Organisational antecedents of employee ambassadorship on social network sites

Abstract

Organisations seeking to enhance their reputation increasingly depend on social network messages—for instance, from employees—instead of being able to control this through their formal communications. The present research aimed to examine how employees’ willingness to share positive messages about their organisation on their social network sites (SNS) relates to organisational features and activities. Specifically, we examined whether employee ambassadorship on SNS relates to two key dimensions of social evaluation: perceived organisational morality and competence. Results of three studies suggest that organisational features can motivate employees to support their organisation online. Across different samples and measures, employee evaluations of organisational morality were a stronger statistical predictor of online ambassadorship than their evaluations of organisational competence. Organisational identification, not external prestige, mediated the effect of organisational morality on online ambassadorship. This suggests that perceived organisational morality relates to intrinsic motives of employees to support their organisation on SNS.