Abstract
Background: Social Media (SM) growth and its acceptance at various economic levels are making it obligatory to make sense of its management in different business environments. A business environment can be volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, static-complex, simple-dynamic with a few similar, continuously changing factors, or simple-static with a few similar, unchanging factors. The environment is exemplified by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, regional war, globalisation, the fourth industrial revolution and disruptive technology. Regulatory focus theory was used to examine whether managers adopt a prevention or promotion focus to SM use, shed light on employees’ attitudes and whether regulatory focus affected the measures taken toward SM management.
Objectives: The purpose of this paper was to explore how designed SM platforms can be managed in the face of dynamic and complex environments.
Method: Experts’ interviews from various organisations were selected using snowball sampling to gather qualitatively rich data. The data were analysed thematically using ATLAS.ti software.
Results: Prevention through reengineering processes, increased use of algorithms, information technology (IT) investments and restricting SM to private use only were observed among experts. Additionally, promotion-focus managers allow employees to use SM for work-related tasks and use monitoring software.
Conclusion: Information technology investments, sizing SM affordances and sensemaking SM management is becoming mandatory given the dynamic nature or pace at which the environment is changing.
Contribution: The study contributed practical, social mediations, generated and qualitative method choice in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data.
Keywords: sensemaking; SM management; KT; knowledge transfer; dynamic-complex environment; regulatory focus theory.
Introduction
The term ‘Social Media’ (SM) is also referred to as ‘social networking’ and ‘Web 2.0’ (Imran et al. 2019). Social Media also includes publishing platforms such as WordPress, Blogger and TypePad Wikis. Social Media also facilitates the sharing of video (YouTube, Vivo, Vine), live streaming using Twitch or Periscope, documents (SlideShare, Scribed) and pictures (Pinterest, Fancy, Ello, Behance). Platforms include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and Kik. Conversation platforms include GitHub, Reedit, Disqus, Muut and Sina Weibo. Lastly, professional social networks include LinkedIn, Viadeo, Xing, Plaxo and others (Cavazza 2008). In contrast, SM is also classified into egocentric, community, passion, media sharing and opportunistic sites (Parent, Plangger & Bal 2011). To explain, egocentric sites allow profiling and connections, whereas community sites imitate natural groups based on faith and interest. Furthermore, media-sharing sites aid in sharing content, while passion sites enable passion associations based on interest and leisure pursuits. Opportunistic sites also facilitate business collaborations. Classifying existing SM tools is worthwhile given the numerous tools that exist, and it also allows one to gain insight into the way individual SM tools work.
Social Media platforms present opportunities for innovation through the diffusion process in innovative business environments (Parthasarathi & Kumari 2021). Natário and Couto (2022) observe that the concept of innovation was developed by Schumpeter (1939) (according to Croitoru [2017]) and expanded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with innovation. Parthasarathi and Kumari (2021:106) regard ‘individual innovation as the process of adoption of an idea, viewed also as a new concept, behaviour, or product’. The innovation process encompasses five stages: (1) the awareness stage; (2) the interest stage; (3) the evaluation stage; (4) the trial stage; and (5) the adoption stage. In sensemaking SM management, organisations should be aware of important platforms, nest important ones through representations, evaluate, and try for competitive advantages and sustainability. Marbun, Juliandi and Effendi (2020:2513) reported that the influence of an SM culture on: (1) knowledge transfer (KT) and (2) work performance is positive and significant. Social Media can offer better immediacy and accessibility, has heterogeneous audiences, and probably low-cost access to KT globally than the print medium (Yemer 2020). Lauri (2021) emphasises that dialogue motivates social change, generating the mentality of improving efficiency and giving back to society by organisations. Social Media management could also follow the process of SM: (1) awareness; (2) interest stage; (3) evaluation; (4) trial stage; and (5) adoption stage to improve KT and work performance.
In relation to challenges, the use of regulations, collaborations and anticipatory governance present gaps to alleviate the challenges for emerging innovations (John 2021). This means managing emerging innovations such as SM in KT is still a challenge. According to Gu, Meng and Farrukh (2021), future research ought to integrate different levels of factors such as countries, organisational, cultural and social network-level factors to support KT.
