How Employees’ Roles and Communication Responsibility Play a Role in an Ideation Process on Internal Social Media

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the emerging research on employees’ communication roles and responsibility. The article explores how and why employees act as responsible communicators while shifting between different roles in an ideation process on internal social media. The empirical material consists of online observations of employee ideation on internal social media and 14 interviews with employees in a Danish knowledge-intensive organization. Drawing on identity work and discourse analysis, this article analyzes the different roles that employees enact, shift and position themselves in when generating ideas on internal social media. The analysis identified eight different communication roles: Diplomat, Expert, Forecaster, Veteran, Facilitator, Investigator, Skeptic, and Apprentice. The role framework provides new knowledge on the diversity and characteristics of employees’ roles on a micro-level and how they complement each other in driving the ideation process forward. This framework may provide managers with an analytical lens to identify potential challenges related to role enactment at different stages of the process. Awareness of the different roles and their significance for the process may also encourage employees to overcome barriers such as insecurity and fear of critical reactions from their colleagues when they generate ideas online in a context of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.