Business and Social Media

940 Words2 Pages

Brian Dunn the CEO of Best Buy learned a difficult lesson using social media as a communication tool (Robbins, Decenzo, & Coulter, 2013). What started as a great tool to communicate with his employees turned into a disaster. Brian Dunn’s twitter account was hacked by someone logging on as him and sent inappropriate messages to all his connections. These devastating incidents can ruin companies and cause employees to question their leadership. Problems with social media can be as small as a miss spelled word, to a customer posting negative comments about a company for the world to read. Additional concerns are employee’s usage during work hours causing lack of productivity (Calvasina, Calvasina, & Calvasina, 2013). Also, employee could be using social media while driving a company vehicle, or defame an individual, and or use it for insider trading. Secondly, social media can be a platform for disgruntled employees to voice their issues, or publicize company trade secrets. These are all very real concerns for companies and their legal counsel. In addition to the concern over current employees causing problems with social media usage, internally it can be a danger. In some cases, potential applicants are being asked to provide their passwords to enable a possible future employer into their personal accounts. This violation of privacy opens up huge legal implications for companies, especially when done during a hiring process. If an applicant is not hired and the applicant can prove it was due to something on their social media accounts, this could cause a company large sums of money to settle claims or battle them out in the court system. When a company is using social media to communicate with thei... ... middle of paper ... ...and our company has gained new patients on the positive reviews. Overall, social media is a very positive influence for companies and employees. Information can be gained so quickly compared to a few decades ago. It has made our world a smaller place and that is good for all of us. Doing business globally was impossible before and now it is the norm. Our children are gaining access to the world and information that we never dreamt would happen when we were children. References Calvasina, G. E., Calvasina, R. V., & Calvasina, E. J. (2013). Protected concerted activity under the national labor relations act and employee use of social media: Policy and practice issues for employers. Business Studies Journal, 5(2), 59-67. Robbins, S. P., Decenzo, D. A., & Coulter. M. (2013). Fundamentals of Management (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

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