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Case Study

All in a Twitter over Facebook? Social internet use at Pragmaticase

By Maury A. Peiperl, Karsten Jonsen and Willem Smit

4 pages

September 2009

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Reference: IMD-3-2138

The case presents the issue of employees’ use of Social Media through the eyes of Johan L., the CEO of Pragmaticase. Several companies have started to block employees from accessing Facebook™, Twitter™, YouTube™, LinkedIn™, flickr™, and other social media tools from their workplace computers and networks. The issue has also recently seen increased coverage in the news media. Should the company simply forbid all use of social websites and give the IT department the go-ahead to block access to these sites? Or should it choose not to fight this battle and let internet use be unrestricted? The case presents arguments a company needs to consider in order to make informed decisions on this divisive question.

Learning Objective

The objective of this case is to raise a contemporary issue: Employees’ use of social media sites. Through this discussion some basic dichotomies can be exposed and discussed, such as work/life balance; control versus flexibility; inspect versus expect; results-only-work-environment versus traditional contracts; requirements of knowledge workers vis-à-vis traditional labour; perspectives on humans and leadership (e.g. theory X vs. Theory Y). The case provokes managers to think about positive and negative aspects of restricting access to social media sites..

Keywords

Productivity, Information Technology, Facebook, Internet, Consultancy

Settings

2009

Type

Generalized Experience

Available Languages

English

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