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Conference Proceedings © 2012 – ISBN: 978-979-15458-4-6

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The 3rd International Conference on Technology and Operations Management

“Sustaining Competitiveness through Green Technology Management”
Bandung – Indonesia, July 4-6, 2012

Social Media Analysis in Performance Measurement:

Moving Toward a New Approach
Corinthias P. Morgana Sianipar1,*, Rucita Cahyawati Putri1, Dermawan Wibisono1
1
School of Business and Management (SBM) – Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB),
Jl. Ganesha 10 (Gedung SBM-ITB), Bandung 40132, Indonesia

Abstract. Many initiatives have been developed in management, i.e. employee recruitment phase, since the marketing's
adoption on social media analysis. However, rarely has social media analysis been included in the context of performance
measurement. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a conceptual framework of social media analysis in performance
measurement. Limited literatures related to both social media and performance measurement will be surveyed and combined
to develop the framework. This paper concludes that social media analysis can be treated as the base of new performance
measurement approach in terms of measuring activity of the employee by performance management team and collecting 360o
feedbacks from the relations of measured employee. By looking at limited previous efforts, this paper bring new light beyond
common understanding by using proposed framework of social media analysis as a new approach in performance
measurement.

Keywords: performance measurement, social media, employee behaviour, 360 o feedbacks

1. Introduction
Since Web 2.0 transform the internet from a static content container for the web user into an active
conversation, sharing, and collaborative content creating medium, it become new foundation of modern
communication. The terms social network media has tended to be used interchangeably with the term “Web 2.0”
[1]. The ubiquitousity of social media make it as a medium of communication which can be implemented widely
in many different place and time, so it has been frequently used in many fields. Business, of course, have
repeatedly sought to use social media for various purposes. Magnier-Watanabe, et al. [2] noted that business tend
to treat social media as a generation of technologies supporting user-driven media that enable active participation,
for business activities. Since social media has been adopted by marketing, it spreaded into many business fields.
Related to firm’s employees, social media become direct and two-way communication medium both among
employees and between employees and firm [3]. One emerging example of the use of social media is for
employers and recruiters who utilize social media to screen the candidates as part of the hiring process [4].

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +62-813-285-87187 ; http://morganasianipar.com

E-mail address: morgana.sianipar@sbm-itb.ac.id ; morgana.sianipar@gmail.com
716 C.P.M. Sianipar, R.C. Putri, and D. Wibisono – Social Media Analysis in ...

In other hand, after the employees had been hired, social media is commonly used as the communication
medium. If hiring process treat social media as a tool for screening, it means social media can also be used to
monitor employees’ activities. While the activities are monitored, management should know the picture of
interactions between each employee and the others, and should be considered as an important information source
in measuring the behavior of each employee. It can be a chance for management to do performance
measurement.
Unfortunately, there is no mature approach in treating analysis through social media as a source of
information to measure the performance of an employee. If we search among the performance measurement
theory, the nearest definition about using interaction as a source of information to do a performance
measurement is using feedbacks. The method is called 360o feedbacks. Usually performance management use
that as a popular management tool for providing feedbacks to leaders and managers [5].
Based on chance above, it should be developed a new approach to use social media as a medium to collect
feedbacks from co-workers. It should provide inputs for an employee to make changes in his/her performance
and behavior based on the results of the feedbacks. This paper aims to describe the potential use and integration
of social media in the performance measurement in terms of collecting 360o feedbacks from co-workers to
provide input for the measured employee about his/her performance. This study will answer the following
research questions:
RQ1 How social media can be the feedbacks source for employee?
RQ2 What is the conceptual framework to integrate social media in performance measurement?

