Digital advocacy among industrial employees : an abstract

Abstract

Digital advocacy by employees can provide the firm with reach and desirable outcomes. Increased reach and visibility can impact an organization’s brand awareness and employer branding (Sivertzen et al. 2013; Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). In addition, increased brand awareness among stakeholders can help strengthen positive associations with the corporate brand that will make it easier to attract and retain employees (Backhaus and Tikoo 2004; Kohli et al. 2015; Sivertzen et al. 2013). Digital advocacy on social media is very much a double-edged sword, and it is therefore increasingly important for organizations to develop strategies for how best to manage it (Kietzmann et al. 2011; Kohli et al. 2015). The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyse the impact of internal branding and organizational commitment on the willingness of industrial employees to undertake advocacy. Five dimensions of employer branding have been labelled: Work Life Balance, Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR), Training and Development, Healthy Work Atmosphere, Compensation and Benefits (Tanwar and Prasad 2017; Ambler and Barrow 1996; Berthon et al. 2006). This research proposes a second-order hierarchical latent variable model whereby employer branding acts both directly and indirectly through organizational commitment to impact employee advocacy. Data was collected via a self-completing online questionnaire from among employees of a Swedish industrial organization that has a global presence. A total of 306 complete responses were collected with 51.7% response rate. Respondents come from a diverse group of individuals, 66% male; 61%, were aged between 35 and 54 years; 28% were between 18 and 34 years; and 11% were older than 5 years. The structural model was assessed in order to determine how well the empirical data fit with theory (Hair et al. 2014; Sarstedt et al. 2014). Findings indicate that training and development and healthy work atmosphere are the most influential dimensions, followed by a healthy work atmosphere, ethics and CSR. This implicates that industrial organizations who seeks to strengthen their employer brand could focus on these two dimensions primarily. According to Anitha (2014), it is important that employees are engaged in their organization and that can be obtained with the help of a pleasant work environment and good relationships with colleagues. Regarding testing the mediation effect, all the effect that employer branding has on digital employee advocacy is mediated by organizational commitment. This means that even though the employer brand is strong, an employee will not become a digital advocate if he or she is not committed to the organization. A strong employer brand does, however, increase the possibility that a committed employee will become a digital advocate.