Social Media Analysis in Performance Measurement: Moving Toward a New Approach

Transcription

1 Available at The 3rd International Conference on Technology and Operations Management Sustaining Competitiveness through Green Technology Management Bandung Indonesia, July 4-6, 2012 Social Media Analysis in Performance Measurement: Moving Toward a New Approach Corinthias P. Morgana Sianipar 1,*, Rucita Cahyawati Putri 1, Dermawan Wibisono 1 1 School of Business and Management (SBM) Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Jl. Ganesha 10 (Gedung SBM-ITB), Bandung 40132, Indonesia Abstract. Many initiatives have been developed in management, i.e. employee recruitment phase, since the marketing's adoption on social media analysis. However, rarely has social media analysis been included in the context of performance measurement. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a conceptual framework of social media analysis in performance measurement. Limited literatures related to both social media and performance measurement will be surveyed and combined to develop the framework. This paper concludes that social media analysis can be treated as the base of new performance measurement approach in terms of measuring activity of the employee by performance management team and collecting 360 o feedbacks from the relations of measured employee. By looking at limited previous efforts, this paper bring new light beyond common understanding by using proposed framework of social media analysis as a new approach in performance measurement. Keywords: performance measurement, social media, employee behaviour, 360 o feedbacks 1. Introduction Since Web 2.0 transform the internet from a static content container for the web user into an active conversation, sharing, and collaborative content creating medium, it become new foundation of modern communication. The terms social network media has tended to be used interchangeably with the term Web 2.0 [1]. The ubiquitousity of social media make it as a medium of communication which can be implemented widely in many different place and time, so it has been frequently used in many fields. Business, of course, have repeatedly sought to use social media for various purposes. Magnier-Watanabe, et al. [2] noted that business tend to treat social media as a generation of technologies supporting user-driven media that enable active participation, for business activities. Since social media has been adopted by marketing, it spreaded into many business fields. Related to firm s employees, social media become direct and two-way communication medium both among employees and between employees and firm [3]. One emerging example of the use of social media is for employers and recruiters who utilize social media to screen the candidates as part of the hiring process [4]. * Corresponding author. Tel.: ; address: morgana.sianipar@sbm-itb.ac.id ; morgana.sianipar@gmail.com

2 716 C.P.M. Sianipar, R.C. Putri, and D. Wibisono Social Media Analysis in... In other hand, after the employees had been hired, social media is commonly used as the communication medium. If hiring process treat social media as a tool for screening, it means social media can also be used to monitor employees activities. While the activities are monitored, management should know the picture of interactions between each employee and the others, and should be considered as an important information source in measuring the behavior of each employee. It can be a chance for management to do performance measurement. Unfortunately, there is no mature approach in treating analysis through social media as a source of information to measure the performance of an employee. If we search among the performance measurement theory, the nearest definition about using interaction as a source of information to do a performance measurement is using feedbacks. The method is called 360 o feedbacks. Usually performance management use that as a popular management tool for providing feedbacks to leaders and managers [5]. Based on chance above, it should be developed a new approach to use social media as a medium to collect feedbacks from co-workers. It should provide inputs for an employee to make changes in his/her performance and behavior based on the results of the feedbacks. This paper aims to describe the potential use and integration of social media in the performance measurement in terms of collecting 360 o feedbacks from co-workers to provide input for the measured employee about his/her performance. This study will answer the following research questions: RQ1 How social media can be the feedbacks source for employee? RQ2 What is the conceptual framework to integrate social media in performance measurement? 2. Literature Review o Feedbacks Research has been reflected that many organizations employ some type of feedback system and that it remains at the core of any organization s strategic performance improvement programs [6]. Performance feedback also has influences on career, as well as on personal and leadership development programs [7]. There are many type of performance feedback systems, one popular and effective model is 360 o feedback. That standardized instrument is used to collect behavioral observations from self, peers, subordinates and supervisors [8]. The primary goal in the 360-degree feedback process is to identify developmental needs of the individuals and increase someone s self-awareness. It was assumed that when supervisors received feedback from their coworkers, they would make changes to their performance and behavior based on the results of the feedback they received. Secondly, organizations felt that this type of feedback would increase communications amongst coworkers and also build trust [9]. 360 o feedback can become a powerful organizational intervention to increase awareness of the importance of aligning leader behaviors, work unit results, and customer expectations, as well as increasing employee participation in leadership development and work unit effectiveness [5]. In assessing and evaluating an individual, a complete circle is considered to be 360 o. There are many individuals that are important components to this feedback circle. First of all, the 360 o feedback process starts with the self-assessment, there are peers, supervisors, and subordinates that conduct the feedback. In some feedback systems, customers or other external sources are used to assist in the evaluative process [7]. In most 360 o performance feedback programs, there are four raters. It has been identified that some programs use the assessments of customers and suppliers when applicable but most traditional forms consist of only four. These raters are called self, peer, subordinate, and supervising raters [7,10,11]. Completing a self-assessment could assist individuals in honestly examining their performance, determining where their strengths and weaknesses are, or validating what they are doing [7]. Feedback from subordinates was directly related to behavior modifications that were made to facilitate these performance improvements [10] Social Media Several researchers show the same intention about technology investment. They [12,13,14] tend to believe that humans outside or inside organization will be significantly and seamlessly connected by investing in technology. Based on the basic nature of social media, business started to use social media in marketing [15]. The use of social media in marketing is ultimately adapted as business strategy in customer relationship management. Then it had been followed by several initiatives in many business fields, including community relationship management [16], recruitment campaign [4], project management [17], and supply chain management [18,19]. Kaplan and Haenlein [20] define social media as a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-

