersonal aspects of communication enabled by social media

platforms, allowing technology to not only faciliate the sharing of data itself, but also

of data together with knowledge through social media's interpersonal aspects--

understood as "sticky" following Brown and Duguid's characterization of knowledge

(2000). Finally, D refers to Procurement in Porter's historic model. Historically,

Porter's understanding of Internet technology in procurement focuses on real time

planning and linking purchase, inventory and forecasting systems with suppliers, as

well as automating features such as "requisition to pay." In light of social media

affordances, procurement can be understood in terms of B-to-B relationships with

suppliers, and metadata that can be gathered from social media interactions related to

procurement issues.

In mapping literature to the value chain, Table 1. demonstrates key concepts

related to each of the secondary activities in the social media scaffolding of Porter's

value chain model.



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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table 1 goes about here

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table 2 demonstrates how primary activities of the value chain can be used as

a scaffolding to coordinate literature for understanding social media management

from a holistic organizational perspective. Primary activities involve direct

interactions and work to operationalize business strategy at the tactical level. In

social media contexts, social media strategies can often be confused with strategies

focused on business goals. This part of the holistic framework for understanding

social media management from an organizational perspective focuses on organizing

social media tactics and strategies in a way that opportunities for aligning and

leveraging social media technologies for business strategy involving the whole

organization can be considered from a holistic, rather than disciplinary perspective.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table 2 goes about here

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In summary, we were able to locate current social media research that mapped

to each of the primary and secondary activities of the value chain historic model of

the firm, demonstrating that most studies, even those searching for a holistic frame for

understanding social media from an organizational standpoint, are not yet developed

enough to encompass all of the historic primary and secondary activities inherent in

Porter's historic model for the firm focused on creating value. Thus, we posit that a

broader model is needed to develop the field of social media management more fully.

Although Porter's model is historically limited and contested, the way that activities

are divided into primary and secondary categories enables a dynamic approach to



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viewing social media management from a perspective that includes activities from

across the organization. The mapping to primary and secondary activities implies that

using this holistic view, researchers can produce questions with broader impact for

developing social media management. This is because the scaffolding from Porter

looks across organizations and opens up possibilities to examine connections between

these primary and secondary activities, as well as between primary and secondary

activities together interfacing with social media platforms, users and audiences in

different configurations.

5. Discussion: Interfaces emerging through Social Media Affordances and

Activities across the Organization

How can the notion of interfaces be applied in the value chain scaffolding for

a holistic approach to social media management? In general, as the Internet added a

layer of information about primary and supporting activities in Porter's 2001

interpretation of his historic value chain in Internet context, social media can be seen

as adding a layer of interfaces affecting primary and supporting activities. Due to the

pervasiveness of social media technologies in society and their ability to affect

corporate reputation, it can be argued that Preece et al's (2001) understanding of

activities across the value chain being relatable to corporate reputation are also

relevant. These interfaces can be seen through our coordination of social media

studies in IT and Corporate Communication disciplines. To adjust our understanding

of the layer of interfaces added by social media platforms, we move from thinking of

the parts of the framework to picture new, amplified and emerging interfaces between

value chain activities and social media platforms, participants, and audiences.

Because of space limitations, we focus on explaining one interface in each category.



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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Figure 2 goes about here

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Figure 2 Demonstrates interfaces within and across the organization which

emerge through organizational uses of social media. The arrows demonstrate that

dealing with social media technologies not only creates interfaces between primary

activities or secondary activities and social media platforms, participants and

audiences, but it also creates interfaces between the different primary activities and a

larger than industry wide.

This mapping of the literature on social media practices to value chain

activities demonstrates that primary and secondary/support activities have been

researched from different fields, and that cross disciplinary perspectives are necessary

for addressing a social media from an organizational vantage point in a holistic

manner. We propose that the value chain model will enable a holistic view of social

media management activities that includes primary activities as well as supporting

structures, and interactions between them. These interfaces can be classified as new,

amplified or emerging.

