Blog, Blogger, and the Firm: Can Negative Employee Posts Lead to Positive Outcomes?
Authors: Aggarwal, Rohit; Gopal, Ram; Sankaranarayanan, Ramesh; Singh, Param Vir
Journal: Information Systems Research (2012)
<jats:p> Consumer-generated media, particularly blogs, can help companies increase the visibility of their products without spending millions of dollars in advertising. Although a number of companies realize the potential of blogs and encourage their employees to blog, a good chunk of them are skeptical about losing control over this new media. Companies fear that employees may write negative things about them and that this may bring significant reputation loss. Overall, companies show mixed response toward negative posts on employee blogs—some companies show complete aversion; others allow some negative posts. Such mixed reactions toward negative posts motivated us to probe for any positive aspects of negative posts. In particular, we investigate the relationship between negative posts and readership of an employee blog. </jats:p><jats:p> In contrast to the popular perception, our results reveal a potential positive aspect of negative posts. Our analysis suggests that negative posts act as catalyst and can exponentially increase the readership of employee blogs, suggesting that companies should permit employees to make negative posts. Because employees typically write few negativ…