Böcker av Anna Danielewicz-Betz

Self-Presentation and Self-Praise in the Digital Workplace presents the findings of an interdisciplinary study of the 'self-entrepreneurial self' and, in particular, the rationale behind its need to self-present under the current socio-economic and business conditions. It addresses the complex landscape of the levels, typologies, categories, triggers, as well as both internal and external factors impacting self-praise in the context of a digital workplace (with the focus on enterprise social media) and professional networking platforms. In order to reflect the complexity of the topic at hand and interconnectivity of the constructs addressed, insights from such fields as socioeconomics, sociology, social psychology (specifically identity studies), software and services (IT sector), business intelligence and business analytics, digital media communication, organisational behaviour or corporate communication are thus combined with a mixed qualitative-quantitative methodological approach utilised to provide an in-depth exploration of the evolving constructs.From the broader socio-economic perspective of hyper globalisation, the impact of the neoliberalism economy on workplace relations, and ultimately on employee behaviour, are considered first to lay the background and introduce the relevant concepts.Self-presentation and in particular self-praise are considered in their multiple forms against the backdrop of precarious work relations dictated by neoliberalism, leading, among other things, to self-exploitation, but also to putting self-interest above anything else.The focus is placed on the triggers and manifestations of the social self (how a person thinks the others perceive them) and the situational self (a person's self-image in a specific situation) in the digital workplace, where individual (cultural) values are frequently overridden by those dictated by a given corporate culture, as aligned with the prevailing market conditions. These in turn impact workplace or employee identity.This exploratory and explanatory study contributes to a rather limited number of research endeavours on self-praise, conducted within narrow disciplines and specific frameworks, with the particular research gap being a lack of studies on self-presentational and self-praise activities in the corporate environment, which can primarily be observed in the virtual context of enterprise social media (ESM) and such tools of remote communication as conference calls or collaboration software, but also on professional networking platforms. Here situational antecedents (broadly what occurred before) and the audience (with their reactions) to such self-promotional activities serve as main prerequisites, thus completing the frame of analysis.

The distinctive point of the book is its innovative interdisciplinary approach to business communication, with interconnections between linguistics, sociology, and critical organisational studies as applied to the corporate world. It offers a first-hand insight into primary business discourse with a deeper understanding and analysis of business processes and mechanisms underlying and reflected in enterprise software-mediated communication. It answers the question what 'doing business' in the digital age is about and illustrates 'business discourse' from practitioners' point of view.Grounded in the analysis of empirical data, pertaining both to internal and external business communication, the author reflects on the reality of accelerated and pressurised communication in global IT corporations. Following a communication-centred approach, this monograph puts the topic of enterprise software-mediated business discourse into a multi-layered perspective of how global corporations operate, what their primary goals are, and what kind of (political) power they execute. Moreover, it demonstrates how profit-driven corporations can be viewed and interpreted as strategically acting systems within a specific sociological framework.