The concept of KT was first proposed by Findlay (1978) and has since been interchangeably used for knowledge sharing, knowledge flow and knowledge acquisition (Zhang & Jiang 2015). Knowledge transfer is furthermore regarded as involving ‘the knowledge transmission, the knowledge absorption, and the use of the knowledge’ (Gregor 2017:181). Knowledge transfer for this paper is a form of cognition, communication among individuals and organisational setups. Making sense of SM management for KT is a complex and daunting task. The term ‘management’ involves: (1) accomplishing organisational vision, mission, strategies, and goals; (2) various methods used by managers and organisations; and (3) the individuals in organisations who guide and direct the actions of others to accomplish organisational goals (Muninger, Mahr & Hammedi 2022). This paper considers Taprial and Kanwar’s (2017:61) stance on SM management. Taprial and Kanwar (2017) regard sensemaking in SM management as:
[I]nvolving the management of the entire or part of the SM campaign for the business, which may include developing the SM strategy, implementing it, and monitoring it on a daily basis, while also measuring and analysing the effects of the activities and generating reports. (p. 61)
Many activities are involved in the SM campaign, for instance, seeking information and knowledge, creating a schema or mental model and gaining insights, which may facilitate sensemaking in SM management.
Sensemaking is a complex concept. Sensemaking is closing the perception-expectations gap, which may occur in the form of breakdowns, surprises, discrepancies or opportunities in organisational settings (Namvar et al. 2018). According to Sandberg and Tsoukas (2020:9), sensemaking features include the use of language, sense and action nexus (a merged ongoing response to the specific aspects related to the situation as well as temporality). Sense is perceived as first being generated in the mind by language and social interaction, which one then acts on. Sandberg and Tsoukas (2020) found that organisational sensemaking is set off by: (1) major planned events; (2) major unplanned events; (3) minor planned events; (4) minor unplanned events; and (5) hybrids of major and minor planned and unplanned events. In this paper, the use of sensemaking represents an invention or innovation in KT as well as the discovery of SM affordance. This means without understanding elements that offset sensemaking, SM strategy, implementation, monitoring and KT become difficult.
Self-regulatory theory basic elements
The self-regulatory theory (Higgins 1997) was used to understand how a focus on either opportunities or risks guides communication managers’ decisions regarding SM management. Self-regulation ‘refers to the process in which people seek to align their performances and self-efficacy with appropriate goals or standards’ (Brockner & Higgins 2001:37). Additionally, the theory extends the basic hedonic principle that people are motivated to approach pleasure and avoid pain. According to Higgins (1997, 1998), people’s regulatory focus is composed of three factors that function to explain the variances between a promotion focus and a prevention focus:
- The needs (growth and development) that people are seeking to satisfy in promotion-focus, and attempt to bring actual selves into alignment with ideal selves in one’s wishes and aspirations (Brockner & Higgins 2001). When prevention is focused, people are responsive to security needs in that they try to match their actual selves with their ought selves (self-standards based on felt duties and responsibilities) (Brockner & Higgins 2001).
- The nature of the goal or standard (which may represent beliefs, hopes, wishes and aspirations) that people are trying to achieve or match (as an example, a management style was a manager who wishes to be seen as charismatic). Promotion-focused people seek to attain the goals or standards associated with their ideal selves, whereas prevention-focused people seek to attain the goals or standards associated with their ought selves. Through the use of language (for prevention-focused managers), transactional leaders impart responsibilities to subordinates so that they perceive their work as responsibilities or things that they ought to do. The use of language is related to sensemaking, which is generated in the mind first (Weick 1995). Similarly, language may be used by a manager’s tone to instil sensemaking strategies for SM management in an organisational setup. If the bulk of the leadership activities suggest that they are either promotion-focused or prevention-focused, the more likely it may be that subordinates will follow suit (Brockner & Higgins 2001):
- In relation to the psychological situations (mental model), the presence or absence of positive outcomes is significant for people who are promotion-focused. Furthermore, the absence and presence of negative outcomes are noticeable for people who are prevention-focused (e.g. safety or security). People enjoy the pleasure of a gain (i.e. they avoid a negative outcome) when they bring themselves into alignment with their better selves. Failure to reach the ought self, in contrast, elicits the experience of the pain of loss (Brockner & Higgins 2001).