3 C.P.M. Sianipar, R.C. Putri, and D. Wibisono Social Media Analysis in generated content. Before them, Short, et al. [21] state from the perspective of social presence theory that media differ in the degree of social presence they allow to emerge between two communication partners. Moreover, social presence is influenced by the intimacy and immediacy of the medium, and can be expected to be lower for mediated than interpersonal and for asynchronous than synchronous communications [20]. Table 1. Functional Building Blocks of Social Media. Adapted from Kietzmann, et al. [22] Building Blocks Identity Conversations Social Media Functionality The extend to which users......reveal themselves...communicate with each other Implications of the Functionality Data privacy controls, and tools for users selfpromotion Conversation velocity, and the risks of starting and joining Sharing...exchange, distribute, & receive content Content management system and social graph Presence Relationships Reputation...know if others are avaliable...relate each other...know the social standing of others and content Creating and managing the reality, intimacy and immediacy of the context Managing the structural and flow properties in a network of relationships Monitoring the strength, passion, sentiment, and reach of users and brands Groups...are ordered or form communities Membership rules and protocols Social media is an ubiquitous technology which is built by seven functional building blocks. The blocks make social media analysis as the complete picture of the personal relationship. There are seven functional building blocks in form of honeycomb which further explains that these building blocks are neither mutually exclusive [22] Theoretical Framework The use of social media in several business area give a notion for performance management to capture the opportunity to include it into performance measurement system. The characteristics of interactions which are connected between colleagues to the measured employee should be understood based on seven functional building blocks of social media. The interactions should be seen from 360 o perspective to get the complete picture of an employee by using feedbacks. Each functional block has its own influence to the feedbacks cause, so this paper will focus on how to understand the social interactions between employees and how 360-degrees feedbacks can be collected through social media as the the input to do performance measurement. 3. Methodology Fig. 1: Theoretical Framework Since Web 2.0 transform the internet from a static content container for the web user into an active conversation, sharing, and collaborative content creating medium, it become new foundation of modern communication. The terms social network media has tended to be used interchangeably with the term Web 2.0 [1]. The ubiquitousity of social media make it as a medium of communication which can be implemented widely in many different place and time, so it has been frequently used in many fields. Business, of course, have repeatedly sought to use social media for various purposes. Magnier-Watanabe, et al. [2] noted that business tend to treat social media as a generation of technologies supporting user-driven media that enable active participation, for business activities. Since social media has been adopted by marketing, it spreaded into many business fields.

