The Role of Social Media for Stakeholder Involvement: A Literature Review

Social media has found its place in the digital economy. Social media tools offer easy, interactive and cost-efficient possibilities to interact with various stakeholders. Not only the mere availability of social media tools but also their implementation renders benefits to an organization. Consequently, evidence from practice indicates that social media is an appropriate way to establish stakeholder involvement; however, current research is ambiguous, lacking a comprehensive approach to social media stakeholder involvement. Thus, the question addressed targets the underlying concepts in research on social media for stakeholder involvement. Conducting a literature review based on a final sample size of 70 peer-reviewed papers, our findings deliver insight into three main research directions and nine different concepts addressed by the literature. The results may function as a starting point for further research into the field of structured stakeholder involvement.