IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bushor/v63y2020i6p749-761.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social networks and social media: Understanding and managing influence vulnerability in a connected society

Author

Listed:
  • Bruning, Patrick F.
  • Alge, Bradley J.
  • Lin, Hsin-Chen

Abstract

Influence vulnerability has recently become a concern across society and in business. Such vulnerabilities increase as social networks are leveraged by different entities, oftentimes through social media, to affect how we think and behave. While many instances of social influence are positive and beneficial, others can be quite negative and lead to harmful outcomes for organizations and individuals such as reputational damage and an inability to control desirable thoughts, narratives, and behaviors. In general, they can decrease people’s freedom of thought and behavior. This article draws on the concepts of social embeddedness and network commitment to outline people’s influence vulnerabilities. It then proposes three guidelines to help reduce influence vulnerabilities based on the concepts of trustworthiness, network commitment, and self-management.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruning, Patrick F. & Alge, Bradley J. & Lin, Hsin-Chen, 2020. "Social networks and social media: Understanding and managing influence vulnerability in a connected society," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 63(6), pages 749-761.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:63:y:2020:i:6:p:749-761
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2020.07.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681320300999
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bushor.2020.07.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Berthon, Pierre R. & Pitt, Leyland F. & Plangger, Kirk & Shapiro, Daniel, 2012. "Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 261-271.
    2. Melancon, Joanna Phillips & Dalakas, Vassilis, 2018. "Consumer social voice in the age of social media: Segmentation profiles and relationship marketing strategies," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 157-167.
    3. Bizzi, Lorenzo, 2018. "The hidden problem of Facebook and social media at work: What if employees start searching for other jobs?," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 23-33.
    4. Tomczak, David L. & Lanzo, Lauren A. & Aguinis, Herman, 2018. "Evidence-based recommendations for employee performance monitoring," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 251-259.
    5. Zagenczyk, Thomas J. & Scott, Kristin D. & Gibney, Ray & Murrell, Audrey J. & Thatcher, Jason Bennett, 2010. "Social influence and perceived organizational support: A social networks analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 127-138, March.
    6. Kaplan, Andreas M. & Haenlein, Michael, 2010. "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 59-68, January.
    7. Lin, Hsin-Chen & Bruning, Patrick F. & Swarna, Hepsi, 2018. "Using online opinion leaders to promote the hedonic and utilitarian value of products and services," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 431-442.
    8. Kristine de Valck & Roberts V. Kozinets & Andrea C. Wojnicki & Sarah J.S. Wilner, 2010. "Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities," Post-Print hal-00458424, HAL.
    9. Kim, Sungdoo, 2018. "Managing millennials’ personal use of technology at work," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 261-270.
    10. Bruning, Patrick F. & Campion, Michael A., 2019. "Exploring job crafting: Diagnosing and responding to the ways employees adjust their jobs," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 625-635.
    11. Michael Workman, 2008. "Wisecrackers: A theory‐grounded investigation of phishing and pretext social engineering threats to information security," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(4), pages 662-674, February.
    12. Posthuma, Richard A. & Flores, Gabriela L. & Barlow, Matthew A. & Dworkin, James B., 2018. "Social signaling and interorganizational relationships: Lessons learned from the professional sports industry," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 521-531.
    13. Bruning, Patrick F. & Alge, Bradley J. & Lin, Hsin-Chen, 2018. "The embedding forces of network commitment: An examination of the psychological processes linking advice centrality and susceptibility to social influence," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 54-69.
    14. Kietzmann, Jan H. & Hermkens, Kristopher & McCarthy, Ian P. & Silvestre, Bruno S., 2011. "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 241-251, May.
    15. Lin, Hsin-Chen & Swarna, Hepsi & Bruning, Patrick F., 2017. "Taking a global view on brand post popularity: Six social media brand post practices for global markets," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(5), pages 621-633.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Feng Chen & Jian Ding & Mochou Li & Bingqing Wang, 2021. "From self‐entertainment to being appreciated: how does social media transfer talent to business?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(5), pages 6113-6146, December.
