**4. Theoretical propositions on OCR in CoSNPs**

To understand the phenomena of OCR in CoSNPs, we must understand; (1) the stages through which OCRs develop and (2) classify the factors that influence these relationships. With these two aspects, organisations can better build and utilise OCR for co-created outcomes. The theoretical propositions developed are based on the theoretical perspectives of the ecological systems and empirical evidence on SNPs and organisation-public relationships.

### **4.1 The three key stages in building OCR: emergence, growth, and collapse**

Previously, in paragraph 2.2.2, we identified three important stages in community cultivation, which we now draw on to define three stages of OCR. When launching community engagement, organisations initiate and attract involvement and participation from the community, which indicates the *emergence* of OCR. Progressively, the community may grow and serve a purpose for community members and the organisation. The organisation will guide its community through purpose and structured content towards individual contributions for co-created outcomes, and we anticipate that OCR function productively to achieve those outcomes. Such productive functioning relationships indicate the *growth* of OCR. However, growing a community does not sustain it over time. Thus, organisations will need a purpose roadmap to redefine their relations with the community [41], or the relationship may *collapse*. A "purpose is a specific and meaningful reason for collaboration that will motivate members of a community to interact and contribute" ([41], p. 80). OCR should be redefined in purpose, or they will fizzle. Nonetheless, SNP-enabled collaborative activities (such as co-creation) will not produce anything of value without a clear purpose, positive value perceptions of SNPs, organisational culture, systems, processes, and policies for relations and community functioning [41].

Looking at the four basic features that drive interaction and relations on SNPs – likes, shares, comments and posts [10], posting content, inviting and accepting follower requests, receiving and offering feedback facilitates the emergence of OCR. Such relationships grow with increasing likes, comments, and replies, steering two-way communication and community feedback. Relationships may also grow as followers respond to event notifications and requests for collective action. However, they may collapse, die, disappear, become unproductive, or be refined in purpose into renewed relationships. NPOs are often faced with collapsing or unproductive relationships when they use SNPs [10, 15], but rebuilding those relationships remains a huge challenge that is worthy of consideration [68]. Learning from the communitycultivation cycle and the basic modes of interaction on SNPs, **Figure 1** below illustrated the core stages that one should expect when building OCR on CoSNPs.

**Figure 1** adds to existing studies on OCR on SNPs, such as Namisango and Kang [45], Qin and Men [46], and Sisson [25], by articulating three stages of relationship building that could guide relationship planning and strategy. Additionally, this

*Building Organisation-Community Relationships in Co-Creative Social Networking Platforms… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99732*

**Figure 1.** *Three stages in building OCR on CoSNPs.*

chapter examines what influences the emergence, growth, and collapse of OCR on CoSNPs based on the organisation's ecological system. The ecological systems perspective allows us to classify and understand the multi-level influences of organisational relationships. Recognising the different levels involved allows the organisation to understand the priority areas and to respond to these influences efficiently and effectively.

## **4.2 Ecological system influences on OCR in CoSNPs**

Using the ecological systems perspective, empirical studies on social media use in NPOs, and public relations literature, we develop propositions of the multi-level factors influencing the OCR on CoSNPs.

The microsystem is internal and includes organisational characteristics, resources, and capabilities. Organisational leadership drives decisions about SNPs, co-creation activities, and resources. Equitable resource allocation facilitates relationship management [23] and the organisation's resource width influences the formation of multiplex ties (S. [69]). Organisational dynamic capabilities, such as technology and relational capabilities, enable relationships for co-creation [30]. Other capabilities, such as the adaptive capability, allow the organisation to sense opportunities and reconfigure resources to respond to environmental dynamism [70]. Adaptiveness also improves the ability to utilise SNP opportunities for service co-creation [40].

Also, organisational culture plays a key role because it manifests in its social media governance, management support for SNPs, and recognising of SNPs as valuable rather than risky [70]. While the perception of benefit improves SNP outcomes, perception of security risks inhibits anticipated outcomes [71]. The social media policies and strategy balance the privacy concerns against high interactivity, and the latter is known to facilitate social media use and success [63]. Privacy concerns are common risks associated with SNPs, and these prompt users to control their interactions with others. Privacy concerns present a social issue and therefore shape online interactions [72] and could undermine relationship growth and result in relationship failure [13]. The challenge for organisations is to find ways to preserve privacy while promoting productive and long-lasting OCR. The nonprofit sector has a complex stakeholder portfolio (i.e. multiple publics or audiences) that includes donors, volunteers, consumer communities of nonprofit services

[58, 73] and often organisations are expected to meet the service expectations for all stakeholders [61].

