Keywords

1 Introduction

The phenomenon of social media pervades now every aspect of our personal and business lives, and this revolution continues. In its most basic sense, social media has created a shift in how people communicate with each other, how we read and share information. This has implications for leaders and leadership in that leaders need to optimize their influence by understanding and acknowledging the changing nature of the leader-follower relationships. As Kotter (1990) suggested, effective leaders and managers spend most of their time interacting with others, so it is quite obvious that a greater number of activities on a social media platform to interact with others is a key driver of the network’s usefulness. Through interactions and activities, managers are able to foster relationship building and general team building (Kayworth and Leidner 2001).

Table 1. Results
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There are several studies that are worth to be mentioned regarding leadership and organizational culture in Romanian SMEs. For example, Craciun et al. (2015) in their survey on 930 subjects identified characteristics of a leader that influence the organization’s results (as seen by employees): adaptability; cooperation; authority; charisma; confidence; motivation. In another research done by Romanian specialists (Nastase and Radu 2013) more entrepreneurs and their staff have been asked to choose the most important values for their companies. Regarding the hierarchy of the values taken into account the most important seemed to be the high focus on customers, performance orientation and professionalism. MKOR (2017) conducted a qualitative survey of nearly 650 Romanian business and NGO leaders and discovered that 19.5% of respondents think they have a rather more collegiate leadership style; 19.1% of respondents think they have a rather democratic leadership style; 18.6% of respondents believe that they have a rather visionary leadership style and, interestingly, only 7.2% of respondents think they have a rather more authoritarian style of leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to identify possible connections between leadership styles and the organizational culture of Romanian companies and to analyze what is the role of social media in mediating these connections.

The paper is organized in 3 sections; the first is dedicated to the literature review; in Sect. 2 we discuss data, methodology and results. In the final section, we discuss the style of leadership and type of organizational culture identified as prevailing in the Romanian companies as well as the challenges these organizations face when leaders and managers need to decide what should be their primary focus (tasks/people) in the context of profound transformations induced by the present pandemic.

2 Literature Review

There is a plethora of leadership definitions in the specialized literature. For example, Northouse (2012) defines leadership as a “process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (p. 5) while Russell (2005) suggests that leadership is the ‘interpersonal influence exercised by a person or persons through the process of communication, toward the attainment of an organization’s goals” (p. 16). Furthermore, Rue and Bryars (2009) define leadership as “the ability to influence people to willingly follow one’s guidance or adhere to one’s decisions” (p. 465). Finally, according to Kane (2009), “Leadership is an influence relationship aimed at moving organizations or groups of people toward an imagined future that depends upon alignment of values and establishment of mutual purposes”.

This last definition builds on the following ideas: first, leadership is more than just a role assigned to a person: leadership is about the behaviors one exhibits in this role. Leadership is also interactive and dynamic, calling upon actions in order to influence followers or subordinates, or put it differently, “The true measure of leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less” (Maxwell 2007, p. 25). Second, power is an essential component of leadership in that it will constantly alter the type of influence one has with one’s followers. Finally, alignment between leaders and followers on values and mutual purposes or outcomes that benefit both the organization and the people involved – is necessary for leadership in order to be successful. Followers need to understand why a certain action is required.

According to Maxwell (2007), leadership ability determines one’s success and effectiveness as a leader. A fundamental ability for leaders is to effectively connect with people, and in the era of technological progress and speed, social media has become a modern and challenging tool for nowadays leaders who want to maintain an open communication with their followers/subordinates.

Social media is also important for leadership as it changes the way relationships develop: information flows from one department to another, tasks are accomplished by teams that work in different time-zones and locations while private online conversations between employees and leaders make virtual meetings by far more productive than in the usual face-to-face settings.

Social media has, however, altered what it means to be a follower. ‘To follow’ used to refer to behavior that meant to go behind someone else and so a follower would tread in the footsteps of a leader. The traditional organizational hierarchy between leaders and their followers has eroded over time, partly due to social movements and the growing empowerment of followers through their ability to access information more easily. To be a follower nowadays implies a choice made by the follower regarding information or communications while leaders are no longer the sole source of information about their companies. The workplace choices made by followers are now much more selective, voluntary, multi-channeled and arguably better informed as new business models arise and blur the distinction between leaders and followers.

In addition to the leader/follower relationship dynamics there is evidence that people are more likely to trust a company whose leadership team engages with social media, and that they would prefer to work for a company where leaders are active on social media. Most people also believe that use of social media improves CEO engagement with employees and that this is mission-critical for a business (according to a BRANDfog 2016 survey).

