Social Media(tion) and the Reshaping of Public/Private Boundaries in Employment Relations

• Date: 01 January 2016
• Author: Paula McDonald,Paul Thompson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12061
• Published date: 01 January 2016

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 18, 69–84 (2016)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12061

Social Media(tion) and the Reshaping of

Public/Private Boundaries in Employment

Relations

Paula McDonald and Paul Thompson1,2

School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, PO Box 2434, Brisbane, Qld 4001, Australia,

1Department of Human Resource Management, University of Strathclyde, 16 Richmond Street, Glasgow, G1 1XQ,

Scotland, UK, and 2School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, Level 1, B Block, Gardens Point, 2

George St., Brisbane, Australia

Corresponding author email: p.mcdonald@qut.edu.au

Tensions surrounding social media in the employment relationship are increasingly

evident in the media, public rhetoric, and courts and employment tribunals. Yet the

underlying causes and dimensions of these tensions have remainedlargely unexplored.

This article firstly reviews the available literature addressing social media and employ-

ment, outlining three primary sources of contestation: profiling, disparaging posts and

blogs, and private use of social media during worktime. In each area, the key dynamics

and underlying concerns of the central actors involved are identified. The article then

seeks to canvasexplanations for these forms of contestation associated with social media

at work. It is argued that the architectureof social media disrupts traditional relations

in organisational life by driving employer and employee actions that (re)shape and

(re)constitute the boundaries between public and private spheres. Although employers

and employees are using the same social technologies, their respective concerns about

and points of entry to these technologies, in contrast to traditional manifestations of

conflict and resistance, are asymmetric. The article concludes with a representational

summary of the relative legitimacy of concerns for organisational actors and outlines

areas for future research.

Defined as virtual networks and communities that en-

able individuals to create, exchange and disseminate

information and ideas, social media has become a

pervasive feature of the contemporary employment

relationship, fundamentally altering the reach, speed

and permanency of work-related conduct and expec-

tations (Ellerbrok 2010; Jacobson and Howle Tufts

2013). At the same time, tensions around the dynam-

ics of social media within the boundaries of the em-

ployment relationship are increasingly evident, with

debates about what is considered appropriate, norma-

tive or legitimate being played out in the media and

blogosphere, as well as in courts and employmenttri-

bunals. The legal context has been the main focus for

academic discussion (for a recent US overview see

Lucero et al. 2013), while explanations of the under-

lying causes and dimensions of social media tensions

have received less attention, especially from a work

and employment perspective.

This paper seeks to canvas explanations for what

we argue here are distinctive ‘contested terrains’ as-

sociated with the use of social media in employment.

The term ‘contested terrain’ has become a familiar

one and is associated with Richard Edwards’ (1979)

foundational labour process book of the same name.

Contestation signals a variety of forms of conflict

and resistance around effort, discipline, wages and

other issues – open or hidden, solitary or collective

– that function as a key driver of workplace change.

The terrain examined by Edwards was a relatively

traditional one – large factory organisations and vari-

ous manifestations of conflicts around the work-effort

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70 P. McDonald and P. Thompson

bargain. Yet he also notes, ‘Conflict in the labour pro-

cess occurs under definite historical circumstances

. . . within a specific economic and social context’

(1979: 15). Thus, if we consider the ‘terrain’ compo-

nent of the term, it has been transformed under the im-

pact of various economic, cultural and occupational

changes. Some of these changes – social media being

a significant example – have facilitated shifts in the

boundaries between the public and private in organi-

sational life. Our discussion of this shifting boundary

derives from understandings of Weberian categories

that have shaped organisational and social theory. For

Weber, in ‘the machinery of modernity’, ‘there is no

room for the concrete, the particular and the personal.

These are banished to the “irrational” realm of “pri-

vate life”‘(Sayer 1991: 153–4), which is associated

with the household, family, friendship and commu-

nity networks. Rationality and bureaucratic organi-

sation was not only based on calculability, hierarchy

and formal rules, but on impersonal modes of con-

duct: ‘Impersonality and the separation of the public

and private spheres distinguish bureaucracy from tra-

ditionalism’ (Pringle 2005: 286).

In this article, we will argue that social media re-

flects and amplifies the tensions associated with shift-

ing public/private boundaries, resulting in distinctive

forms of contestation in the employment relationship.

For example, employers have used social media to

access information from private digital networks that

they consider useful in selecting suitable job candi-

dates and monitor the behaviour of employees to an

extent not previously possible. Meanwhile, disgrun-

tled employees can vent their negative views and ex-

periences concerning the circumstances of their em-

ployment –often to ‘friends’ on platforms such as

Facebook– and def ameco-workers, divulge company

confidentialities, and destroy both individual and or-

ganizational reputations (Lucero et al. 2013). The

article begins by reviewing the available literature

that has addressed these emerging tensions between

employers/managers (including HR managers) and

employees around social media use in employment.

Weframe this review according to three main sources

of contestation – profiling, work-related blogs and

posts, and private use of social media in work time

– providing an account of the dynamics involved and

identifying the underlying concerns of the key actors.

The review draws on a greater than normal num-

ber of non-standard or ‘grey’ literature such as online

media sources, websites of law firms and workplace

consultants, conference papers, and reports and work-

ing papers. This is a reflection of both a relatively

new field at an early stage of development and one in

which emergent areas of discussion about workplace

boundary issues are prominent in public, policy and

legal discourses. These usefully provide recent illus-

trative examples of contestation, supplementing and

complementing peer-reviewed scholarship.

In the later sections of the article, we propose ex-

planations for these emerging forms of contestation

and we argue for why they are distinctive. In partic-

ular, we suggest that such tensions are illustrative of

wider patterns of shifting and blurring public/private

boundaries in organisational life, whichare made pos-

sible, in part, through the ‘instrumentalisation of sub-

jectivity’ (Flecker and Hofbauer 1998). We take as

one starting point Ackroyd and Thompson’s (1999)

conception of work, time, effort and identity as ter-

rains in which employment relations actors seek to

appropriate scarce resources, generating patterns of

contestation and misbehaviour.This lens facilitates an

exploration of patterns of continuity and change in the

domains in which the dynamic ‘interplay of interests

and identities’ of the actors in the employment rela-

tionship unfolds. It will be argued that contemporary

forms of social media provide a space for a nexus of

conduct (Allred 1999) where employer and employee

actions that (re)shape the boundaries between pub-

lic and private spheres meet in characteristic forms of

work/place contestation. We further propose that such

forms of contestation are distinctive because whilst

employers and employees are using the same social

technologies, unlike traditional terrains such as effort

and time, their concerns about and points of entry

to these technologies are asymmetric. The empirical

and theoretical territory covered in the article offers

insights into a number of important dimensions of em-

ployment relations, including the appropriate extent

of codification and direction of employee behaviour

by employers; issues of employment regulation and

protection; and how creeping changes to workplace

norms may impact on reasonable expectations of pri-

vacy and the intensification of work. Finally, direc-

tions for future research in the area are proposed.

Sources of contestation related

to social media

The literature has identified an array of circumstances

in which social media use has led to contestation in

employment relationships. These tensions have been

discussed predominantly from a legal perspective,

with a relativepaucity of empirical or theoretical work

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