**Proposition 1:** *Microsystem relates to the organisation's internal influences ranging from its characteristics to capabilities. These will include organisational characteristics, leadership, culture, social media strategy, dynamic capabilities, absorptive capacity, and adaptiveness to technological and dynamic environments. Organisational characteristics and leadership will facilitate the emergence of OCR, while its culture, resources and capabilities will facilitate the growth or collapse of its relationships.*

At the mesosystem, influential factors are mainly relational and shared between the online community and the organisation. This implies that such influences could be community-driven or organisation-oriented but are based on either entity's evaluation of the interaction or relationship. These influences will include a sense of control mutuality, relationship trust, relational commitment, satisfaction, and perceived benefit. Control mutuality is the degree to which actors can influence relational goals and routines [74]. A sense of control mutuality is critical for relational stability [74] and improves the organisation's ability to achieve the intended benefits in social media relationships [25]. Additionally, trust or distrust, relational satisfaction and relational commitment drive OCR [24]. Relational commitment is the extent to which parties involved in a relationship believe it is worth spending time and energy to maintain the relationship [75]. On the other hand, relational satisfaction is the extent to which the parties feel that their expectations are met [75].

Nonetheless, ideal relationships and patterns of interaction are essential for co-creation in SNPs [13]. Relationship types that offer win-win situation – such as communal, covenantal, and exchange, could build trust and relational satisfaction, thus promote the growth of OCR. From a technological perspective, privacy concerns often influence online interaction and relationships [13, 72] and ultimately affect social capital needs [76]. Also, social media conversation is key. When organisations tweet topics of interest to audiences and replies to followers, they tend to attract interconnected, decentralised and reciprocal networks [59]. Also, related to trust issues and the uncertainties of the online setting, people will want to interact and collaborate with organisations they consider socially legitimate [77].

**Proposition 2:** *Mesosystem influences relate to organisation-public interaction on Co-SNPs, and these are primarily relational factors shared between the organisation and its online community. Such influences will include patterns of interaction, types of relationships, relational commitment, benefits and satisfaction, trust, control mutuality, social media conversation, privacy concerns, and social legitimacy. Since mesosystem factors are interaction-oriented influences, they will affect the growth and collapse of OCR rather than the emergence of OCR; but social legitimacy will influence the emergence of OCR.*

Sectoral and industry drivers of exosystem influences and may often not directly affect OCR in CoSNPs. Community demands and expectations, community orientation, social capital, market dynamics, beliefs and regulations, and social media diffusion are important influencers at the sector level. Community orientation relates to the concept of market orientation in business firms [78, 79] and NPOs [61]. Community orientation reflects the degree to which an organisation generates intelligence and responsiveness on a specific community group's current and future needs and the forces that affect that group, e.g., women in entrepreneurship or youth employment program. Communities expect NPOs to be responsive to social

#### *Building Organisation-Community Relationships in Co-Creative Social Networking Platforms… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99732*

service needs; but, achieving value and meeting service expectations of multiple stakeholders are visibly challenging [73] but important in fostering stronger community relationships.

Alternatively, SNPs are recognised as an avenue for maintaining and solidifying existing offline relationships [80, 81]. SNPs, therefore, strengthen relational capital [82], structural [80, 81] and cognitive capital [83]. They also build a sense of connectedness, increase members knowledge of others, which facilitates reciprocity and trust and creates opportunities for collective action [84]. Norms of reciprocity and trust often result in productive relationships [50, 60].

**Proposition 3:** *Exosystem influences relate to the sector or industry dynamics, which include community demands, community orientation, social capital, and industry or sectoral characteristics, beliefs and regulations, and social media diffusion with the sector. These will indirectly influence the emergence, growth, and collapse of OCR in CoSNPs through the mesosystem (P2) and microsystem (P1).*

Under the macrosystem, countrywide ICT laws and regulations, global advances in social media, socio-cultural systems, and environmental dimensions, i.e., capacity, complexity, dynamism, internet adoption, and political and socio-economic factors, are reported. The socio-cultural system is a set of large-scale beliefs, values, and norms as forces within society that support the formation of social structures. The socio-cultural system presents multiculturalism, diversity, individualism, or collectivism; moreover, multiculturalism and diversity influence social cohesion [85]. Cohesive relationships foster a sense of connectedness between individuals or groups, strengthening the social network [86]. In SNPs, cohesiveness fosters communal and symbiotic relationships [45], and such relationships could drive co-creation [13]. Moreover, national cultures will influence organisational culture and ultimately shape social media adoption and use [87].

