Leaders Navigating Organizational and Personal Boundaries on Social Media

Being a leader in an ever more transparent world requires more openness and presence in dealing with questions from the public by using highly visible platforms such as social media. However, recent research on social media and leadership communication is scarce and mainly focuses on an internal perspective (Lee, 2015) and leaders’ technology acceptance level (Parry & Solidoro, 2013; Sedej & Justinek, 2013), not focusing on employees and leaders as users of social media outside the internal communication context. We argue for expanding the understanding of communicative leadership on social media to include communication that crosses organizational boundaries through social media, recognizing the difficulty of separating internal and external communication in this new transparent context. To explore these issues, we have conducted surveys in social media forums directed at corporate leaders. Forums examined include LinkedIn Groups and professional group pages on Facebook. In addition, we have interviewed six corporate leaders who are active on social media in Denmark.

 Key words: Leadership style, leadership communication, social media Paper type: Explorative Empirical Study References Lee, C.E. (2015). Social media and leadership communication: The use of social media by corporate leaders for effective internal communication, International Journal of Arts & Sciences, 8(01), 513–529. Parry, E., & Solidoro, A. (2013). Social Media as a Mechanism for Engagement?, in: Social Media in Human Resources Management, 121-141. Advanced Series in Management, by Emerald Group Publishing Limited Sedej, T., & Justinek, G. (2013). Social Media in Internal Communications: A View from Senior Management, in: Social Media in Human Resources Management, Advanced Series in Management, by Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 83-95.