Strategic communication in an organization: Determinants of workers’ information-sharing behaviour on social media

Firms are investing in social media (SM) to encourage internal information-sharing behaviour (ISB) for efficient teamwork and the organization’s success. However, literature that examines the determinants of ISB on organizational SM remains scarce; thus, this study intends to investigate several factors that influence and hinder workers’ ISB on a firm’s SM platform. It hypothesizes whether individual, technological and organizational factors are related to ISB on a firm’s SM. It analyses empirical data to provide a complete depiction of the variables influencing workers’ choices and whether they are willing to share information on organizational SM. This study uses a qualitative method to gather data from organizational SM reviews and semi-structured interviews at Kompas Gramedia, a major Indonesian broadcasting company with over 22,000 employees. The study uses the iterative analysis tenets of systematic repetition and recursive switching between various phases. The qualitative data analysis software ATLAS.ti was used for the qualitative encoding. The findings confirm that the three factors – individual, technological and organizational – are influential drivers and barriers to workers’ willingness to perform ISB on the firm’s SM. Subsequently, this willingness to perform internal ISB affects workers’ external ISB, that is, their willingness to voluntarily communicate and share information about the positive aspects of firms to the broader public.