Developing Social Leadership: Cultural and Technological Influences

Abstract

The development of social leadership is triggered by the adoption of social media for internal purposes by organizations. It involves dynamics of collaborative and mutual influence between leaders and followers, and among followers themselves, mediated by social media. The aim of this paper is to analyze individual attitudes to social leadership as a function of cultural and technological factors. Using data collected from a sample (N = 178) of employees, we developed and adapted multiple item scales from a wide range of sources in the literature to assess organizational culture, information technology and social media adoption, in addition to other individual and organizational variables. Regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between these variables. What emerged was a three-dimensional model of social leadership as a positive attitude towards: shared responsibility, social media usage and direction. In particular, organizational culture strongly influenced two of these three dimensions, while the use of social media for personal purposes predicted attitudes to the use of social media in organizations.

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1 Introduction

The use of social media to manage relationships with employees—that is to say, with a focus on internal processes (rather than on external clients)—is an experimental area of growing interest to both academics and practitioners. We ourselves have examined the internal social media initiatives of a number of organizations in a recent exploratory study [1], finding that several factors foster the adoption of social media to manage relationships with staff: primarily, internationalization, knowledge-intensive activities, organizational strategies focused on innovation, the need to manage the Y-generation workforce, cross-cultural issues and ongoing cultural change. Our exploratory research also showed that the use of social media to manage relationships with employees plays a key role in creating competitive advantage. At the same time however, it poses both cultural and managerial challenges. First, social media emphasize bottom-up dynamics such as participation, discussion, openness and contribution. Second, they increase the weight of the information dimension within the organization, primarily in terms of enhanced information sharing. From the perspective of Adaptive Structuration Theory [2], it is to be noted that followers can now access the information that leaders had exclusive access to in the past. Thus, leaders are engaged in continuous efforts to legitimize their position, while continuing to communicate the organizational vision and carry out supervision, in a challenging balance between traditional and new leadership styles [3]. This paper has three objectives: first, to propose and explain the new construct of social leadership. Second, to analyze individual attitudes to social leadership in relation to both cultural and technological drivers. Third, to suggest guidelines for managing the development of social leadership. Therefore, the core research questions addressed are: is there a relationship between perceived organizational characteristics—such as the cultural and technological dimensions—and attitudes to social leadership? How exactly are perceived organizational culture, deployment of IT and social media usage related to attitudes to social leadership? We drew on two perspectives—the Competing Values Framework [4, 5] of organizational culture and the model of IT implementation proposed by Albadvi et al. [6]—in order to generate hypotheses about individual attitudes to social leadership. We then tested these hypotheses with a sample of employees.

2 Theoretical Framework

2.1 Defining the Social Leadership Construct

The last few decades have seen an intensification of interest in the impact on leadership of the spread of flat organizational forms, increasing use of teamwork to attain organizational goals and the growing role of IT as a mediator of human interaction. As result, researchers have brought new approaches and concepts to bear on the study of leadership styles in contemporary organizations. The emerging e-leadership concept refers to a social influence process mediated by AIT that leads to changes in attitudes, feelings, thinking, behavior, and/or performance on the part of individuals, groups and/or organizations [7, p. 617]. Within such a perspective, IT is seen as creating a new context for the exercise of leadership. Not only do followers have increased access to information in general, but potentially they can access information that in the past was exclusively available to leaders. Virtual teams with responsibility for organizational tasks may be formed among people located in different countries, with diverse cultures and habits: leaders are required to act within networks that cross over traditional boundaries. The influence of leaders may be affected by the opportunity for followers to know and contribute more—and at earlier points—in the decision-making process [3]. The assumption of the e-leadership approach is that IT does not change the fundamental principles of leadership but impacts on the dynamics between leaders and followers as well as the leader’s role. Connections between people are shaped by technology [8, 9] and this in turn influences the virtual team’s final performance [10]. Therefore, leaders must engage in sense-making activity by configuring the optimal mix of tools required by the task and the context and by designing the collaboration environment in such a way as to assure optimum communication and collaboration dynamics between leader and followers as well as amongst followers.