A more recent Brandfog survey (2020) also shows that CEOs who actively participate in social media can build better connections with customers, employees and investors (92% of respondents agreed to that) and 9 in 10 respondents (88%) agreed that “CEOs on social media who take a stand in the key social issues of our time can act as role models for the next generation of leaders”. Furthermore, 82% of survey respondents stated they were more likely to purchase from a company whose leadership communicates openly on social media channels regarding their efforts during the Covid-19 crisis while two thirds (66%) say that social media engagement makes CEOs more effective leaders (Brandfog Survey 2020).

Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid was first developed in the 1960s and ever since has been through many transformations (1964, 1978, 1985, 1994). It is widely accepted as a critical and important analysis of leadership behavior. The Grid is similar in some respect to the Ohio State Studies which combines a leader/manager’s focus on tasks and a focus on the relationship with the subordinates. However, the managerial grid develops these concepts further by quantifying the degree to which the focus is on tasks or “concern for results” and the focus is on the relationship with the subordinates or “concern for people”. The 1 to 9 scale allows differentiation among the variable responses regarding concern for production or people, where 1 represents a low concern and 9 represents a high concern.

Blake and Mouton (1964) postulated there were 5 leadership types:

1.1. Impoverished management – describes a situation in which there is both low concern for results and low concern about people. The apathetic nature of this leader results in behavior that is indifferent to both-success and human relationships.

1.9. Country Club Management – leaders/managers manifest a low concern for results combined with high concern for people. This translates in a leader who is more interested in pleasing people than in the performance of tasks while attempting to create an environment that is both friendly and welcoming.

9.1. Authority-Compliance Management – is a combination of high concern for results and a low concern for people. This controlling leadership style is characterized by a focus on results (delivering instructions and tasks) while manifesting no compassion or concern for subordinates.

5.5. Middle-of –the Road Management – is a style of compromise as leaders try to balance concern for results with satisfying relationships.

9.9. Team management – where emphasis is placed both on results and people. This optimal balance of developing human relationships and effective results attainment provides for the most comfortable and satisfying work environment.

Leadership styles (how leaders deal with tasks and people) together with social media make their mark on the organizational culture of companies.

The specialized literature contains many definitions of the concept of “organizational culture.” However, two perspectives dominate the relevant literature, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive: the managerial and social sciences approach. According to the first, a leader or a management team creates and affects the culture, while the social sciences approach supports that culture is shaped by the shared experiences between individuals, often developed on an ad hoc basis.

Based on the second approach, the intersection of the various definitions refers to the common characteristics, perceptions, values, beliefs, and fundamental principles that a group of employees follow, in order to adjust to new external environmental conditions and contribute to inter-organizational integration and operation, and all these guide and constrain employees’ behavior (Schein 2004; Bourantas 2006; Kondalkar 2007). Konteh, et al. (2008) observed that culture constitutes a lens through which an organization can be understood and interpreted while Chapman (2002, p. 14) stressed that organizational culture is dynamic and “emerges in the complex interactions of human behavior” and is also structural, because of “such interactions produce particular patterns (or structures) which, in turn, influence the interactions themselves”. Simply put, culture depicts the character or identity of an organization, on how things are done and is reflected by artifacts that someone sees when visiting a company, such as office spaces, the dressing code of employees, etc. (Ribière 2001).

Goffee and Jones (2009) pointed out that culture is simply a “community,” which is built on shared interests and mutual obligations and thrives on cooperation and friendships.

Organizational culture guides employees’ behavior toward operational effectiveness (Schein 2004) and particularly to an organization’s performance (Denison 1990; Kotter and Heskett 1992; Alvesson 2002). But businesses rely on patterns of social interactions that sustain them over time. From this perspective, Goffee and Jones attribute to business organizations two characteristics that are present in any organizational culture: sociability and solidarity (1996). Sociability is about human relations. Employees perceive each other as friends while working in such an environment is enjoyable. Sociability has many benefits: it fosters team work, sharing of information, creativity and openness to new ideas. Solidarity, on the other hand, is more about the mind. Relationships within organizations are based on mutual interests and common tasks, shared goals and focus on profit that will benefit both the employees and the organization (Goffee, Jones 1996). While sociability and solidarity come as natural in all types of organizations, assessing where one stands in both dimensions may be particularly useful for leaders and managers. According to Goffee and Jones (1996), the intersection of sociability and responsibility results in four types of organizational culture: networked, mercenary, fragmented and communal.

Networked organizations are high in sociability and low on solidarity: people collaborate more as friends and act as a family; decisions are often made before the business meetings (lack of hierarchy). Their low level of solidarity means that managers and leaders have often trouble when trying to make employees commit to rules, procedures and shared objectives.