The main research questions (RQ) and interview questions (IQ) that were used in this research are:
- Does your organisation use SM as a tool? If yes, how, and if no, why?,
- Are there any key or large-scale IT initiatives currently ongoing in any of your departments?,
- Has your organisation established any set of policies, regulations, and legislation that will enable content management or increased levels of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) development? If yes, how, and if no, why?
The structure of the article is as follows: problem statement, aim, research method, findings, discussions, conclusions and recommendation.
Problem
There is a lack of relevant structures, cultures and approaches for participatory modes of online communication and understanding of the SM landscape, necessitating the development of new ones in the form of innovative SM (Nijssen & Ordanini 2020). The use of SM for innovation requires firms to manage rapid KT, capabilities, big data and multiway communication, although managers lack clear understandings of SM management strategies (Muninger et al. 2022; Van den Berg & Verhoeven 2017). Without sensemaking SM management and considering the SM landscape, organisations miss the SM affordances, and sustainability remains a challenge. Social Media facilitates KT and provides high-volume, real-time data, which has been widely used in diverse applications such as sales, marketing, disaster management and health surveillance (Hou et al. 2021). Social Media implementation in the KT process has been demonstrated to be complex and challenging for organisations (Muninger et al. 2022; Nijssen & Ordanini 2020).
Literature review
Social Media management is still difficult because of various factors such as the business environment and divisional structures. The business environment can be classified as linked, volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous (Alsufiani, Attfield & Zhang 2017; Proskuryakova 2017; Weick 1995). According to Duncan (1972), the external environment is made up of all significant external stakeholders. Duncan demonstrates that the external environment can have a lot of external factors or a lot of little external influences (a simple environment) or both (a complex environment). The simplicity and complexity axis is important for sensemaking because as the number of variables or significant components rises, so does the complexity of the SM management process. In this case, individual sensemaking of SM management may not be sufficient if the environment is too complex. Moreover, one of the factors that is affecting organisations could be the frequency of change (or stability of the environment).
Various divisional structures emphasise the necessity of sensemaking SM management. Global divides (between industrialised and emerging nations), societal divides (between wealthy or impoverished countries), and digital democratic divisions (who uses or does not use digital resources to engage, mobilise, and participate in public life) (Norris 2001). Finally, management is challenged in terms of how large investments (SM use and management) will bring returns from the technology as well as an increase in production (Aramidee et al. 2020). In terms of challenges related to the sensemaking of SM management, organisations ought to seize SM affordances to counter the issues that accompany the dynamic, complex environment. Examples of SM affordances include the fact that SM allows communication, first information, replaying annotated content and enabling management practices (Treem & Leonardi 2013). Neeley and Leonardi (2018) explain that SM brings about different affordances: visibility, editability, persistence and lubricating relationships (VEPR). Social Media also facilitates dialogue, conversation and collaboration among people, which can be productive or unproductive. Productive dialogue brings virtues like creativity, curiosity, fairness, gratitude, honesty, humility, kindness, love, self-regulation, social intelligence and low levels of positive success (ed. Arthur 2019). Table 1 discloses SM management strategies found in the literature in relation to the regulatory focus.
| TABLE 1: Reveal sensemaking of Social media management strategy found in literature in relation to the regulatory focus. |
Aim
The purpose of this paper was to explore the sensemaking of SM management in a dynamic and complex environment.