The traditional approach to leadership emphasizes the influence of the formal leader on the work outcomes of individual employees and teams [11, 12]. However, given the growing complexity of organizations today, it is becoming increasingly difficult for any one individual to possess all the skills and abilities required to competently lead an organization [13]. The traditional perspective cannot explain the leadership dynamics that arise in organizations characterized by high levels of interdependence, complexity, creativity and team-work. Therefore, concepts such as shared leadership, collective leadership and distributed leadership have recently begun to feature in the literature as part of the attempt to capture the collective dimension of behavior as along with the legitimacy of authority and leadership per se. The shared leadership concept takes into account the impact on team members and team performance not only of the formal team leader, but also of team members/followers. The focus is on the team: shared leadership is defined as “a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both” [14, p. 1]. The same authors also state that “this influence process often involves peer, or lateral, influence and at other times involves upward or downward hierarchical influence”. This point of view, also in keeping with the emergentist perspective that frames leadership as an outcome of group dynamics [15], does not envisage the existence of a single formal leader, but sees the leadership function as being shared among team members [16]. Consequently, leadership is not only an individual trait, but is also an organizational trait [17]. In short, leadership “entails a simultaneous, ongoing, mutual influence process within a team that is characterized by the ‘serial emergence’ of official as well as unofficial leaders” [18]. Therefore, team members emerge as leaders when they have the skills/knowledge/expertise that the team needs. However, from the organizational point of view the challenge is to find the best way to combine top-down, bottom-up and shared dimensions of leadership in order to provide optimum connections between individuals. The social leadership construct that we propose here is consistent with both the e-leadership concept—in terms of the enabling role played by advanced IT in providing a collaborative setting—and the shared leadership concept—in terms of the definition of leadership as an organizational trait and as an ongoing, mutual influence process within a team. The social dimension of social leadership comes from the use of social media which stimulates social interaction, as well as from the focus on horizontal relationships between peers. Thus, we define social leadership as a social process of mutual influence among the members of a group/organization who, by interacting through social media, share the responsibility of leadership in order to achieve group/organizational goals. Within this perspective, formal and informal leaders coexist as a result of the self-organization process enabled by the mutual feed-back system provided by social media. The aim of social leadership is to lead one another towards the attainment of both individual and group goals: that is to say, to enhance the sharing of tacit knowledge within an organization, increase levels of innovation and creativity, define new organizational policies and generate patents.

2.2 Cultural and Technological Dimensions of Social Leadership

Technology is influenced by the context in which it is used, but in turn has the power to modify the context [2]. Therefore, organization and technology recursively influence each other. In order to explore this interplay, specifically in relation to attitudes towards social leadership we need to understand: (a) to what extent organizational traits, primarily organizational culture, influence the development of social leadership; (b) and to what extent levels of IT and social media usage influence the development of social leadership.

Issues Affecting Organizational Culture

Organizational culture has been defined as a “glue that holds organizations together” [19]. In recent years, cultural issues have provided a growing focus of interest for both scholars and practitioners [20, 21], although organizational culture remains a difficult construct to pin down and consequently to study [20] especially in relation to management practices [22]. Nonetheless, to guide our own examination of how organizational culture influences the development of social leadership, we chose to refer to the Competing Values Framework [4, 5]. This model is one of the most cited in studies analyzing organizational culture in relation to information systems [23] and has also been applied to the analysis of leadership issues [5]. The Competing Values Framework may be used to “explore the deep structures of organizational culture, the basic assumptions that are made about such things as the means to compliance, motives, leadership, decision making, effectiveness, values and organizational forms” [4, p. 298]. It is based on two main dimensions. The first encompasses the competing demands of change (focus on flexibility/spontaneity) and stability (focus on order/control). The second spans the conflicting demands of internal organization (focus on integration and internal processes) and external environment (focus on competition and adaptation). Four types of cultural orientation arise from the possible combinations of these two dimensions. Group culture combines change/flexibility/spontaneity with an emphasis on internal organization/integration. It values the development of human resources, with a focus on the team as well as on maintenance of the sociotechnical system. Trust, commitment, discussion, participation, openness and membership are core values. Effectiveness criteria focus on the development of human potential in a long-term perspective. Leaders tend to be participative and supportive, facilitating interaction through teamwork. Therefore, we posit that a perceived group culture will be positively associated with positive attitudes to social leadership (H1).

Hierarchical culture combines stability/control/order with an emphasis on internal organization/integration. It values internal efficiency, coordination, measurement, evaluation, continuity, consolidation and equilibrium. Execution of regulations tends to be the key focus of organizations with this cultural orientation: motivating factors are rules, order and security. Leaders tend to be conservative and technically-oriented. Therefore, we posit that a perceived hierarchical culture will be positively associated with positive attitudes to social leadership (H2).