2. Literature Review
2.1. 360o Feedbacks
Research has been reflected that many organizations employ some type of feedback system and that it
remains at the core of any organization’s strategic performance improvement programs [6]. Performance
feedback also has influences on career, as well as on personal and leadership development programs [7]. There
are many type of performance feedback systems, one popular and effective model is 360o feedback. That
standardized instrument is used to collect behavioral observations from self, peers, subordinates and supervisors
[8].
The primary goal in the 360-degree feedback process is to identify developmental needs of the individuals
and increase someone’s self-awareness. It was assumed that when supervisors received feedback from their co-
workers, they would make changes to their performance and behavior based on the results of the feedback they
received. Secondly, organizations felt that this type of feedback would increase communications amongst co-
workers and also build trust [9]. 360o feedback can become a powerful organizational intervention to increase
awareness of the importance of aligning leader behaviors, work unit results, and customer expectations, as well
as increasing employee participation in leadership development and work unit effectiveness [5].
In assessing and evaluating an individual, a complete circle is considered to be 360o. There are many
individuals that are important components to this feedback circle. First of all, the 360o feedback process starts
with the self-assessment, there are peers, supervisors, and subordinates that conduct the feedback. In some
feedback systems, customers or other external sources are used to assist in the evaluative process [7]. In most
360o performance feedback programs, there are four raters. It has been identified that some programs use the
assessments of customers and suppliers when applicable but most traditional forms consist of only four. These
raters are called self, peer, subordinate, and supervising raters [7,10,11].
Completing a self-assessment could assist individuals in honestly examining their performance, determining
where their strengths and weaknesses are, or validating what they are doing [7]. Feedback from subordinates was
directly related to behavior modifications that were made to facilitate these performance improvements [10].
2.2. Social Media
Several researchers show the same intention about technology investment. They [12,13,14] tend to believe
that humans –outside or inside organization– will be significantly and seamlessly connected by investing in
technology. Based on the basic nature of social media, business started to use social media in marketing [15].
The use of social media in marketing is ultimately adapted as business strategy in customer relationship
management. Then it had been followed by several initiatives in many business fields, including community
relationship management [16], recruitment campaign [4], project management [17], and supply chain
management [18,19].
Kaplan and Haenlein [20] define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the
ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-

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generated content.” Before them, Short, et al. [21] state from the perspective of social presence theory that media
differ in the degree of “social presence” they allow to emerge between two communication partners. Moreover,
social presence is influenced by the intimacy and immediacy of the medium, and can be expected to be lower for
mediated than interpersonal and for asynchronous than synchronous communications [20].
Table 1. Functional Building Blocks of Social Media. Adapted from Kietzmann, et al. [22]
Social Media Functionality
Building Blocks Implications of the Functionality
The extend to which users...
Data privacy controls, and tools for users self-
Identity ...reveal themselves
promotion
Conversation velocity, and the risks of starting and
Conversations ...communicate with each other
joining
Sharing ...exchange, distribute, & receive content Content management system and social graph
Creating and managing the reality, intimacy and
Presence ...know if others are avaliable
immediacy of the context
Managing the structural and flow properties in a
Relationships ...relate each other
network of relationships
...know the social standing of others and Monitoring the strength, passion, sentiment, and
Reputation
content reach of users and brands

Groups ...are ordered or form communities Membership rules and protocols

Social media is an ubiquitous technology which is built by seven functional building blocks. The blocks
make social media analysis as the complete picture of the personal relationship. There are seven functional
building blocks in form of honeycomb which further explains that these building blocks are neither mutually
exclusive [22].
2.3. Theoretical Framework
The use of social media in several business area give a notion for performance management to capture the
opportunity to include it into performance measurement system. The characteristics of interactions which are
connected between colleagues to the measured employee should be understood based on seven functional
building blocks of social media. The interactions should be seen from 360o perspective to get the complete
picture of an employee by using feedbacks. Each functional block has its own influence to the feedbacks’ cause,
so this paper will focus on how to understand the social interactions between employees and how 360-degrees
feedbacks can be collected through social media as the the input to do performance measurement.

Fig. 1: Theoretical Framework

3. Methodology
Since Web 2.0 transform the internet from a static content container for the web user into an active
conversation, sharing, and collaborative content creating medium, it become new foundation of modern
communication. The terms social network media has tended to be used interchangeably with the term “Web 2.0”
[1]. The ubiquitousity of social media make it as a medium of communication which can be implemented widely
in many different place and time, so it has been frequently used in many fields. Business, of course, have
repeatedly sought to use social media for various purposes. Magnier-Watanabe, et al. [2] noted that business tend
to treat social media as a generation of technologies supporting user-driven media that enable active participation,
for business activities. Since social media has been adopted by marketing, it spreaded into many business fields.

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4. Discussion
4.1. Social Media, Social Bridge, and Feedbacks Flow
Interactions through social media have very unique characteristics. They are virtual but provide social
interactions. Beside offline activities, employees tend to use social media as their “second life” [23]. As their
needs to do many things through internet, social media provides direct follow up to show self-expression or just
do several sharing activities. Employees’ virtual activities should be viewed as a social bridge among them.
Employees started to use social media as an ubiquitous technology to connect each of them with the other
employees or may be outsiders. Therefore, social media can be the feedbacks source for the measured employee.