Research method
Expert interviews from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia, Russia and South Africa were completed via MS Teams and Google Meet applications. It was important to have a unit of analysis (20 in total) in this research to extract data from experts from various backgrounds. The unit of analysis included 4 chief executive officers, 7 managers, 2 supervisors and 7 experienced operational staff. This was guided by Saunders and Townsend (2018:15) who expressed that expert interviews unit of analysis maybe 15–60 for ‘qualitative researchers in practice tend to use the expectations of the business and management community: previous experience, expert opinion and replication of previous studies as justification for their research’. Participants were informed about the purpose of the research, voluntary involvement, the risks involved, the researchers’ details and address, anonymity and confidentiality (Leedy & Ormrod 2010). Snowball sampling was used in the selection of participants. Atkinson and Flint (2001:1) defined snowball sampling as ‘a technique for finding research subjects’. One subject gives the researcher the name of another subject, who in turn provides the name of a third, and so on, aiming to extract data from hard-to-reach populations, in this case, experts. The qualitative research analysis of Braun and Clarke (2006), a thematic analysis, was aided by the ATLAS.ti application.
Findings
The interviews revealed that the participants’ approaches to sensemaking in SM management depend not only on the regulatory focus of managers but also on the individual and organisational sensemaking process. Experts’ approaches to sensemaking in SM management also represent the managers’ understanding of the communication of the organisational goals with stakeholders. The next section reveals how the RQ was answered. The attestations highlight how SM can be managed for effective KT in a dynamic, complex environment. To reveal the manager’s innovation (SM) awareness, use or adoption, (RQ and IQs were) was used. Additionally, interview questions were meant to reveal part of the investment initiation towards the SM management.
IQ3: Does your organisation use Social Media as a tool? If yes, how and if no, why?
Many strategies are applied to manage SM. According to P1 (chief executive officer, in 45–50 years), P2 (executive director, in 55–60 years) and P6 (chief executive officer, in 45–50 years), SM is used at an organisational level. This is evidenced by the participants’ quotations, which include the following:
‘… Slake is not reliant on having meetings, slake is reliant on immediate transfer of information. I am sitting, something has gone wrong in the consumer, finance, on the app write in … same as what you get from other SM platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook if people get bored they move to something else.’ (P1, Chief Executive Officer, 45–50 years)
‘… on Facebook we share videos, there is also the rigid, static wiki on the website development stage … three blogs now I understand what’s going on. As such, it’s a very ineffective way to communicate and that’s one of the big things that SM kills …’ (P2, Executive Director, 55–60 years)
Social Media tools such as Twitter, Module Reporter, Jira, Jerk, sprint, Vimeo, Instagram, LinkedIn, SharePoint and WhatsApp are used in KT. Social Media can reduce content, make it easy to use in sharing articles, allow online meetings, be static and rigid, and maintain confidentiality and competitive advantage. These SM tools require integration, and management strategy for effective KT in a complex business environment.
Experts’ responses (who are at the strategic level of management) also reflect the regulatory focus, which is composed of three factors:
- When people are promotion-focused and motivated by the need for growth and development, they know the SM platform applicable to their environment. This is reflected by the following citation:
‘… for the company, you can integrate your LinkedIn … something has gone wrong in the consumer, finance, on the app write …’ (P1, Chief Executive Officer, 45–50 years)
People sense SM management when they are promotion-focused and motivated by growth and development. This is reflected by focusing on integration, being responsive to security needs, and assessing the presence and absence of positive outcomes of SM use in organisations. In contrast, prevention is focused on people who are responsive to security needs as reflected in the following quote:
‘… SM (WhatsApp, Instagram) has made it smaller and more personal for me, easy to use, and easier to maintain confidentially than an email, which needs a formal session.’ (P4, IT Project Manager, Researcher, 35–40 years)
- Promotion-focused people seek to attain the goals or standards associated with their ideal selves. For instance:
‘Yes, we have standardized content management called Swagger – that’s a deep platform where we standardize documents, show when standardized, empty project processes are at what level, who reviews them, who distributes them, and when they go to customers. We run a competency education program.’ (P17, ICT, Researcher, Trainer, 30–35 years)
The self-ideals of achieving standardised content reflect promotion-focused people seeking to attain the goals or standards of their ideals in the except:
- In relation to psychological focus situations, the presence and absence of positive outcomes are significant for people who are promotion-focused, and the absence and presence of negative outcomes are noticeable for people who are prevention-focused.
