The Pursuit of Empowerment through Social Media: Structural Social Capital Dynamics in CSR-Blogging

Christian Fieseler () and Matthes Fleck ()

Journal of Business Ethics, 2013, vol. 118, issue 4, 759-775

Abstract: With the emergence of participative social media, the ways in which stakeholders may interact with companies are changing. Social media and Web 2.0 technologies change gatekeeping mechanisms and the distribution of information. In consequence, organizations must realize that they are structurally embedded in online networks of interconnected and equitable actors. In this paper, we analyze how this change in today’s information and communication technologies may affect Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) action. We utilize social network analysis to investigate the CSR blogs of three IT firms: Google, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel. The analysis reveals that their Internet-enabled social networks exhibit patterns of power law distribution and an uneven distribution of structural social capital among the actors involved, especially on the corporate side, which fails to fully engage with the network. We conclude by indicating the research implications of shifting social capital dynamics and by deriving implications for management and practice. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Online communication; Social media; Social network analysis; Structural social capital; Web 2.0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-013-1959-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:118:y:2013:i:4:p:759-775

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1959-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().