{"id":3877,"date":"2025-07-08T15:54:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=3877"},"modified":"2025-07-08T15:54:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:54:24","slug":"professionals-must-walk-a-tightrope-on-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/professionals-must-walk-a-tightrope-on-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Professionals Must Walk a Tightrope on Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

Professionals interact in complex ways with one another on social media that we\u2019re living in. Technology is blurring the boundaries between work and home and changing the ways that peers establish relationship boundaries and how bosses communicate with colleagues.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Nancy Rothbard<\/a> of the University of Pennsylvania said that something as simple as accessing Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn on their phones all day is affecting the ways interactions and connections with people happen during\u2014and after\u2014work. The pressure to connect with clients, members, colleagues, peers, and even bosses via social media, along with expectations that say something interesting, but nothing controversial or off-putting, can create a real bind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really complicated, because on the one hand, it is a huge asset to be able to connect with these people in various ways\u2014think about your social networks and how LinkedIn and other sorts of connection technologies make sure that you\u2019re networking,\u201d Rothbard said. \u201cWe\u2019re taught that you have this low-level connection to lots of people\u2014more people than you could ever connect with personally face-to-face, so there’s lots of positives to online social media and how that connects us to other people.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there are also real risks that are associated with the boundaries that become blurred in these contexts, for example, people at work learning something about you that you don\u2019t want them to know, and they see you in a different light as a result, and you might worry about how that would reflect on you professionally,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are really uncomfortable with that across organizational hierarchy, but when they connect with people online through these technological platforms, they do expect some level of personal disclosure\u2014they don’t like it when someone doesn\u2019t ever post, because then they think that there\u2019s something wrong or that person is spying on them, if they\u2019re not disclosing anything personal about themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher Professionals interact in complex ways with one another on social media that we\u2019re living in. Technology is blurring the boundaries between work and home and changing the ways that peers establish relationship boundaries and how bosses communicate with colleagues. 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Technology is blurring the boundaries between work and home and changing the ways that peers establish relationship boundaries and how bosses communicate with colleagues. 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