Affording Employee Voice: How Enterprise Social Networking Sites (ESNS) Create New Pathways for Employee Expression

Abstract

As organizations seek to find new ways to engage employees and increase workplace participation, many have turned to Enterprise Social Networking Sites (ESNS) as a tool to foster dialogue and participation. Seeking to capitalize on social technologies that have enjoyed a warm reception in the personal lives of many citizens, organizations hope to harness the accessibility and immediacy of these platforms to encourage tasks such as knowledge management, training, and direct communication. Many employees, accustomed to using social media tools outside of work, are also leveraging these channels to express their voice within organizations. In this paper, we develop the concept of ESNS voicing affordances that enable employees to individually and directly express their voice within their organizations. Drawing from a detailed review of relevant literature on employee voice and social media affordances, we follow a systematic scale development process to establish an instrument for the construct of voicing affordances through ESNS.