Stakeholder Engagement Through Social Media: Logics and Control Conflicts

The introduction of new information and communication technologies such social media platforms in organizations results in a new emerging logic of stakeholder engagement around sustainable development issues. We investigate how middle managers of a pharmaceutical corporation navigate between two competing logics of stakeholder engagement: the current (influence logic) and the new logic underlying social media (logic of community). With a longitudinal study of 26 months we observe how engagements failed since managers were not able to integrate certain symbolic and substantive elements of the new logic. We show how the strategic constraints related to the locus of control caused the rejections of these elements and how the relaxation of the locus of control enabled successful engagements. We discuss our results in light of understanding new strategic responses to new institutional complexity introduced by social media.