Paper Reading #4: Corporate Career Presences on Social Network Sites: An Analysis of Hedonic and Utilitarian Value

Corporate Career Presences on Social Network Sites: An Analysis of Hedonic and Utilitarian Value

Franziska Brecht
Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin
Spandauer Str. 1, 10178 Berlin Germany
franziska.brecht@wiwi.hu-berlin.de

Andreas Eckhardt
Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main
Gruneburgplatz 1, 60323 Frankfurt, Germany
eckhardt@wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de

Christian Berger
Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin
Spandauer Str. 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany
christian.berger@wiwi.hu-berlin.de

Oliver Gunther
Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin
Spandauer Str. 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany
guenther@wiwi.hu-berlin.de

The researchers tested to see what makes social networking sites successful in the business world. Several people participated in this study (470 people). One of the key focuses on this study was to see what hedonic and utilitarian values these social networking sites have.

The evaluations were mostly subjective and qualitative. The users would answer questions on a surveys about their experience in this test. A lot of the questions on the survey were simple yes or no. Due to the number of participants, the researchers had a wide set of data to analyze. The results showed that users enjoyed using social networking sites to find more information about a potential job. Lots of information could be available to active job seekers to get a good idea what a job is like before committing to it.

I found this work to be kind of odd. The subject matter seemed very difficult to try to quantify and study. The idea behind it isn't bad in my opinion, just difficult to study. Research has been done about social networking sites and how the play a role in businesses. While not new, I do believe the idea is still novel since it gives us a better idea as to why social networking sites are popular in the business world and why other businesses should adopt a site to use to help promote a business' recruitment.