Social tools reflect a somewhat different set of cultural and social ideas, they are less hierarchical and have less presumption about who needs to share information with whom, and they push the authority much lower down the organization

– Charles Armstrong, CEO of Social Analytics provider Trampoline Systems

The new decade of the 21st Century has been undermined by the oppressive force of the internet, most notably, its emperor – Social Media. More companies are starting to incorporate its use into management systems hoping for rapid, effective, communication results. The question then arises, will Social Media be a friend or foe to the fine lined structure of a business?

Austin’s: “Internal resistance to social and collaboration support initiatives grows as an exponential function of the number of employees, where the exponent is the number of hierarchy levels in the organisation.”

From the suggestive theory of Austin, it is evident that social collaboration itself is not the reason for malfunction in communication, rather, it is the people’s unwillingness to utilize its platform.

Often, employees are reluctant to share opinions in a online social pool since the CEO will likely be reading it. Other times, heated online debates about problems that cannot be resolved by the organization will cause the company to turn off social collaboration altogether.

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