4 718 C.P.M. Sianipar, R.C. Putri, and D. Wibisono Social Media Analysis in Discussion 4.1. Social Media, Social Bridge, and Feedbacks Flow Interactions through social media have very unique characteristics. They are virtual but provide social interactions. Beside offline activities, employees tend to use social media as their second life [23]. As their needs to do many things through internet, social media provides direct follow up to show self-expression or just do several sharing activities. Employees virtual activities should be viewed as a social bridge among them. Employees started to use social media as an ubiquitous technology to connect each of them with the other employees or may be outsiders. Therefore, social media can be the feedbacks source for the measured employee. Fig. 2: Social Media, Social Bridge, and Feedbacks Flow Social interactions which are provided through social media are consist seven facets. The facets are caused by functional building blocks of social media. Social bridge between two employee is exist in two-ways. The continuous interactions between them develop the social bridge to be more complete in providing feedbacks. Although the social bridge is exist in two-ways, feedbacks should be captured as one-way flow. It is important to separate the reverse influence of feedbacks flow from measured employee to the co-workers. The separation need to be done to produce a clear measurement and avoid negotiation among employees Conceptual Framework In doing a performance measurement through 360 o feedbacks in social media, firm should understand the facets of interactions in the social bridge in social media itself. The identity facet explain how the measured employee is revealed by the co-workers. The facet provides measurement of an employee related to the selfinformations which are given to the co-workers. Conversation facet provides feedbacks based on the velocity of conversations between co-workers and measured employee. It should explain informations in terms of calculating communication level among them, how good they cooperate when they are joined in a team, etc. Next facet, sharing, should measure the sharing level of the measured employee to the co-workers, whether the employee s willingness to share his/her knowledge is high or low. Furthermore, presence facet will provide feedbacks related to the quality of measured employee in managing the real jobs, wheter he she is exist in the fields or just sit in the back of the table. In terms of managing network in the assigned jobs, relationship facet should provide measurement about how good the measured employee maintain his/her network to the coworkers in assigned jobs to reach the job successfulness. Reputation facet need to be measured to provide feedbacks about how the measured employee can master the situation and read the weaknesses and strengths of people around so he/she can put him/herself appropriately in the assigned jobs. The last facet, group, will provide information of how the measured employee tend to form group with several co-workers and seperate him/herself from the other employees. Each facet have its way to explain the performance of an employee, so the performance management should develop the appropriate method to measure them based on the needs of the performance measurement system. Because the interaction among measured employee and each co-worker is unique, the result of the feedbacks will have differences if the performance management collect feedbacks from different co-workers who have different connection path or distance. Path means that the connection between a peer/supervisor/subordinate to the measured employee should be understood from the perspective of structural way. The path can be seen from organizational structure or maybe the team structure in the assigned jobs. In other hand, distance means that

5 C.P.M. Sianipar, R.C. Putri, and D. Wibisono Social Media Analysis in the connection maybe near or far based on the activity of the measured employee with the co-workers. In structural path, maybe they are in same path, but in reality their activity is mostly separated in different time or place. Based on path and distance, the weight of feedbacks from different source can be separated to get the complete picture of the measured employee. 5. Conclusions Fig. 2: Proposed Conceptual Framework Social media really changes how people connect themself to the others. The unlimited ways of connection which come up together with the use of social media bring the fact that social media become important in employees activities as another shape of interactions. The result is the social bridge through social media. In a firm, the bridge should be captured to get an alternative source of information about each employee s performance. Furthermore, the measurement system should pay an attention to the characteristics of interaction through social media. Each block from seven functional building blocks of social media provide different facet of virtual activity. It means that the feedbacks collection method should measure from the perspective of those seven blocks to get the complete picture of the measured employee from his/her peers, superiors, as well as subordinates. Each facet has its different importance level based on the connection between the measured employee and each co-worker who give the feedbacks. Because of that, feedbacks from different persons who have different connection distance and path from the measured employee will have different influence factors to the result of measurement. 6. Research Limitations This paper is a part of an ongoing research designed to build a new approach in integrating social media analysis in whole company business processes. Performance measurement for employees as one of vital point in company internal processes should be included to know how social media can be integrated deeply into every part of company businesses. The measurement in specific case study is still underway therefore this paper would only able to discuss about the conceptual framework as the guidance in further research.