Country-wide internet adoption promotes emerging technologies such as SNPs [88]. Emerging technologies create many social affordances that promote, threaten, or constrain relationships [89]. Internet evolution may decrease, transform, or supplement a community [89]. Similarly, studies [13] have noted several types of SNP affordances for OCR, but technologies not only afford but also constrain outcomes. Therefore, advances in SNPs may promote or constrain OCR in CoSNPs. Also, environmental capacity, complexity and dynamism, influence organisational structures; for instance, environment dynamism heightens uncertainty [66, 67]. Such environmental dimensions also affect the organisation's technology capability [67]. Environmental capacity is the extent to which the environment can support the flow of relational resources for the sustained growth of OCR. Environmental complexity, on the other hand, means the extent of heterogeneity and variation in relational activities enabling OCR. Environmental dynamism relates to the absence of patterns and the unpredictability of change. In other cases, country-level factors such as internet adoption, human development, and ICT laws and regulations facilitate the adoption and use of social networking systems [88, 90].

**Proposition 4:** *Macrosystem influences relate to the countrywide or global environment. Such influences emanate from the socio-cultural system, environmental capacity, complexity and dynamism, political and socio-economic factors, ICT laws and regulations, internet adoption and advances in social media. They will indirectly influence OCR but directly influence the exosystem (P3), such as industry regulations, market dynamics, and social media diffusion. They are also likely to influence the microsystem (P1), particularly organisational culture, strategic focus, and dynamic capabilities.*

#### **Figure 2.**

*An ecological system based model of factors influencing OCR in CoSNPs.*

#### **Figure 3.**

*Strength of influences between ecological systems surrounding OCR in Co-SNPs.*

The propositions on multi-level influences of OCR in CoSNPs are visually summarised in the model below. The model provides a basis for examining and predicting OCR on CoSNPs.

The model in **Figure 2** presents the proposed scope of factors that influence the emergence, growth, and collapse of OCR in CoSNPs. For each of the four ecological systems, we derive a proposition that identifies the factors involved and the nature of influences anticipated, i.e., direct or indirect influences on other ecological systems and OCR. The microsystem and mesosystem will directly influence OCR (that is why the OCR dashed box appears in both system boxes in **Figure 2**). The exosystem and macrosystem will indirectly influence OCR through their influences on the meso and microsystems. Certain microsystem and mesosystem influences are more apparent at a given stage of the relationships. For instance, organisational characteristics and leadership (at microsystem level) and social legitimacy (at mesosystem level) would influence the emergence of OCR than their growth. In contrast, patterns of interaction (at the mesosystem level) would influence the growth and collapse of OCR. Such potential differences have been pointed out in the propositions provided above. We also considered how strong these influences could be when examined in a path model (see **Figure 3** below).

Based on the studies in **Table 1**, the effects observed varied in strength and between contexts. Using **Figure 3**, we summarise the potential strength of influences proposed in P1 to P4. Arguably, the micro and meso systems are directly involved in the cycle of OCR on Co-SNPs and will strongly influence these

*Building Organisation-Community Relationships in Co-Creative Social Networking Platforms… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99732*



#### **Table 1.**

*Deducing ecological system-based influences for OCR in CoSNPs.*

relationships (*a* and *b*). Online communities present a range of interaction influences that may strongly influence OCR. Still, such factors may not necessarily reshape the organisation and thus have weak influences on the microsystem (*c*). National (macrosystem), industry, and sectoral (exosystem) factors will strongly influence organisational structures, processes, and other value-creating activities because they provide the organisation's external operating environment (*d* and *e*). Sector-wide aspects may not strongly affect online communities except for community-oriented factors such as community demand and expectations, community orientation, and organisational visibility, reputation, or recognition in that sector. Therefore, the exosystem would have a weak influence on the mesosystem (*f*). National and global aspects shape the functioning of sectors. Hence, the macrosystem factors in this context will strongly influence the exosystem (*g*); however, the influence could be weaker on the mesosystem (*h*). The weak influence would be because only a few influences such as advances in social media, internet adoption, and socio-cultural systems could influence organisation-public interaction (mesosystem).

### **5. Discussion and implications of the study**

While many studies have indicated the need for organisations to build OCR, they rarely explain how these relationships can be cultivated nor their influencing factors. This study proposes an OCR analysis, particularly in CoSNPs, driven by an ecological systems assessment. Such an assessment extends beyond the organisation, individual, and community who are the central actors in CoSNPs. The chapter delves into the factors that could influence OCR in CoSNPs, and such factors have been categorised based on four layers of the ecological system.

This chapter pursued two overall objectives. The first objective was to determine the stages of OCR cultivation in CoSNPs. We indicate that the cultivation of OCR in CoSNPs can be traced in three stages, similar to community cultivation. First is the emergence of OCR, which relates to connection and initiation of community relationship defined by purpose. Second is the growth of OCR fostered by *Building Organisation-Community Relationships in Co-Creative Social Networking Platforms… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99732*

guiding the interaction and achieving the purpose of relationships. Lastly, OCRs will collapse after achieving their purpose when organisations do not redefine future activities.