Developmental culture combines change/flexibility/spontaneity with external environment/competition/adaptation. It emphasizes growth, innovation, adaptation, acquisition of resources and external support. Leaders tend to be entrepreneurial, capable of developing a vision for the future and willing to take risks, with an emphasis on improving visibility, legitimacy and external support. Therefore, we posit that a perceived organizational developmental culture will be positively associated with positive attitudes to social leadership (H3).

Rational culture combines stability/control/order with an emphasis on the external environment/competition/adaptation. It values productivity, performance, achievement and clear goal-setting. The focus is on competition, goal accomplishment and decisiveness. Leaders tend to be directive, goal-oriented, instrumental and functional, providing structure and encouraging productivity. Therefore, we posit that a perceived rational culture will be negatively associated with positive attitudes to social leadership (H4) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Conceptual research framework

Levels of IT and Social Media Usage

At the organizational level, according to DeSanctis and Poole [2], technology and the social process of technology use are interrelated. In other words, technology creates organizational structures that guide human behavior, but at the same time these organizational structures contribute to transforming technology within a recursive relationship. Thus, in this regard we expect that a high perceived level of organizational IT and social media usage will be positively associated with positive attitudes to social leadership (H5).

At the individual level instead, to what extent does the use of social media for personal purposes influence employees’ attitudes towards social leadership? As ease of use, usefulness and compatibility increase, attitudes towards the use of technology are likely to become more positive [24]. In addition, Tornatzky and Klein [25] found that an innovation is more likely to be adopted when compatible with the job responsibility and value system of an individual. We may expect that a person already using social media for personal purposes to be more aware of the advantages that the introduction of organizational social media can offer, as well as more skilled in using them. Therefore, we posit that a high level of personal usage of social media will be positively associated with a positive attitude to social leadership (H6).

3 Method

3.1 Data Collection and Sampling

A survey methodology was used to test the hypotheses outlined above. A web-based questionnaire was constructed and distributed via a professional mailing list in the month of June 2013. The questionnaire contained items assessing social leadership, organizational culture, and IT and social media usage variables, as well as other information about the respondent and the organization employing them (e.g., age, gender, role, industry, etc.). In total, 178 fully completed surveys were returned. Fifty-one percent of respondents were male. Participants’ mean age was 42 years (SD = 10.4; min = 24; max = 67) and they had an average of 18 years’ work experience (SD = 10.7; min = 1, max = 45). Eighty-eight percent of respondents were university graduates and over 40 % held managerial responsibilities and were employed in the HR function. Over 50 % of respondents worked for large organizations (with over 250 employees). The majority were employed by Italian companies (78 %) in the services sector (services: 36 %, advanced services: 36 %).

3.2 Measures and Analysis

Dependent Variable

In order to develop a questionnaire to measure individual attitudes to social leadership we drew on the qualitative analysis conducted in an earlier study of our own [1]. By surveying the existing literature and using focus group and interview methodologies, we developed a set of 15 items using a seven point Likert-scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree). The items focused on how the respondent defined and viewed leadership, particularly with regard to the use of social media within the leadership process, relational emphasis, mutual influence and the sharing of common goals. Sample items from the scale include “Leadership may be broadly shared among a set of individuals rather than centralized in the hands of a single individual” or “Social media can increase social interaction within an organization”. A complete list of the items used, together with their loading on the relevant social leadership factor, may be found in Table 1. A pilot study was then conducted.

Table 1 Principal component loading matrix (varimax rotation) for social leadership items

Independent Variables

Organizational culture was measured using the Competing Values Model as conceptualized in a validated scale published in Quinn and Spreitzer [26]. The instrument measures four ideal types—group culture, developmental culture, hierarchical culture and rational culture—by asking respondents the extent to which the listed organizational attributes describe the organization they work for. Each ideal type is measured by four items to be rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (to a very great extent).

