Strong Employer Brands and Employee Advocacy in Social Media : exploring the Employee Perspective

Sammanfattning: Employer Branding activities in the competitive labour market are becoming increasingly interactive rather than being a top-down exercise. Limited resources together with new technology is playing a role in this development. Little, but some research exists on Employee Advocacy or the voluntary promotion and defence of a brand by its employees. While some researchers suggest that strong Employer Brands fosters Employee Advocacy, there seem to be little empirical support or comprehensive models incorporating the supportive factors. Earlier studies have been primarily quantitative in nature, focusing on the corporate perspective. This research adds a qualitative angle with focus on the Employee Perspective. The purpose with this thesis is to explore how employees in companies with strong Employer Brands practice Employee Advocacy in a Social Media context, Because of the subjectivist and abductive approach, the method was qualitative in form of interviews with employees of different companies in the service sector as primary data together with secondary data. The findings indicate that Employee Advocacy, although largely driven by employee commitment, in practice seem to be a rather temporary phenomenon. The dominating intrinsic motives for Employee Advocacy does not seem to translate in a Social Media Context, where nature of expression ultimately seem to depend more on external or situational factors. The limitations of this study are the small number of respondents made up of a convenience sample. The narrow theoretical base also limits the study to explore and broaden a phenomenon rather than developing an entirely new concept. The conceptual model could act as a basis for other studies with a combined qualitative/quantitative approach or as a basis for discussion in companies formulating their Employer Branding or Social Media strategies. The original value of the conducted study is a comprehensive model of shapers and some new empirical insights regarding complexities of the Employee Advocacy phenomenon.