This was reflected in the following quotations:
‘… for WhatsApp, we have the management committee team. The management committee team and the COVID-19 response team is running parallel. These are the most important ones.’ (P2, Executive Director, 55–60 years)
‘The psychological prevention focus is reflected in the following extract … The negative side of saturation (continuous use of a SM platform) is that you get absolute information overload.’ (P1, Chief Executive Officer, 45–50 years)
‘Yes, expensive management systems that become dumps of rubbish using SM.’ (P4, IT Project Manager, Researcher, 35–40 years)
IQ2: Are there any key or large-scale information technology initiatives currently ongoing in any of your departments?
The key ICT or large-scale IT initiatives reveal part of the investment initiation towards the management of SM for effective KT. The following extracts express and answer the IQ.
Participants such as P2, P4 and P5 (ICT Manager, 35–40 years) indicated that as much as R600 000 up to R27 million is used for ICT development. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) investment has a positive effect on the economy, although development takes time and is sometimes too expensive in terms of maintenance, infrastructure and idle time. In relation to self-regulatory theory P2, P4 and P5 emphases the need for promotion and growth by managers investing in IT.
Experts’ responses also reflect the regulatory focus, which is composed of three factors:
- The ICT investment demonstrates that people are concerned with promotion:
‘Prevention-focused people are responsive to security needs, as reflected in the following quote: “Yes, expensive management systems that become dumps of rubbish using SM.”’ (P4, IT Project Manager, Researcher, 35–40 years)
- Idle ICT (SM) infrastructure is associated with psychologically focused situations in which the presence or absence of positive outcomes is significant for people who are career-focused. The psychological promotion of:
‘The rolling up [sic] of the share point is something the institution has owned for the last five years but hasn’t used, and it is beginning to roll out in my department.’ (P2, Executive Director, 55–60 years)
The psychological focus on the promotion and prevention of idleness in SM management reveals the elements of sensemaking in SM management.
Most executives interviewed were reluctant to reveal information about ICT investments, although some were willing to do so (could be a researchable area).
IQ3: Has your organisation established any set of policies, regulations and legislation that will enable content management or increased levels of ICT development? If yes, how and if no, why?
The ensuing quotations expose the evidence. The regulatory focus is composed of three factors:
- People who are promotion-focused are motivated by growth and development:
‘Swagger … a deep platform where we standardize documents … ’ (P19, IT supervisor, 45–50 years)
- When prevention-focused (from failure in this study), people are responsive to security needs. For instance, P18 said:
‘SM can be used to measure proficiency in organisations’. The excerpt also reflects promotion-focused people seeking to attain the goals or standards.’ (P18, Software development, Manager, 35–40 years)
- Psychological focus is reflected in the following quote:
‘… people don’t know how to use or aware of SM … lack of promotions and banners, organisation should promote, create a community site for the community to use, resources, connectivity are challenges …’ (P18, Software development, Manager, 35–40 years)
Discussions
This article discusses the following themes: people, organisational structure and technology. People are involved in the sensemaking of SM management, creating content, distribution and KT. Ncoyini and Cilliers (2020) state that knowledge cannot be efficiently transferred if employees are not motivated to share it. To gain an understanding of the factors that impact knowledge management systems (KMSs) to improve KT, Ncoyini and Cilliers (2020:7) used interviews to reveal the main factors, such as: (1) organisational efficiency; (2) motivation; (3) trust; (4) reciprocity; (5) organisational culture; (6) organisational structure; (7) people; and (8) technology. Unfortunately, little attention has been given to the use of SM for innovation, with research dispersed across various disciplines such as marketing, information systems and general management (Nijssen & Ordanini 2020). Knowledge transfer factors and SM management affect the innovation strategies chosen. The use of incentives and the sharing of promotions indicate that management is focused on promotions.
