The Influence of Corporate Social Media on Firm Level Strategic Decision Making: A Preliminary Exploration

Social media engagement by business firms has been steadily on the rise, with its application extending to a range of corporate functions, beyond marketing and customer engagement, many of which can be construed as strategic. However, the potential influence of social media on strategy process or strategic decision making has scarcely been explored in strategic management literature. In addressing this gap, this paper conceptually explores the likely influence of social media on issue of strategic decision making and the mechanism of such influence, and also uses an assortment of anecdotes from practice for illustrative purposes. The authors suggest a plausible model whereby corporate social media engagement is seen to exert its influence through the three key dimensions of strategy process - environmental factors, strategists characteristics and decision issue characteristics. In particular social media engagement is conceived as ingraining knowledge creation and integration through socialization within an extended value network.