Mercenary organizations (low sociability and high solidarity) are focused on business issues: deadlines, common tasks, shared objectives. Work takes priority on private life and individual interests coincide with the company’s goals. Poor performance is not tolerated while employees are driven more by competition and a strong will to win. In this case, low sociability drives people towards less cooperation and sharing of ideas.

Fragmented organizations (low sociability and low solidarity) are the ones in which members rarely agree on performance standards and organizational objectives. Employees perceive themselves as experts and because they have a high sense of self- worth, many of them prefer to work alone. This makes a leader’s job very difficult: it is hard to align people to the company’s goals when they do not identify themselves with the organization and act solely on a “what’s in it for me” basis. Teamwork in this type of organizations is difficult to achieve because there is little interdependence in the work itself.

Communal organizations (high sociability and high solidarity) seem to be the ideal type of organization: employees identify with the organization; share equitably risks and rewards; value fairness and justice while being committed to the company’s goals. Teamwork and creativity thrive because commitment and focus are high (Goffee, Jones 1996).

As unstable as these four types of organizational culture may be, knowing where the organizations stand in terms of sociability and solidarity is important for managers and leaders: They need to know where and how to act on these dimensions in order to gain a competitive advantage and drive their companies to success. Measuring these two dimensions is a challenge particularly in times of crisis such as the present pandemic. Businesses need to become more dynamic and flexible because technological progress puts its mark both on human relations and performance. Therefore deciding what type of organizational culture you want to build up is essential for leaders and managers who know where they are heading in the long run.

Some authors, however, including Scott, et al. (2003), have pointed out that there is little evidence in the research literature on the relationship between organizational culture and performance. However, leaders should develop a clear understanding of organizational culture (Reigle 2001), as this is important for guiding the operations of the whole organization, in order to know its strengths and weaknesses and to use them appropriately. In addition, they should uncover the probable causal relationships between the different kinds of cultures and organizational performance and then implement this most suited to their needs (Alvesson 2002).

The role of leadership is important in shaping the appropriate culture, affecting its main characteristics, such as attitudes to risk, rituals, and autonomy that respond to their organizations’ needs (Konteh et al. 2008). Thus, top management needs to understand the culture of their organization or enterprise and must then decide how this can be changed in order to improve both their employees’ experience of the workplace and their organization’s profitability, despite this being a complicated task (Sadri and Lees 2001). Many challenges must be overcome in order to implement and sustain beneficial cultural change (Konteh, et al. 2008). The relevant literature shows that there are a number of standard steps and appropriate values that managers can follow in order to achieve an efficient organizational cultural change (Kotter 1996; Momen 2015).

Leaders and managers can manipulate the levels of sociability and responsibility in their organizations through the decisions they make. Therefore, their leadership styles generate patterns of organizational cultures that affect the organizational climate and the way work is done while social networking platforms are being used to provide much more support and input for employees. If the chosen leadership style is directly related to the organizational performance of the company, this implies that leaders and managers should invest in their leadership abilities as a leader’s effectiveness is always determined by his/her leadership skills (Maxwell 2007).

3 Data and Results

Our study was conducted among 45 Romanian managers/entrepreneurs, the data being collected in January 2021 and processed in SPSS and Excel. The applied questionnaire that consists of 24 questions was build based on fundamental principles related to organizational culture and leadership (Goffee & Jones 1996; Blake and Mouton 1964).

The demographic structure of the respondents is presented, as follows: 37.8% women, 62.2% men, from which most of them work in IT (13%) or retail (15%), but also in fields like banking, education, professional services or transportation. The respondents who were between 26 and 39 years old were the majority – 37.8%, followed by those that are between the ages 40 and 49–26.7%. The respondents who under 25 years old represent 20% whereas people between the ages 50–59 represent 11.1%. Only 4.4% from the total number registered by the statistics were people over 60 years old.

The formulated hypotheses are the following:

  1. 1.

    Over 60% of Romanian managers/entrepreneurs practice a team management style, supporting both sociability and solidarity in their organizations.

  2. 2.

    The most important social media platform for entrepreneurs to connect with their employees are Facebook and LinkedIn.

  3. 3.

    Sociability is predominantly encouraged by managers and CEOs under 25 years of age while solidarity is supported mainly by leaders who belong to the 26–39 years of age segment.

  4. 4.

    Most managers/entrepreneurs develop their leadership abilities by constantly reading professional books and articles.

The following table provides information regarding aspects that define the managers/entrepreneurs in organizational culture and leadership:

As we can see from the table above:

  • At most of the questions we have a percentage that is higher than 60% regarding that Romanian managers/entrepreneurs practice a team management style, supporting both sociability and solidarity in their organizations.

