The Mechanism Of Effects Of Informations In Personal Social Networks On Work Involvement

Original intention of this paper is thinking of the increasingly importance of the effects on social network."Social network is the same as the consensus that social network has become the pivotal force through the process of personal career development?""In what ways has the interpersonal contacts affected individual career development? How do they work?" Promoting the study on the issue derives from the interest. Based on the content of social network including information in social network, organization identification, and work engagement, this paper attempts to build a reasonable framework to clarify the mechanism--how explicit information and hidden information function on employees'work state? Therefore, it can solve the problem--how network information affects on individual occupation?The paper selects perception of organizational reputation, organizational identification, and work engagement as the variables to study basic relationship. Based on the impact from information in social network on the individual level, this study follows the basic model of "Stimulus-Information Transformation Response". Through the early theoretical research, in-depth interviews and other procedures, the impact from information in social network information is summarized as two parts:the impact from explicit information and the impact from hidden information. Explicit information is identified as all types of objective messages or subjective evaluation transferring in social network; while hidden information refers to the demonstration effect of a fine example in the interpersonal circles, regarded as external stimulus in this framework. Organizational identification and work engagement can be seen as employees' attitudes and behaviors in response to external stimulus. Perception of organizational reputation as variable precisely reflects how the individual turn external stimulus information into useful information. It is the evaluation and recognition from organizations cognitively and emotionally. The framework selected in this paper focuses on the recent research in the related fields. The main constructs of this paper, including the effect from social network information, organizational identification and work engagement, try to explain the potential relationship and mechanism among them.To ensure the study of scientific, normative, and precise, this paper combines demonstration research and normative research, integrates quantitative research with qualitative research, and joins theoretical research with applied research. On the stage of building the theoretical model, normative research is used to deduce theories. The theoretical model is give on the basis of literature review and depth interviews. On the later stage of testing hypothesis, diversiform methods for empirical analysis are used to study, which include creative design for the questionnaire on the impact from social network information, optimization for the scale on organizational identification, work engagement and perception of organizational reputation, testing the reliability of the measuring tool by using SPSS and AMOS softwares, independent sample T-test, ANOVA, the verification of the intermediary effect and model fitting analysis. There are the conclusions drawn by empirical analysis:1. Some basic characteristics of the variables appear the significant differences. That is to say, the differences originate from basic items such as gender, age, education attainment, work experience and occupation, as well as the quantity and the characteristics of the fine examples.2. Face with massive information from social network, individuals prefer social network rather than the traditional medium such as books or newspapers. Individuals are willing to pay more attention to professional-association topics and entertainment, especially when obtaining others'occupation information. As we all know,"comparison" is becoming an unavoidable way of information internalization.3. Explicit information in social network reflects objective statement and subjective evaluation about careers, such as information of industry, organization, position, salary and welfare, promotion and other aspects. This information presents by texts, languages and other ways. Explicit information in social network directly has a positive impact on work engagement. Instead of direct impact on organizational identification, explicit information has an indirect impact on organizational identification by directly influencing perception of organizational reputation. Meanwhile, work engagement has been influenced from perception of organizational reputation and organizational identification, which show the indirect effect.4. Hidden information in social network reflects the demonstration effect by propagating good examples in social network. While the demonstration effect influences individuals in an invisible way. Organizational identification is directly influenced by hidden information, while indirectly influenced by perception of organizational reputation. By directly affecting perception of organizational reputation and organizational identification, implicit information has an indirect impact on work engagement.5. There is obvious evidence that perception of organizational reputation is verified as an important intermediary variable. Meanwhile, organizational identification plays an intermediary role in the impact from perception of organizational reputation and work engagement.The expected objective has basically been accomplished by verifying the theoretical hypothesis. It proves that empirical data support the point that social network information has a pervasive influence on individuals. Meanwhile, it has clarified how explicit and hidden information affect organizational identification and work engagement.This paper has discussed the management phenomena by literature review, structured interviews, statistics, empirical analysis, and other approaches. The main contribution of the study has presented as follows:1. By a fresh perspective, we have found out how social network affects organizational identification and work engagement in individuals' career. Social network, organizational identification and work engagement have experienced a long-term trial. Numerous scholars and practitioners have studied systemically or uniquely in a certain perspective. In majority of the present research, the impact from social network has been limited in the organization. While this paper has broken the organizational boundaries, defining the social network including the individuals inside and outside the organization. Individuals own broader social network, including not only colleagues but also other interpersonal resources. Based on the above perspective, we have studied the potential relationship and mechanism among the impact from social network information, organizational identification and work engagement.2. We have redefined the content of social network, and creatively pointed out2factors:explicit information and hidden information. Dating back to1940s, research on social network arose. During the next decades, the study of social network boomed:Tichy and Tushman (1979) studied the network symmetry, mutuality, diversity and strength of the relationship; Granovetter (1973) verified the strength of the relationship in the network; Monge&Eisenberg (1987) found that information, content, emotional number, frequency and stability, continuity are important indicators to evaluate the strength of the network relationship; Suarez (2005) considered the strength of the network relationship will directly affect decision-making. Meanwhile, other scholars have also tried from the network size, density, centrality, and other indicators to determine the relationship between the openness of the network, stability, reach-ability, personal network location, and other stability structural features (Freeman,1979,1992, etc.). The present research focused on the three-dimensional network structure, such as the characteristics of social network structure, instead of explaining how social network works. Based on observing and explaining, this paper defines the content of social network and figures out the mechanism not explained before. It extends the content of the impact from social network by extracting explicit and hidden information from in-depth interviews. It enriches social network theory.3. We have firstly summarized the theory, designed the scale and do empirical testing for demonstration effect by propagating good examples in social network. Although "example" has been studied in psychology, it's just about the definition and the function by qualitative analysis. This paper has analyzed the examples' effect on individuals by quantitative analysis and empirical testing, which has never been used before. It is of great theoretical importance and practical values.4. We have found that perception of organizational reputation plays an important intermediary role in solving the problem-how to use the "stimulus-response" model to study the impact from social network information. Perception of organizational reputation functions as an important intermediary, instead of acting as same transferring variable when social network information affects the2factors in different ways. Of great theoretical importance, it has supplied the research of the antecedents.