Navigating Social Media: Strategies for Institutional Managers in the Digital Era

Abstract

With the spread of electronics-based interactions across various sectors, virtual space has also become lively with societal spaces for newer dimensions of social and psychological factors. In this light, effective managerial engagement with social media is an imperative, grounded in sensitivity to both platforms and audiences. Managers face distinctive challenges and opportunities at the juncture of social and economic science. Although social media provides unprecedented access to stakeholders, online discourse is sensitively social and ethically challenging. Given the void that exists in current managerial communication research, this paper presents a qualitative study informed by the views of private sector managers in Oman. Notwithstanding challenges such as traditional values and privacy issues, there is acknowledgement of the potential benefits of social media for organizational reputation and stakeholder trust. Social media also impacts the decisions of investors; hence, managers need to be on social media to ensure transparency and the generation of trust. Currently, the approach private companies adopt on social media is a one-way strategy and most often promotional. In times of crisis, social media acts as a virtual learning process on how to prepare and mitigate a crisis through engaging and empowering the community and the institution. It is, therefore, crucial to know the influence created by influential people on social media to develop relevant marketing strategies for the stakeholders. The development of an effective managerial engagement with social media is therefore a complex task that requires a diversity of insights from the social and economic sciences. In interaction with social media as a genuine field, managers can work toward organizational goals, build meaningful relations, and create positive societal change in an increasingly digital world.