6 720 C.P.M. Sianipar, R.C. Putri, and D. Wibisono Social Media Analysis in Insights for Further Research This study provides many insights to the researchers. Further research should apply this new approach to specific case to see the implications. Another research may attemps to do comparison between traditional 360 o feedbacks and this new approach. In other hand, human resource researchers may develop a set of tools which can combine traditional approach and the new approach. Researchers who have been engaged in informatics field may be develop a new social media platform or integrate this approach to the existing social networking sites. The integration should provides a nearly-realtime measurement using expert-system-like. 8. Acknowledgements C.P.M.S. would like to thank Gatot Yudoko, Ph.D. for his willingness in many discussions to explore new possibilities regarding the use of social media in the area of Operations and Performance Management expertise group. C.P.M.S. and R.C.P. would like to acknowledge the comments and corrections from our great lecturer: Prof. Togar Simatupang on earlier ideas of social media in management science. References [1] Palmer, A., and Koenig-Lewis, N., (2009). An experiential, social network-based approach to direct marketing, Direct Marketing: An International Journal, 3(3), [2] Magnier-Watanabe, R., Yoshida, M., and Watanabe, T., (2010). Social network productivity in the use of SNS, Journal of Knowledge Management, 14(6), [3] Dadashzadeh, M., (2010). Social Media In Government: From egovernment To egovernance, Journal of Business & Economics Research, 8(11), Nov 2010, [4] Vicknair, J., Elkersh, D., Yancey, K., Budden, M.C., (2010). The Use Of Social Networking Websites As A Recruiting Tool For Employers, American Journal of Business Education, 3(11), Nov 2010, [5] London, M., and Beatty, R., (2003). 360-degree feedback as a competitive advantage, Human Resource Management, 32(2&3), summer/fall 2003, [6] DeNisi, A. and Kluger, A., (2000). Feedback effectiveness: Can 360-degree appraisals be improved? Academy of Management Executive, 14(1), [7] McCarthy, A.M. and Garavan, T.N., (2001). 360 feedback process: Performance, improvement and employee career development, Journal of European Industrial Training, 25(1), [8] Hoffman, R., (1995). Ten reasons why you should be using 360-degree feedback, HR Magazine, 40 (4), [9] Waldman, D., Atwater, L. and Antonioni, D., (1998). Has 360-degrees feedback gone amok? Academy of Management Executive, 12(2), [10] Atwater, L. Roush, P., and Fischtal, A., (1995). The influence on upward feedback on self and follower ratings of leadership, Personnel Psychology, 48, [11] Edwards, M.R. and Ewen, A.J., (1996). 360 Feedback: The powerful new model for employee assessment & performance improvement, New York: American Management Association. [12] Frohlich, M.T., (2002). E-integration in the supply chain: barriers and performance, Decision Sciences, 33( 4), [13] Fiala, P., (2005). Information sharing in supply chains, Omega: The International Journal of Management Science, 33(5), [14] Robinson, E.P., Sahin, F. and Gao, L.L., (2005). The impact of e-replenishment strategy on make-to-order supply chain performance, Decision Sciences, 36(1), [15] Hoffman, D.L., and Fodor, M., (2010). Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing? MITSloan Management Review, 52(1), Fall [16] Ang, L., (2011). Community relationship management and social media, Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 18, [17] Remidez, H., and Jones, N.B., (2012). Developing a Model for Social Media in Project Management Communications, International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(3), February [18] O Leary, Daniel E., (2011). The Use of Social Media in the Supply Chain: Survey and Extensions, retrieved from Social Science Research Network (SSRN): or on 24 January [19] Sianipar, C.P.M., (2012). The Integration of Social Media into Supply-Chain Management, Proceedings of 7th International Congress on Logistics and Supply-Chain Management System, Seoul - South Korea, 2012, #257.

7 C.P.M. Sianipar, R.C. Putri, and D. Wibisono Social Media Analysis in [20] Kaplan, A.M., and Haenlein, M., (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, Business Horizons, 53(1), 2010, [21] Short, J.A., Williams, E., and Christie, B., (1976). The social psychology or telecommunications, London: Wiley, [22] Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P., and Silvestre, B.S., (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, Business Horizons, 54(3), 2011, [23] Sianipar, C.P.M., and Yudoko, G. (2012). Understanding Issue Dissemination and Arrival Patterns on Supply-Chain using Network Analysis and Social Media, Journal of Asia Pacific Business Innovation and Technology Management, 2(3), Cite this paper Sianipar, C.P.M., Putri, R.C., and Wibisono, D. (2012). Social Media Analysis in Performance Measurement: Moving Toward a New Approach, Proceedings of The 3 rd International Conference on Technology and Operations Management: Sustaining Competitiveness through Green Technology Management, Bandung Indonesia (July 4-6), pp ISBN: