Social Media Usage and Cultural Dimensions: an Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Cultural attributes of employees affect organizations in several different ways through their impact on organizational goals and decision-making processes. Social media create ample opportunities for organizations to improve competitiveness and efficiency of marketing and communications. We empirically investigate the impact of employee cultural dimensions on social media usage at work and at home. Such a study has not been undertaken before to the best of our knowledge and this would be the first study to connect cultural dimension characteristics of individuals with social media usage. Specifically, we investigate the effect of Power Distance (PD), Uncertainty Avoidance (UA), and Individualism-Collectivism (IC) on the use of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and LinkedIn. Our results show that certain cultural dimensions predict higher or lower levels of use of specific social media platforms. We provide implications of our results on research and practice.