New interfaces can be seen in interfaces between secondary activities and

social media platforms, participants and audiences. One example of a new interface

would be between C. Technology development, and external social media platforms.

This interface can be focused on interactions between corporate web sites, their IT

systems and external social media platforms. Another example of a new interface can

be seen in interactions between data from user generated content, IT systems for

knowledge capture to enhance innovation and RandD processes, and Marketing

practices around key performance indicators. New social media interfaces are also



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emerging along the supply chain because globally distributed products can have local

social media presences created by product distributors and organizations selling their

products locally in different regions of the world.

Amplified interfaces can be seen in interactions between A. Organizational

structures and cultures, and B. Human Resources interfacing with Social Media

Platforms. This would include CEO communication via social media channels, as

well as changes in organizational structures balancing C-suite roles related to IT,

Marketing and possible even communication, as the field of Corporate

Communication advocates a CCO role that connects marketing, PR, and internal

communication. Historically, CEOs have been public figures such as Steve Jobs from

Apple, or Bill Gates from Microsoft during the 1980s-2000s. However, the HR

interface with social media platforms might be understood as amplified by social

media because platforms such as LinkedIn have augmented traditional interfaces with

the public that were earlier connected through other media, such as newspapers or

websites such as Monster.com, a 20-year-old job seeking website. Currently, HR

recruiters have the ability to learn more about candidates through their social media

presences--not only the more traditional recruiting site, LinkedIn, but also more

personally oriented platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition, the

affordances of social media which allow applicants to craft a deliberate social media

presence have been found to affect HR processes for judging applicants (Chiang et al,

2014). Another set of amplified interfaces can be seen in the interactions between

marketing and customer services. Traditionally, these functions have been informally

linked, but the use of social media platforms for marketing purposes can lead to social

media participants using marketing or branding campaigns as a way to communicate

to companies about customer service.



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Emerging interfaces can be discussed in terms of interfaces between the

different supporting structures of the organization, which, can shift and change

depending on the stage of growth for social media integration (Chung et al, 2017)

present in the organization. In discussing how to find the most appropriate social

media metrics for an organization's dashboard, Peters et al (2013) note that "profound

organizational changes ... may be implied when setting up social media interfaces

with various functions ..."(p. 282). They also suggest that interface will start to merge

as organizations strategize and bring together inbound and outbound communication

interfaces to enhance their social media strategy.

6. Conclusion

In exploring understandings of and uses for social media across an

organization, we have demonstrated the usefulness of drawing on Porter’s value

chain. As a conceptual tool, it addresses a need for holistic framing across disciplines

to enable research strategy to take the complexity of organizations into account in

useful ways. As a practical tool it allows managers to find opportunities for

developing strategy through coordinating functions and interfaces across the

organization with respect to social media practices.

This perspective on social media management integrates internal and external

perspectives on social media management, going beyond roles and strategies to

interactions in social media environments that are both impacted by and have an

impact on organizational support structures and associated support activities. It also

offers a tool that opens up new ways to understand the emerging field of social media

management--as a field that is multidisciplinary and multi-perspectival in nature. It

also enables social media management to focus on three different kinds of interfaces



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created by the affordances of social media--new, amplified and emerging interfaces.

This classification scheme for interfaces enables a more nuanced view of ways in

which the technologial affordances of social media management lead to

organizational change and open up opportunities for developing organizational

strategy which connects concepts and perspectives from the different disciplines that

employees in various functional areas bring to the organization. Directions for future

investigation include key questions related to the analytical aspects of the value chain,

which Kaplinsky (2000) reminds us can be seen through using connections and

relationships between primary and secondary/support activities. Our framework for

classifying interfaces adds an extra dimension to this, expanding the notion beyond

relationships to include interfaces related to social media platforms, participants and

audiences.