Some applicable promotion strategies for SM management that focus on sensemaking include social monitoring and using online listening tools to track organisational publicity, brand and products or services (Taprial & Kanwar 2017). Management should include strategy formation, profile creation, expanding the network, implementation or enjoyment, monitoring, and measurement of SM metrics on the effects of activities to form reports. Strategy formation includes selecting a strategy based on where individuals’ friends are or where notable organisations’ customers are. Profile creation involves the careful development of a researchable, interesting profile with all organisational information on the selected platform so that it may come up on the search engine. Expanding the network involves connecting with friends, family, forums, a local group and clients to deliver your message to them and those connected to them. Monitoring and analysing SM use online entails understanding and discovering what people are saying about one’s business and its products on SM. A conversation will increase through online visibility, and if there are negative comments, one should correct or respond to them as this will also give insight into the types of customers and enhance customer service, marketing, sentiment analysis, demographics and influencer identification (as a prevention focus).
Sensemaking of SM management strategy by people also includes the use of software like Hootsuite, Buffer, TweetDeck and Pokedem as measurement metrics tools to achieve simple, measurable, accurate, realistic and time-bound goals (Taprial & Kanwar 2017). Aramide et al. (2020) reveal that organisations ought to invest in risk assessment, SM policy development, training, management strategies and other activities as well as technology management. These strategies reflect a prevention and promotion focus. To ensure that active digital records are readable for future use, a proactive maintenance plan should be implemented when operating systems or software applications are changed or upgraded (Aramide et al. 2020). Another usable approach is to avoid insecure tools and intrusive applications like Swarm, which infringe on the rights to freedom, security and privacy. The lack of security on SM necessitates having more enabling, other than regulative policies to manage SM, such as the policy at Ford Motor Company (Ford Social Media Guidelines n.d.) and the one at The Coca-Cola Company. Employee interns’ confidentiality and professionalism agreements should lead to avoiding public statements about the financial performance of current or former organisations (Macauley et al. 2021). This suggests that both employers and employees need to be mindful and proactive about the potential SM risks, merits, context, policy and ethical issues that may impact an organisation’s status. This implies a prevention focus more by the management.
People’s regulatory focus should be composed of the following factors: (1) promotion-focused, reflecting that people are motivated by growth (Duan et al. 2022). The (2) development and prevention focus is when the intention is to be responsive to security needs (Bidgoli 2021; Brockner & Higgins 2001).
When it comes to discussing organisational structure, the term ‘structure’ refers to the social configuration of the group, such as the association or political structure of the social-cultural group. This structure might be exemplified, for instance, by an organisational chart (Creswell 2007). In relation to structure, organisational culture affects the employees’ attitudes towards knowledge sharing. Lombardi (2019) assumed that if staff have senior management backing, attitudes concerning KT will be more positive, and staff will gain more confidence to share knowledge. Top managers’ support of knowledge management (KM) smooths resource allocation to KT. According to Ncoyini and Cilliers (2020), an organisational structure should be strategically designed to support knowledge activities because unintended structural barriers might hinder knowledge creation and sharing within the organisation. More so, KT succeeds with structures that support ease of information flow and knowledge sharing with fewer boundaries between divisions (Ncoyini & Cilliers 2020). In relation to psychological situations, the presence and absence of positive outcomes as seen by top management drive people to be promotion-focused, while the absence and presence of negative outcomes (ease of information flow, knowledge sharing, with fewer boundaries between divisions) are related to people who are prevention-focused.
Guidelines for SM use in media and choosing SM are highlighted by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010:65–67). Choosing media entails selecting a platform based on the target audience and communication goals, weighing the opportunity cost of purchasing or developing your own application and reaping the benefits of popularity and user base, aligning SM with one’s various activities, and aiming for a media plan integration. Lastly, ensure accessibility to all while reserving segregation of duties. Social guidelines include being active with audience interaction or sharing, being interesting to the audience, being humble to treat clients fairly, avoiding overly professional content offerings, and being honest to accept the rules of the platform chosen. Thus, sensemaking of SM management, promotional or preventive focus at individual, organisational, and international levels in SM use should be considered.