In order to measure IT usage, we followed Albadvi et al.’s [6] classification. These authors proposed four criteria for the assessment of organizational IT implementation, namely IT in communication, IT in decision-making support, IT in production and operation, and IT in administration. Therefore, we asked respondents to rate the extent to which their companies applied technology within each of these areas on a seven-point Likert-scale (1 was “not at all” and 7 was “to a very great extent”). In order to measure social media usage we included three further items using a five point Likert-scale to examine the extent of company usage of social media both externally and internally (1 “never considered”—5 “fully implemented”) as well as the extent to which respondents made personal use of social media (1 “not at all”—5 “several times a day”).

Control Variables

We also asked our respondents to answer some basic questions about their personal and professional characteristics. The control variables were: gender (dummy variable); age of respondent; possession of a university degree (dummy variable); type of university degree (four dummy variables); role (three dummy variables); organizational function worked for (four dummy variables).

Analysis

In order to reduce the data on attitudes towards social leadership to a set of more meaningful variables, we carried out exploratory factor analysis. We expected that the components emerging from this analysis would reflect the construct of social leadership; therefore the three emerging components—namely, shared responsibility, social media usage and direction—became the dependent variables in the following step of the analysis. We entered the independent variables—the four cultures, levels of IT and social media usage and the control variables—into three stepwise regressions to determine the impact of the cultural and technological dimensions on the three components of social leadership, thereby testing the hypotheses described above.

3.3 Results

Exploratory Factor Analysis

A principal component analysis with Varimax rotation was conducted using SPSS, to identify emergent factor solutions for social leadership items. Factorability of the correlation matrix, as assessed via the Keyser–Meyer–Olkin test (KMO = 0.87) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ² = 1173.796, df = 105, p < 0.000), was supported. Factors were retained on the basis of three criteria: first, we looked for factors with eigenvalues of over 1.0 [27]; second, we adopted Cattell’s [28] scree test to graphically determine the number of components to retain; third, we retained only factors with two or more items loading at a significant level (0.60) [29]. The analysis yielded a three-factor solution consistent with the theoretical construct discussed above. Specifically, the first principal component included items related to a positive attitude towards shared responsibility; the second included items related to a positive attitude towards using social media within organizations and the third included items related to a positive attitude towards direction (Table 1). Values of Cronbach’s α were 0.86 for the first component (shared responsibility), 0.87 for the second component (organizational use of social media) and 0.69 for the third component (direction), indicating an acceptable level of reliability.

Regression Analysis

Before using regression analysis to test our hypothesis, we calculated scores for perceptions of organizational culture following the procedure developed by [26]. Average scores on the four items associated with each ideal type was used as a measure of each cultural variable. The only exception was the composite variable for rational culture, for which dropping one of the questionnaire items increased the Cronbach’s α reliability measure from 0.54 to 0.69. In any case, values of Cronbach’s α were 0.87 for group culture, 0.88 for developmental culture and 0.76 for hierarchical culture, indicating an acceptable level of reliability. The four cultures, as well as IT and social media usage and the control variables, were entered into three stepwise regression models in order to determine the impact of cultural and technological dimensions on attitudes to social leadership. The aim was to identify the most parsimonious set of predictors that was most effective in predicting the three dependent variables in our study: attitude to shared responsibility; attitude to using social media within organizations and attitude to direction. As reported in Table 2, only two of the predictors initially proposed, group culture and developmental culture, were identified as having a significant influence on attitude to shared responsibility. Specifically, perceived group culture appeared to have a positive relationship with and developmental culture a negative relationship with positive attitude to shared responsibility. The first predictor, group culture, accounted for about 3% of variance and developmental culture for an additional 3 %.

Table 2 Stepwise regression results for attitude to shared responsibility

With regard to the second dependent variable, only personal use of social media seemed to be a predictor of individual attitudes to using social media within the organization, accounting for about 6 % of variance (Table 3).

Table 3 Stepwise regression results for attitude to organizational use of social media

Table 4 presents the stepwise regression results for the third dependent variable. In this case, hierarchical culture was the first predictor entered in the model, accounting for about 9 % of variance in attitude to direction. The second predictor showing a positive relationship with the dependent variable was respondent’s age, accounting for an additional 5 % of variance.

