Communicative leadership on internal social media – a way to employee engagement? Kommunikativ lederskab på interne sociale medier - en vej til medarbejderengagement?

Purpose
This paper explores interactions on internal social media (ISM) in a Danish Bank to understand how communicative leadership is enacted in social media dialogues in an organizational context.
Methodology
Three months of posts, comments and likes from September to November 2018 were analyzed to find communicative leadership roles and communicative leadership behavior.
Findings
Three types of communicative leadership seemed to appear in the study of the interactions between organizational members on ISM: Formal communicative leadership, co-constructed communicative leadership and peer communicative leadership. Furthermore, communicative leadership was identified in communicative acts such as setting directions, making sense, solving problems and listening.
Research implications
The findings suggest that communicative leadership is co-constructed in interactions between managers and employees as well as in interactions among employees. In this respect, communicative leadership on internal social media is not only enacted by formal managers. It is just as much enacted by knowledgeable individual organizational members as well as being co-constructed between several employees.
Originality/Value
The findings help us understand leadership as a complex set of interactions in organizational contexts and that empowering communication on ISM can enchance employee engagement.
Research paper