The effect of employees’ hierarchical position and the type of social networking site on outsiders’ social evaluation of employees who engaged in online ambassadorship for a criticised organisation. A quantitative study.

The increase of digital technologies has led to a rising number of employees using social media for work-related purposes, for instance, by performing electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and talking about their company online. Thereby, they act as online brand ambassadors representing their company to their followers. Consequently, employees – who are seen as highly authentic and trustworthy ambassadors of companies – play an important role in companies’ social media strategies and reputation. However, such behaviours can have negative consequences as online ambassadorship behaviours by employees are likely to be socially evaluated by outsiders. The perceived morality, sociability, and competence of employees is rated and especially, employees who perform eWOM for a criticised company are likely to be evaluated harshly. When a company is behaving unethically and thereby transgressing moral norms, these negative values can spill-over to the employees who identify with their company online and affect their social evaluation by outsiders. This research aims to add clarity to this topic by studying the influence of two variables on the social evaluation of employees who perform eWOM for a criticised organisation: the level of hierarchy and the social networking site (SNS). Therefore, an experiment with 200 participants has been conducted which compares how a CEO and a subordinate are evaluated and if the platform on which the eWOM has occurred influences the social evaluation. The results demonstrate that the hierarchy level does not significantly influence the social evaluations of morality and sociability but show a significant positive effect of hierarchy on competence. More precisely, CEOs who engaged in online ambassadorship for a criticised organisation are assigned more competence than subordinates. Moreover, the type of SNS does not have a significant influence on morality and sociability but on competence, as employees who posted on Facebook are assigned less competence than on LinkedIn. Last, the interaction effect of hierarchy level and type of SNS was tested but did not show any significant effects on morality, sociability, or competence.