Table 4 Stepwise regression results for attitude to direction

4 Discussion

This study is the first attempt to analyze the emerging construct of social leadership as a function of both cultural and technological influences. Our first set of hypotheses related organizational culture to attitudes to social leadership. Following the Competing Values Framework [4, 5], we hypothesized that group culture, hierarchical culture and developmental culture would be positively associated with positive attitudes to social leadership. On the contrary, we expected rational culture to have a significant negative influence on attitudes to social leadership. Our second set of hypotheses posited that higher perceived levels of organizational IT and social media usage, as well as personal use of social media, would be associated with more positive attitudes to social leadership. The outcomes of our analysis provide interesting insights into the topic, with many implications for managerial practice. First, the factorial analysis suggested a three-dimensional model of social leadership as a positive attitude towards: shared responsibility, social media usage and direction. This model featured the simultaneous presence of top-down (direction) and bottom-up (shared responsibility) leadership styles. The former is aimed at controlling and supervising processes with a view to attaining organizational goals, and coexists with the emergence of collaborative processes emanating from the bottom up, and enabled by social media. Three stepwise regressions provided our second set of findings. The first regression, which had shared responsibility as dependent variable, revealed a positive relationship with group culture and a negative relationship with developmental culture. As result, hypothesis H1 was supported and H3 was not supported. Although we found no support for our organizational IT and social media usage hypothesis (H5), the second regression, which had attitude towards using social media within one’s organization as the dependent variable, revealed a positive relationship with personal usage of social media. Therefore, hypothesis H6 was supported. The third regression, which had direction as the dependent variable, revealed a positive relationship with hierarchical culture. Therefore, hypothesis H2 was supported. In contrast, we did not find support for the hypothesized relationship between rational culture and attitudes to social leadership (H4). However, we found a positive relationship between respondent’s age and the direction component of social leadership. Indeed, according to Inglehart [30], older workers are characterized by a traditional set of work values including respect for authority and an emphasis on control. Although it was not possible to test the relationship between a perceived high level of organizational IT and social media usage and attitudes to social leadership, personal use of social media was found to play a role in determining attitudes to social leadership. Indeed, personal use of social media is a critical intervening variable in attitudes to using social media at work. Given that the technology acceptance model (TAM) suggests that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use influence an individual’s attitude towards the use of a given technology [31], in this case the pervasiveness of social media for personal purposes makes people more inclined to use them at work (Table 5).

Table 5 Summary of hypothesis test

5 Conclusions

Overall, the results of this study suggest that corporate culture and attitudes towards social leadership are strongly connected. In particular, an internal focus within perceived organizational culture appears to play a prominent role in developing social leadership, given that both group culture and hierarchical culture have a primary focus on internal organization underpinned by the attempt to maintain the socio-technical system by balancing flexibility and control. Moreover, these two ideal cultural types also share a long-term orientation, which is considered to be a key predictor of innovativeness [32]. These results are also in line with the work of Jarvenpaa and Staples [33], suggesting that people are more prone to share knowledge if they perceive that their organizations are high in solidarity—that is to say, there is a tendency to pursue shared objectives and relationships are based on common tasks and mutual interests—and in the need for achievement. Surprisingly, developmental culture is negatively related to social leadership. Basing our hypothesis on the emphasis on flexibility and change, we had expected that those perceiving a strongly developmental culture would be more positive towards social leadership. On the contrary, the primary focus of developmental culture appears to be on attaining visibility and legitimacy in the relationship with external, rather than with internal, stakeholders. Developing social leadership requires individual effort in terms of sharing knowledge, taking responsibility and cooperating through social media. This is probably more likely to occur if people know they will obtain visibility and legitimacy internally. Indeed, according to social exchange theory [34], people’s behaviors are based on a self-interested analysis of costs and benefits. Therefore, an organizational culture that emphasizes evaluation and efficiency, and in which people can pursue long-term goals, seems more likely to encourage people to invest in social leadership. In conclusion, in order to foster the development of social leadership within organizations, management should encourage an organizational culture aimed at developing membership and cohesiveness while maintaining a clear vision of the goals to be reached. In order to facilitate the change management process a key factor will be the commitment of the top management team. Furthermore, accurate planning of a development process encompassing assessment and rewarding systems is required. This study shows that organizational culture plays an important role in developing social leadership. However, the results only account for a very low percentage of observed variance. For this reason, additional factors to those investigated here will need to be explored in future research. Given the increasing penetration of social media within organizations, we expect social leadership to receive growing attention. It will became a major concern as the dissemination process enters in a more mature stage.

Appendix (Tables 6, 7, and 8)

Table 6 Items wording from competing values culture instrument

Table 7 Items wording for the extent of IT usage

Table 8 Items wording for the extent of social media usage