    2. Hong, Ying & Hu, Jiangting & Zhao, Yaxin, 2023. "Would you go invisible on social media? An empirical study on the antecedents of users' lurking behavior," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    3. Bruning, Patrick F. & Hsin-Chen Lin, & Hsu, Ching-Yi, 2022. "Crafting solutions to leadership demands for well-being and effectiveness," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 65(5), pages 603-615.
    4. Xinhai Lu & Yanwei Zhang & Handong Tang, 2021. "Modeling and Simulation of Dissemination of Cultivated Land Protection Policies in China," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-21, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Venciūtė Dominyka, 2018. "Social Media Marketing – from Tool to Capability," Management of Organizations: Systematic Research, Sciendo, vol. 79(1), pages 131-145, June.
    2. Manisha Mathur, 2020. "Improving the value of the retailer brand through social media equity," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(5), pages 508-530, September.
    3. Rydén, Pernille & Ringberg, Torsten & Wilke, Ricky, 2015. "How Managers' Shared Mental Models of Business–Customer Interactions Create Different Sensemaking of Social Media," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-16.
    4. Bastos, Wilson, 2020. "“Speaking of Purchases”: How Conversational Potential Determines Consumers' Willingness to Exert Effort for Experiential Versus Material Purchases," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-16.
    5. Elena Casprini & Alberto Di Minin, 2015. "How are companies facing the social media (r)evolution?," MERCATI & COMPETITIVIT?, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2015(2), pages 67-86.
    6. Ziad Abdelmoety & Spiros Gounaris, 2015. "Exporting B2B Solutions: The Impact and Contribution of Using Social Media," Athens Journal of Business & Economics, Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), vol. 1(1), pages 23-40, January.
    7. Veronica Scuotto & Manlio Del Giudice & Elias G. Carayannis, 2017. "The effect of social networking sites and absorptive capacity on SMES’ innovation performance," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 409-424, April.
    8. Amoah John & Nutakor Felix & Li Jinke & Jibril Abdul Bashiru & Sanful Benjamin & Odei Michael Amponsah, 2021. "Antecedents of social media usage intensity in the financial sector of an emerging economy: a Pls-Sem Algorithm," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 16(4), pages 387-406, December.
    9. Roma, Paolo & Aloini, Davide, 2019. "How does brand-related user-generated content differ across social media? Evidence reloaded," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 322-339.
    10. Effing, Robin & Spil, Ton A.M., 2016. "The social strategy cone: Towards a framework for evaluating social media strategies," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-8.
    11. Agnieszka Izabela Baruk & Grzegorz Wesołowski, 2021. "The Effect of Using Social Media in the Modern Marketing Communication on the Shaping an External Employer’s Image," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-23, July.
    12. Liu, He & Li, Xuerong & Wang, Shouyang, 2021. "A bibliometric analysis of 30 years of platform research: Developing the research agenda for platforms, the associated technologies and social impacts," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    13. Foltean, Florin Sabin & Trif, Simona Mihaela & Tuleu, Daniela Liliana, 2019. "Customer relationship management capabilities and social media technology use: Consequences on firm performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 563-575.
    14. Atthaphon Mumi & Michael Obal & Yi Yang, 2019. "Investigating social media as a firm’s signaling strategy through an IPO," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 631-645, October.
    15. Casprini, Elena & Di Minin, Alberto & Paraboschi, Andrea, 2019. "How do companies organize nascent markets? The BlaBlaCar case in the inter-city shared mobility market," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 270-281.
    16. Bruno Schivinski & Dariusz Dabrowski, 2013. "The Impact of Brand Communication on Brand Equity Dimensions and Brand Purchase Intention Through Facebook," GUT FME Working Paper Series A 4, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdansk University of Technology.
    17. Payal S. Kapoor & K.R. Jayasimha & Ashish Sadh, 2013. "Brand-related, Consumer to Consumer, Communication via Social Media," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 2(1), pages 43-59, January.
    18. Straker, Karla & Wrigley, Cara & Rosemann, Michael, 2015. "The role of design in the future of digital channels: Conceptual insights and future research directions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 133-140.
    19. Shakeel ul Rehman & Rafia Gulzar & Wajeeha Aslam, 2022. "Developing the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) through Social Media (SM): The Modern Marketing Communication Approach," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.
    20. Kick, Markus, 2015. "Social Media Research: A Narrative Review," EconStor Preprints 182506, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:63:y:2020:i:6:p:749-761. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.