  • Most managers/entrepreneurs develop their leadership abilities by constantly reading professional books and articles, having a high percentage in each question regarding this aspect (approx. 80%). The Somers’ D and Kendall tests (Garson 2012) were applied to see if there were significant statistical differences among groups regarding age or gender. The p-value for the tests were not smaller than 0.05 meaning that no differences were identified.

The most important social media platform for entrepreneurs to connect with their employees are Facebook (82%) and WhatsApp (69%), as we can see in the graph below (Fig. 1). Younger entrepreneurs, besides Facebook and WhatsApp, are closer to Instagram, while the more experienced ones are more familiar with Linkedin.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Distribution of entrepreneurs regarding social media

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Even though the difference is insignificant, the Romanian managers/entrepreneurs are slightly more oriented on tasks rather than people and – based on the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid – their leadership style is team leadership, meaning that they are strong on both tasks and people skills. While meaningful differences between segments of age do not exist, it appears that younger entrepreneurs are barely a bit more targeting tasks rather than people.

To see if there were differences based on age whether sociability or solidarity is predominantly encouraged by managers and CEOs, the Somers’ D and Kendall tests were again applied. For each question, p-value was not less or equal to 0.05 which means that there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that there are age differences regarding the way entrepreneurs deal with sociability and solidarity. But as an observation, the sample was rather small, so further investigation may be required to look into this matter.

Nevertheless, using the Somers’ D, Kendall and Pearson Chi Square tests, we found that there are some differences regarding age in the following statements:

  1. 1.

    Nothing is more important than accomplishing a goal or a task

  2. 2.

    I enjoy reading articles, books and trade journals about my profession and then implementing the new procedures I have learned.

  3. 3.

    People in my company try to make friends and to keep their relationships strong.

  4. 4.

    Our group/team understands and shares the same business objectives.

Most of the statements where we found differences are oriented more towards solidarity rather than sociability. However, our results indicate a communal organizational culture that prevails in the Romanian entrepreneurial companies. Only the second statement out of the fourth is not sensitive to order (only chi-square p-value being relevant with a value smaller than 0.05). In all other three statements the order of ages is important, in this case Somers’ D and Kendall p-values being smaller than 0.05.

Yet, an interesting fact is that there are no statistical significant differences regarding gender when we refer to leadership and organizational culture.

4 Discussion

In the analysis of the results obtained we must take into account both the specificity of the SME sector and the current pandemic context.

Willingly or unwillingly, the societal crisis generated by the pandemic, through its surprising appearance and its all-encompassing and virulent manifestation, forced management at all levels of society and economy to make decisions, to take actions and have reactive behaviors. At the forefront have been and still are, in many areas, especially at company level, the survival and/or ensuring a “reasonable” level of functionality, given that economic challenges and difficulties are closely interconnected with those of medical and social nature (Nicolescu 2020a). Organizational resilience and agility have become coordinates of management in many companies. Among the new managerial elements, crystallized in 2020 under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic are:

  • the ascendancy of pivoting in the forefront of management, i.e. the ability of the management and entrepreneurs to quickly change decision and action directions, when the context changes rapidly and with unique and often atypical manifestations;

  • promoting a new type of distributed leadership and a collaborative culture, able to facilitate organizational changes and transformations at an alert and efficient pace.

  • highlighting humanistic management, focused on people in its complexity and based on taking into account changes in perception, expectations, aspirations, motivations, feedback, behaviors and emotional intelligence, at the individual and community level;

  • intensifying the virtualization of management, aimed at using online applications, digital transformations, increasing use of new concepts, approaches and tools on artificial intelligence “internet of things (IOT) and connected devices”, “big data analysis”, “metrics and clouds”, “custom manufacturing and 3D printing” (Nicolescu 2020b).

The surprising homogeneity in the survey results is obviously explained by the particular context that organizations live in the midst of the pandemic, a context that requires similar reactions: communication methods, leadership in the sense of strengthening the team, real-time collective reactions, reactive and opportunistic strategies, solidarity, agility and organizational resilience. In crisis situations, the differences in the approach of leaders depending on age, gender, field of activity are blurred.

For small companies, the perspective is often dominated and therefore restricted by the personal perspective of the entrepreneur. The company reproduces the personal imprint of the entrepreneur, in many respects: the main purpose of the company (profit, growth, stability, job satisfaction); orientation (technical, commercial, social); working conditions, internal and external communication style, etc. (Nooteboom 1993).

Organizational culture is shaped not only by the values and norms of the entrepreneur, but also by the way these values and norms are communicated to the employees (Grigore 2019).

