Corporate Enactments of Social Control across Social Media Affordances

Social media contributes to blurring organizational boundaries, increasing the prevalence of “boundaryless organizations.” Unable to rely entirely on managerial fiat or market prices that typically facilitate economic action, such “boundaryless organizations” pose a problem for coordinating collective action. In this study, we therefore employ a grounded theory approach to addressing the following questions: (1) What does control mean in the “boundaryless organization” enabled by social media? (2) How do social media technologies afford opportunities for enacting such controls? In addressing these questions, we build on and contribute to extant literature on social control and social media affordances and provide an analysis of texts describing thirty-four corporate initiatives involving social media.