A Systems View of Companies’ Communication in Online Social Environments

ABSTRACT

In order to enrich previous contributions interested in the identification of possible pathways to improve companies’ capabilities to better face the challenges imposed by increasing social and economic variety, this paper focuses attention on the role of companies’ communications in online social environments. Thanks to the adoption of systems thinking, the paper enlarges existing contributions on companies’ online communication by combining the research streams of signalling theory, capital need theory, and legitimacy theory. By building on a multi-disciplinary literature review, this paper identifies three variables to analyse the effectiveness of companies’ communication based on the use of social networks: the frequency, the instability, and the previous activities. Empirical research is proposed with reference to a sample composed by the 50 best performing European companies in terms of return on sales (ROS) (USD) in 2015 via the use of structural equation modelling (SEM). SEM is applied to explore the relationships among identified variables in companies’ online communication on Facebook and Instagram, and how those communications influence companies’ economic performance in terms of ROS.

KEYWORDS:

• system thinking
• companies’ communication
• online social environment
• structural equation modelling

Notes on contributors

Francesco Caputo Ph.D., is Post-Doctoral Researcher at Department of Computer Systems and Communications, Masaryk University, Czech Republic where he is lecturer of Service and System Thinking and of Knowledge Management. He is also adjunct Professor of Knowledge Management at Department of Informatics, University of Bari, Italy and member of Scientific Board of Reald Summer School (University of Reald Vlore – Albania). His main research interests include but are not limited to complexity, knowledge management, healthcare management, network theory, corporate communication, strategy, and systems thinking. He is member of the Editorial Boards of different international journals and he serves as reviewer for many relevant journals. He is Secretariat of the ASVSA, Association for research on Viable Systems (www.asvsa.org). He was also finalist at the 2012/2013 Emerald/EMRBI Business Research Award and he has won the best presentation award at the 2016 B.S. Lab. Symposium ‘Governing Business Systems. Theories and Challenges for Systems Thinking in Practice'.

Federica Evangelista is Ph.D. student in Business Administration in the Department of Economics and Law at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio in Italy. Her research interests cover the following topics: business administration, business management, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, intellectual capital and intellectual property rights, intellectual asset management and knowledge management, international accounting, leadership. She's author of articles regarding corporate governance, intellectual capital and management of intangible assets.

Giuseppe Russo is associate professor of Business Management in the Department of Economics and Law at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (Italy). He is Master coordinator of I Level both in Social Enterprise Management and in Innovation and in Public Administration Management. He is author of books and articles regarding business management, knowledge economy, intellectual capital planning and control.

Bara Buhnova has received the Ph.D. degree in computer science at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, in 2008, for application of formal methods in sofware architecture design. She continued with related topics as a postdoc researcher at University of Karlsruhe and Research Center for Information Technology (FZI) in Karlsruhe, Germany, and later at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Besides construction of analytical and simulation models of software systems, she is currently involved in projects applying architecture-based analysis and simulation to smart infrastructures. Bara is involved in organization of numerous top-rated conferences (QoSA, CBSE, ESEC-FSE, ICSE) and acts as a reviewer and guest editor in multiple journals (IEEE TSE, Elsevier SCP, Elsevier JSS, Springer SoSyM, Wiley SME).