Potential areas for investigation include examining how interfaces configured

through not only connections between primary and secondary activities, but also

social media platforms, participants and audiences can better help researchers ask

questions that will lead to the development of social media management as a field, as

well as a component to strategy. Directions for further exploration include rethinking

the 5 forces (Porter, 2001) with respect to social media. How might these forces be

rethought for social media intensive contexts? Do issues parallel to those that Porter

used to open discussions about a holistic perspective on strategy apply? How useful

would it be to investigate the five forces in Porter's historical terms? For example,

could 1) barriers to entry on different social media platforms, 2) social media

governance and 3) systemic efficiencies which support optimization of reputation

building processes be key issues for moving our understanding of social media

management forward? Could these questions help lead to a research context where



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social media management and business strategy perspectives inform each other to a

greater extent through the research process? And finally, do other holistic competing

models for the firm, such as a resource based view of the firm offer perspectives that

can lead us to find a different set of relevant interfaces for developing holistic

perspectives on social media management across the firm?



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Figure 1. Mapping Social Media to the Value Chain Model (adapted from Porter, 2001)



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Figure 2. Social Media Related Interfaces Across the Organization (adapted from Porter 2001).



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Secondary Activity Key Concepts Supporting Literature A. Organizational and Cultural Infrastructures, roles, information sharing practices

Defining roles in organizations related to social media practices and presence: issues manager, relationship analyzer, master of metrics employee recruiter Investigating the role of CEOs use of social media in the public sphere Impact of Social Media on C-Level Roles: examining configurations of CIO/CMO Leadership for social media management Social roles and Interactions as part of the S-O-R framework for social media metrics (connecting employee motives, social roles and networks with platform social roles and networks) Social Media Beyond Marketing "social media creates strategic value when it is used throughout the organization in systematic ways": organizational strategy as point of departure for developing social media presence Cross-functional approach for managing social media and online activities 9 cross functional strategic roles for social media in organizations Importance of social media for different organizational functions Communicational Ambidexterity for dealing with social media tensions with internal communication, stewardship and self ownership of communication internal and external Three orientiations towards social media use:

• Marketing Orientation • Entrepreneurship Orientation • E-commerce Orientation

Neill and Moody (2014) Zerfass and Scherzada (2015) Deans (2011) Peters et al (2013) Arora and Predmore (2013) Gur˘au (2008) Breakenridge et al (2012) Aichner and Jacob (2015) Huang et al (2015) Valos, Polonsky, Mavondo, and Lipscomb (2015)

B.Human Resources: Hiring, Training, Competence Needs for using and learning from social media platforms, social media governance, policy

Online Platforms LinkedIn and Facebook influencing recruitment practices in Belgium Candidate LinkedIn presentation skills can affect recruiter evaluations before interviews Worker as Politician: affects of social media platform use in self presentation strategies on professional reputation and career management Social media guidelines for all employees Policing role for managing social media Social media guidelines for understanding boundaries and mitigating risks, and regulatory frameworks across the organization Social Media and Employee Creativity: Complex engagement with social media as expanding employee competences

Caers, R., and Castelyns, V. (2010). Chiang, J. K. H., and Suen, H. Y. (2015) Berkelaar, B.L., Scacco, J.M. and Birdsell, J.L., (2015) Dreher (2014) Neill and Moody (2014) Linke and Zerfass (2013) Sigala and Chalkiti (2014)

C. Technology Development including RandD: Integrating connective features between systems and social media platforms

Social Media Management Systems supporting interdepartmental communication Enterprise Social Media Systems for Internal Communication in organizations Connecting Social Media data to Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM) Social Media integration affected by ability of existing systems to link to social media platforms "Know why" component of organizing visions and social media as IT innovation

• Good citizen in corporation • Repetoires of meaning offering

prospective stakeholder opportunities

Benthaus et al (2016) Leonardi et al (2013) Arman (2014) Bharati, et al ( 2014) Miranda et al (2015)



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Table 1. Secondary Activity categories of the value chain scaffolding for social media management with key concepts and sources Table 2. Primary Activity categories of the value chain scaffolding for social media management with key concepts and sources. Primary Activity Key Concepts Supporting Literature 1. INBOUND LOGISTICS/KNOWLEDGE

