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Developing Social Leadership: Cultural and Technological Influences

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From Information to Smart Society

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 5))

Abstract

The development of social leadership is triggered by the adoption of social media for internal purposes by organizations. It involves dynamics of collaborative and mutual influence between leaders and followers, and among followers themselves, mediated by social media. The aim of this paper is to analyze individual attitudes to social leadership as a function of cultural and technological factors. Using data collected from a sample (N = 178) of employees, we developed and adapted multiple item scales from a wide range of sources in the literature to assess organizational culture, information technology and social media adoption, in addition to other individual and organizational variables. Regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between these variables. What emerged was a three-dimensional model of social leadership as a positive attitude towards: shared responsibility, social media usage and direction. In particular, organizational culture strongly influenced two of these three dimensions, while the use of social media for personal purposes predicted attitudes to the use of social media in organizations.

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Acknowledgments

This paper stems from an idea originally developed within the Bicocca Training & Development Centre of the University of Milano-Bicocca.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Human Sciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Alessandra Lazazzara & Cristiano Ghiringhelli

Authors
  1. Alessandra Lazazzara
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  2. Cristiano Ghiringhelli
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alessandra Lazazzara .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Lapo Mola

  2. Department of Management and Technology, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

    Ferdinando Pennarola

  3. CeRSI Research Center in Information Systems, LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy

    Stefano Za

Appendix (Tables 6, 7, and 8)

Appendix (Tables 6, 7, and 8)

Table 6 Items wording from competing values culture instrument
Full size table
Table 7 Items wording for the extent of IT usage
Full size table
Table 8 Items wording for the extent of social media usage
Full size table

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Lazazzara, A., Ghiringhelli, C. (2015). Developing Social Leadership: Cultural and Technological Influences. In: Mola, L., Pennarola, F., Za, S. (eds) From Information to Smart Society. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09450-2_4

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