Abstract
Although still young, social media platforms (SM) have already attracted over a quarter of the world's population rendering SM very attractive for organizations. SM adoption presents challenges that may prevent organizations from capitalizing on them to improve performance; thus indicating a need to analyze critical challenges, before taking relevant initiatives. This article identifies 13 most critical challenges associated with the adoption of SM. First a framework is derived from a systematic review of challenges associated with the adoption of SM for HR management (HRM) in three major research databases: ABI/INFORM Complete, Business Source Complete and Web of Science. Second the framework is used in a Delphi survey of 28 Canadian human resources (HR) managers. Statistical analysis includes Cohen Kappa, Kendall's W, Wilcoxon rank test, and cluster analysis. This paper contributes to HRM and Information Systems (IS) research literature on SM adoption in general and provides specific insights to practitioners.
1. Introduction
Despite their youth social media platforms (SM) have already reached as many as 26% of the global population, compared to the Internet with a 35% penetration worldwide (We Are Social, 2015). In Canada, the penetration rate of the Internet and SM are 86% and 82% respectively (Canadians Internet, 2015).
5. Research contributions and limitations
The study of SM adoption and use in organizational settings and particularly HRM is still very young (Treem & Leonardi, 2012), despite empirical evidence of their ubiquitous presence in the business environment of firms worldwide. This research focuses on the identification of challenges that inhibit organizations from adopting SM for HRM and which may also prevent them from capitalizing on SM in the pursuit of strategic organizational outcomes. This exploratory study is an initial step towards a deeper understanding of factors that inhibit organizations from adopting SM for HRM.