The know-how in SMEs flows very fast due especially to the informal networks and high interactions between the entrepreneur-leader and his subordinates. We could see this informality in the results of our research regarding the most used platforms: Facebook, 82% and WhatsApp, 69%.

Usually the climate within SMEs is very much associated with that of a family, with a lot of informality, with a parental figure, with clear support for professional and personal development.

The use of SMEs’ capabilities is possible only to the extent that the entrepreneurs are able to develop leadership competencies. That means to be able to attract high quality human resources, to unleash their potential, to build up and implement together a realistic vision.

The entrepreneur’s success is highly dependent to the extent that his/her decisions and actions come to meet his/her employees’ aspirations and needs. Nothing is more important than the solidarity of human resources to their leaders’ values and vision. (Nastase and Grigore 2014).

Collaborative business culture is another major pillar of the collaboration. The lack of a business culture that encourages collaboration both within organizations and developing collaborative relationships in the outside will be a real barrier to conducting collaborative strategies.

Another important factor for a strong organizational culture is represented by the leaders’ capacity to build up and work in teams. It is often said that entrepreneurship is mainly characterized by individualism. However, entrepreneurs need to develop professional networks inside and outside the company. Moreover, It is important to build up a strong, supportive culture within a SME, especially in times of crisis: the way that the entrepreneur is treating the people around him, starting with his/her employees, customers, suppliers, etc. is about to undergo profound changes.

In this regard, leaders-entrepreneurs try to become role models for their employees; show empathy and support and a significant involvement in the problems they face; they inspire not so much through the vision they have about the future of the company, but through their personal example. Productivity and resilience seem to be two of the manifestations that characterize leaders in times of crisis.

Direct, open and fast communication with employees tends to become the number 1 feature on the list of leadership skills. From this perspective, browsing social media platforms has become a “must”: entrepreneurial leaders use Facebook and WhatsApp groups to transmit information and be in constant contact with employees. Most Romanian leaders-entrepreneurs have accounts on at least 3 social media platforms, and this finding is in line with specialized studies that show that leaders who know how to use social media are more appreciated by their employees compared to those who cannot or do not want to use them. Moreover, social media is also a very good tool to strengthen sociability between team members: people rarely gather for coffee face-to-face, and more on WhatsApp for the exchange of information and ideas, but also for socializing (Mocanu 2020). If, prior to the crisis, the main tool used by leaders was email, today it has given way to social media platforms.

The organizational culture of Romanian companies in the period before the pandemic was a mercenary one, characterized by competitive individualism and personal achievements, a culture that did not exclude cooperative activities in situations where benefits can be obtained for both individuals and the organization (Nastase and Grigore 2014). Pragmatism in labor relations is what dominated, and still dominates in many companies. However, the pandemic brought with it a more pronounced orientation towards sociability: the need to strengthen relations between team members is greater because the risks are high, and sincere friendship and collegiality help employees face challenges more easily. Solidarity, in this context, tends to acquire a double meaning: solidarity, in the sense of focusing on tasks and performance, but also solidarity – as mutual support in times of crisis.

Specialized literature (Goffee and Jones 1996) has shown that communal organizational cultures are unstable by definition, the balance between solidarity and sociability constantly oscillating between the 4 types of known cultures, depending on the context. In the Romanian communal cultures, according to our study and, in accordance with Blake and Mouton’s Grid, team leadership prevails. The question we can ask ourselves is this: is this leadership style, together with the communal cultures present in SMEs, only a temporary effect of the pandemic or is it rather a long-term shift?

5 Conclusions

We are living in times of great transformations with many and numerous challenges ahead for states, companies and leaders. In this dynamic environment, the leaders’ role is becoming vital for the functionality and performance of all systems, at macro or micro levels.

Intensifying VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) implies both creative, pragmatic and intense efforts of management experts and the need to capitalize on “forced progress” in digitization, online work, communication and blended teams, adaptive leadership – made in the present crisis (Nicolescu 2020a).

Limits of the study and future research directions:

  1. 1)

    The small number of respondents who wanted to participate in our research prevents us from generalizing our observations to all Romanian companies and leaders;

  2. 2)

    The homogeneity of participants – entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises.

In this regard, we believe that future research in the field should include a significant number of large Romanian companies, private and state, as well as the non-governmental sector.

Changes in the social architecture of Romanian companies are already visible in the Romanian business environment. The teams of many companies are now operating online, and online businesses have exploded. Leaders need to redefine the concept of “performance” in order to put it back in an acceptable balance, according to Blake and Mouton, with human resource (human-oriented) tasks. We believe this should be one of the important directions of research in the coming years.