The second objective was to develop a multi-level analysis of the factors influencing OCR in CoSNPs based on the four ecological systems, including the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem.

The microsystem forces are *organisational* and emerge from organisational structures, processes, and capabilities, while mesosystem forces are *interactional* and emerge from organisation-public interaction on the platforms. At the micro-level, organisations should focus on the organisation's nature, resources, capabilities, and leadership. At the same level, the organisational culture and strategic emphasis are vital. At the meso level, interactions, relationships, and networks are central points of reference, while social media conversations amidst concerns about privacy and social legitimacy influence organisational networks. Mesosystem influences may have a direct but moderate to weak influence on organisational structures, process and capabilities (microsystem). However, focusing solely on the microsystem and mesosystem forces overlooks broader environmental dynamics, which are vital in the functioning of communities and organisations [66].

The exosystem and macrosystem present broader environmental forces that indirectly influence OCR on CoSNPs through the meso and microsystems. The exosystem forces are *sectoral* or industry dynamics reflected in the nature of the industry and its operations in the offline environment. Such influences will relate to social capital resources at a sectoral level, such as the nature of partners and alliances in service delivery, community demand, orientation, and market dynamics, organisational representations, as well as technical considerations such as the diffusion of social media technology in that sector. On the other hand, the macrosystem forces are *national* or global, emerging from the greater operating environment. They constitute socio-cultural contexts, environment capacity, complexity, dynamism, countrywide internet adoption and global advances in social media, national ICT laws and regulations, and the political and socio-economic forces such as human development. Macrosystem factors naturally influence the exosystem causing sector-wide effects; but, they will indirectly influence the meso and microsystems. It is also possible that macrosystem factors (such as socio-cultural contexts, socio-economic factors, and advances in social media technology) will directly influence the organisation as a microsystem, particularly its culture, resources, and capabilities.

The first managerial implication is that CoSNPs offer several capabilities such as conversation, collaboration, networking, and ideation that allow NPOs to co-create services through co-ideating, co-promoting, co-evaluating, and co-delivery [30]. Such service co-creation activities are facilitated by the nature of OCR and the capabilities of SNPs. Still, the emergence, growth and collapse of OCR on SNPs are associated with several environmental forces. Recognising the role of the ecological system in different operations of the social sector promotes shared values and improved collective impact [101]. Collective impact "does not, of course, require that all participants do the same things. Instead, diverse stakeholders engage in mutually reinforcing activities" ([101], p. 8). Participants engage in voluntary and independent contributions to achieve collaborative outcomes [41].

Secondly, OCRs emerge, grow, and collapse. OCR will organically emerge when the organisation creates a social media presence, initiates interaction, and defines a co-creative focus. However, such relationships will grow by guiding the community through a defined co-creative activity and showing progress towards co-created outcomes. OCR will potentially collapse when the goal is achieved; hence, organisations must redefine the purpose of interaction (a new form of co-creation) for

the SNP community. Based on the patterns of interaction on the platform, OCR will emerge in different types, and these can be defined based on how resources are exchanged between the organisation and the community. Organisations must pay attention to the quality of these relationships reflected by commitment, trust, satisfaction, control mutuality, and mutual service benefits. Such relational elements will shape the growth of current service relationships and define future relationships. The growth and collapse of OCR rely on relational outcomes and organisational dynamics such as organisational resources and capabilities dedicated to building community relationships on CoSNPs. Other organisational factors will include organisational policies and culture around the use of CoSNPs. Besides the organisational aspects, online settings raise privacy and social legitimacy questions that often undermine relational and network prospects.

Lastly, OCR in CoSNPs, not only emerge, grow, and die because of organisational and interactional influences, but also the seemingly distant sectoral, national, or global forces. Inherently, these provide the operative environment for organisation and interactions. Organisations should consider social beliefs running in the offline communities and how they affect interactions in CoSNPs. Organisations should also consider promoting shared beliefs and values with target communities, establishing sectoral based social capital (i.e., partnerships and alliances), and using CoSNPs community intelligence to identify and respond to service needs. Other studies [58] have emphasised the need for organisations to meet stakeholder needs, consider stakeholders as partners, consider a stakeholder-oriented approach, and continuously review their relationships. NPO practitioners must recognise that running a funding model (as opposed to a business model) may attract a different set of sociocultural, political, and socio-economic issues in co-creative activities, SNPs use, and OCR. Nonetheless, understanding advances in social media and the complexities, capacity, and dynamism will be key in building OCR. These issues could imply that CoSNPs may not function uniformly across all contexts (e.g., countries).
