University of Twente Student Theses
THE POLICE ON SOCIAL MEDIA : how comments by employees or organizational representatives on social media can influence trust in the organization and intention to help
Waveren, R. van (2015) THE POLICE ON SOCIAL MEDIA : how comments by employees or organizational representatives on social media can influence trust in the organization and intention to help.
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| Abstract: | Social media are very important in modern marketing and employees are encouraged to use social media in their organization’s name. If this is not done in a positive or neutral manner, negative social media messages may influence the overall trust in the organization. In the current research it is expected that a positive message about the organization (congruent with image claims) has a positive impact on trust in that organization. Also, because a single employee is more easily excluded from a trust judgment, it is expected that a low-ranking employee posting the comment has the least influence on trust in the organization. A high-ranking officer has more influence on trust. The organization as a sender has the highest influence on trust in the organization. Finally, a higher level of trust in the organization is expected to increase the intention to help the organization in doing their job. These hypotheses are tested in a 3 (Sender: individual low-ranking vs. individual high-ranking, organization) x 2 (Content: consonant vs. dissonant) between subjects experiment with the Dutch Police as an example organization. Sender and Content did not have a significant effect on either one of the trust variables. Also no interaction effect was found. Integrity and Benevolence significantly predicted Intention to help, whereas perceived Competence did not. It is discussed that the limited number of significant results can be explained by the limited number of respondents who noticed the manipulation. Also, a different view of trust in organizations as societal entities is suggested. Future research should attempt to include the assets of this research, including a realistic social media setting. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology MSc (66604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/68726 |
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