In relation to investment in technology and the prevention and promotion focus of managers, Bidgoli (2021) emphasises that an all-inclusive security system should include biometrics, nanobiometrics, physical access, a virtual private network and data encryption. Furthermore, the investment, prevention and promotion focus of managers includes e-commerce transactions (to protect confidentiality, integrity and availability [CIA], non-repudiation of origin and receipt), a computer emergency response team and a zero-trust security system. This means investment in IT is an important part of the sense-making of SM management, and may improve organisational productivity or effectiveness. Information and Communications Technology promotes economic growth (Asongu & Odhiambo 2020; Heeks & Bukht 2018). Heeks and Bukht (2018) highlight that ICT is suffering from a lack of human capabilities, weak financing and poor governance. Asongu and Odhiambo (2020) studied the importance of ICT in: (1) growth in economic development; (2) driving contemporary economic development outcomes; and (3) discovering gaps in contemporary economic development and having a positive effect on economic growth dynamics, such as an increase in productivity. This means IT investment can lead to both promotion and focus.
The use of technology such as SM necessitates planning, applying relevant, infusing and transforming ICT tools (Messaoudi et al. 2022). Social Media policy is often part of a larger IT policy on business systems. There is consistency in the interview findings (or lack thereof) with literature that specifies that employees and interns, including employer confidentiality and professionalism agreements, should be clear regarding the ‘internal use’ of information and business secrets when using SM. In relation to IT policies, Bidgoli (2021) postulated that ethics should emphasise the safeguarding of the environment in an information society and ethical principles. In this research, safeguarding the environment implies preventions focus. Ethical principles are classified into privacy, accuracy, property and access, which can be traced to their sources. The sources include: (1) the general role and immense capabilities of systems for collecting, storing, communicating and accessing information in society; (2) the complexity of IT; and (3) the intangible nature of information and digital goods, such as digitised music or software. Social Media can be managed to facilitate KT in a dynamic, complex environment through a set of policies, culture, regulations and legislation.
Conclusions and recommendations
This study confirms that people are motivated to approach pleasure and avoid pain in seeking the needs (growth and development), goals or standards, and psychological needs in SM management. Sense-making SM’s management for KT in an innovative environment is spread across three levels of analysis: personal, organisational structure and technological. This means organisational sensemaking of SM management through promotion and prevention focus should be centred around people training on SM monitoring tools, policies use, organisational structure and technology investment. Weick’s (1995:17) organisational sensemaking characteristics include: (1) identity construction; (2) retrospective; (3) enactment of sensible environments; (4) social; (5) ongoing; (6) focused on and by extracted cues; and (7) driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. Kudesia (2017) recommends the value of noting how sensemaking occurs (usable in SM management) through the enactment-selection-retention process (organising process) with each of the seven above-mentioned sensemaking principles from 1 to 7:
- Enactment encompasses: (6) focusing on cues, and (3) enacting or creating sensible environments as part of noticing and bracketing information from the environment (need for growth, specifically, promotion focus).
- Selection consists of seeking workable interpretations rather than completely accurate ones: (2) retrospective in nature or past experiences, and (7) driven by plausibility, (promotion focus in trying to achieve ideal standards).
- Retention is comprised of: (1) identity-based, how outputs are negotiated through interactions with others, (4) social and (5) ongoing, (need for growth – promotion focus).
Thus, the sensemaking of SM management in the face of the dynamically changing environment is becoming more binding. A proactive maintenance plan should be implemented as part of SM management. Examples include profile creation, expanding the network, implementation or enjoyment, monitoring and measuring; assessing audience demographics, objectives of the SM, and goals; driving more leads; increasing sales; promoting products; and improving customer relations or services are also reflections of the promotion focus.
Limitations
One limitation of the study is related to the elicitation of SM management strategies from interviews, where experts used subjective measures. As one of the study’s limitations, the beliefs of individual experts or a group of experts can impact the results, as indicated by O’Hagan (2019).
Acknowledgements
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
Authors’ contributions
F.N. wrote and A.d.l.H. reviewed and selected the framework which was used.
Ethical considerations
Ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology Faculty of Informatics and Design Research Ethics Committee.
Funding information
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, F.N., although there are no restrictions on the data.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. It does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency, or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings, and content.
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