Developing social leadership: Cultural and technological influences

Abstract

The development of social leadership is triggered by the adoption of social media for internal purposes by organizations. It involves dynamics of collaborative and mutual influence between leaders and followers, and among followers themselves, mediated by social media. The aim of this paper is to analyze individual attitudes to social leadership as a function of cultural and technological factors. Using data collected from a sample (N=178) of employees, we developed and adapted multiple item scales from a wide range of sources in the literature to assess organizational culture, information technology and social media adoption, in addition to other individual and organizational variables. Regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between these variables. What emerged was a three-dimensional model of social leadership as a positive attitude towards: shared responsibility, social media usage and direction. In particular, organizational culture strongly influenced two of these three dimensions, while the use of social media for personal purposes predicted attitudes to the use of social media in organizations.