Organizations as organizing co-created experiences and leveraging them, engaged co-creators working in synergy with organizations. Creative Consumers shifting value from organizations to consumers, creating inbound ideas Crisis communication, roles for dealing with inbound crisis information Social media monitoring Customer Socialization and Open Co-Creation Social Software affecting Knowledge Management:

• leveraging social media software for building knowledge resources

Ramaswamy and Ozcan (2016) Berthon et al (2012) Frandsen and Johansen (2011) Zhang B. and Vos M. (2014) Jarvenpaa and Tuunainen (2013) Von Krogh (2012)

2.OPERATIONS/OPERATIONALIZING KNOWLEDGE

Interfaces between platforms and brand experiences Positive effects of interaction via social media on public-organization relationships:

• social media dependency of participants

• parasocial interaction between participants and employees

• community identification Developing and validating flow experience in social networking Social Media affordances process of recognition: co-perception as part of engagement on social media Consumers as authors of pivotal brand stories Three orientiations towards social media use:

• Marketing Orientation • Entrepreneurship Orientation • E-commerce Orientation

Social Media Team Strategy Images of and barriers to perceived usefulness of social media in B-2-B contexts Use of Social Media Management tools to monitor activity and response, connecting internal

Ramaswamy and Ozcan (2016) Men and Tsai (2013) Kaur et al (2016) Cabbidu et al (2014) Gensler et al (2013) Valos et al (2015) Dreher (2014) Siamagka et al (2015) Benthaus et al (2016)

• Vision affecting IT diffusion about social media uses

Connections between social media platforms and client hosted forums to firm's homepage. Stages of growth in organization's social media presence Social Media, Knowledge Sharing and Innovation: Communication Visibility

Culnan et al (2010) Chung et al (2017) Leonardi (2014)

D. Absorptive Capacity for social media use and establishing presence

Absorbtive capacity for leveraging social media: Social Media integration through general learning and affected by institutional pressures indirectly, and directly affected by top management Absorptive capacity for leveraging information and knowledge gained from social media interactions for innovation in the firm Effective social media implementation: --mindful adoption, community building and absorptive capacity

Bharati, et al ( 2014) Scuotto et al (2016) Culnan et al (2010)



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and external measures of social media activity, such as informing other departments about identified social media activity influencers. Social Media Management Tools vs. Web based tools for strategy in building positive public perception Social Software for Knowledge Management:

• dynamically recreating knowledge boundaries

Benthaus et al (2016) Von Krogh (2012)

3. OUTBOUND LOGISTICS

Social Media Strategy cone elements Consumer flow experience in social commerce: Perceived interpersonal interaction. Social networking popularity and product launching. Critical of Twitter use as outbound channel, stakeholder engagement

Effing and Spil (2016) Liu et al (2016) Waters et al (2009) Lovejoy et al (2012)

4. MARKETING and SALES

S-O-M model for social media marketing interfaces:

• marketing input as stimulus • interconnections between motives,

social roles and interactions, network structure and content

• marketing outcomes as response Four generic dimensions of social media marketing:

• scope • culture • structure • governance

User engagement at the marketing interface, stakeholder relationship management Social media as providing strategic opportunities for marketers, integration of social media into marketing plans. Interactive Marketing Paradigms with consumer and corporate roles—consumers act, corporations gather data and make assumptions.

Peters et al (2013) Felix et al (2017) Maxwell and Carboni (2016) Constantinides (2014) Deighton and Kornfeld (2009)

5. AFTER SALES SERVICE

Customer engagement cycle and market orientation Virtual Customer Environments and engagement Social Media based customer dialogue as Megaphone, Magnet and Monitor Collaborative Experiences and dialog that customers value

Sashi (2012) Verhagen et al (2015) Gallaugher and Ransbotham (2010) Heller Baird and Parasnis (2011)

coordinating social media management interfaces across the...

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