Fig. 2: Social Media, Social Bridge, and Feedbacks Flow

Social interactions which are provided through social media are consist seven facets. The facets are caused
by functional building blocks of social media. Social bridge between two employee is exist in two-ways. The
continuous interactions between them develop the social bridge to be more complete in providing feedbacks.
Although the social bridge is exist in two-ways, feedbacks should be captured as one-way flow. It is important to
separate the reverse influence of feedbacks flow from measured employee to the co-workers. The separation
need to be done to produce a clear measurement and avoid negotiation among employees.
4.2. Conceptual Framework
In doing a performance measurement through 360o feedbacks in social media, firm should understand the
facets of interactions in the social bridge in social media itself. The identity facet explain how the measured
employee is revealed by the co-workers. The facet provides measurement of an employee related to the self-
informations which are given to the co-workers. Conversation facet provides feedbacks based on the velocity of
conversations between co-workers and measured employee. It should explain informations in terms of
calculating communication level among them, how good they cooperate when they are joined in a team, etc.
Next facet, sharing, should measure the sharing level of the measured employee to the co-workers, whether the
employee’s willingness to share his/her knowledge is high or low. Furthermore, presence facet will provide
feedbacks related to the quality of measured employee in managing the real jobs, wheter he’she is exist in the
fields or just sit in the back of the table. In terms of managing network in the assigned jobs, relationship facet
should provide measurement about how good the measured employee maintain his/her network to the co-
workers in assigned jobs to reach the job successfulness. Reputation facet need to be measured to provide
feedbacks about how the measured employee can master the situation and read the weaknesses and strengths of
people around so he/she can put him/herself appropriately in the assigned jobs. The last facet, group, will
provide information of how the measured employee tend to form group with several co-workers and seperate
him/herself from the other employees. Each facet have its way to explain the performance of an employee, so the
performance management should develop the appropriate method to measure them based on the needs of the
performance measurement system.
Because the interaction among measured employee and each co-worker is unique, the result of the feedbacks
will have differences if the performance management collect feedbacks from different co-workers who have
different connection “path” or “distance”. Path means that the connection between a peer/supervisor/subordinate
to the measured employee should be understood from the perspective of structural way. The path can be seen
from organizational structure or maybe the team structure in the assigned jobs. In other hand, distance means that

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the connection maybe near or far based on the activity of the measured employee with the co-workers. In
structural path, maybe they are in same path, but in reality their activity is mostly separated in different time or
place. Based on “path” and “distance”, the weight of feedbacks from different source can be separated to get the
complete picture of the measured employee.

Fig. 2: Proposed Conceptual Framework

5. Conclusions
Social media really changes how people connect themself to the others. The unlimited ways of connection
which come up together with the use of social media bring the fact that social media become important in
employees’ activities as another shape of interactions. The result is the social bridge through social media. In a
firm, the bridge should be captured to get an alternative source of information about each employee’s
performance. Furthermore, the measurement system should pay an attention to the characteristics of interaction
through social media. Each block from seven functional building blocks of social media provide different facet
of virtual activity. It means that the feedbacks collection method should measure from the perspective of those
seven blocks to get the complete picture of the measured employee from his/her peers, superiors, as well as
subordinates. Each facet has its different importance level based on the connection between the measured
employee and each co-worker who give the feedbacks. Because of that, feedbacks from different persons who
have different connection “distance” and “path” from the measured employee will have different influence
factors to the result of measurement.

6. Research Limitations
This paper is a part of an ongoing research designed to build a new approach in integrating social media
analysis in whole company business processes. Performance measurement for employees as one of vital point in
company internal processes should be included to know how social media can be integrated deeply into every
part of company businesses. The measurement in specific case study is still underway therefore this paper would
only able to discuss about the conceptual framework as the guidance in further research.

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7. Insights for Further Research

This study provides many insights to the researchers. Further research should apply this new approach to
specific case to see the implications. Another research may attemps to do comparison between traditional 360o
feedbacks and this new approach. In other hand, human resource researchers may develop a set of tools which
can combine traditional approach and the new approach. Researchers who have been engaged in informatics
field may be develop a new social media platform or integrate this approach to the existing social networking
sites. The integration should provides a nearly-realtime measurement using expert-system-like.

8. Acknowledgements
C.P.M.S. would like to thank Gatot Yudoko, Ph.D. for his willingness in many discussions to explore new
possibilities regarding the use of social media in the area of Operations and Performance Management expertise
group. C.P.M.S. and R.C.P. would like to acknowledge the comments and corrections from our great lecturer:
Prof. Togar Simatupang on earlier ideas of social media in management science.

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Cite this paper

Sianipar, C.P.M., Putri, R.C., and Wibisono, D. (2012). “Social Media Analysis in Performance Measurement: Moving
Toward a New Approach,” Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Technology and Operations
Management: Sustaining Competitiveness through Green Technology Management, Bandung–Indonesia (July 4-6), pp.
715-721. ISBN: 978-979-15458-4-6.

The 3rd International Conference on Technology and Operations Management (ICTOM)

Conference Proceedings © 2012 – ISBN: 978-979-15458-4-6