- Email: [email protected]
The complexities of governing in a social media world
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The complexities of governing in a social media world Thomas G. Philpott, MBA, MHA, CHE; Julie Swettenham, MA
Abstract—The complexity of governing has increased with the Internet’s introduction of social media. Boards need to be aware of social media impact upon external stakeholder relations, as well as legal responsibilities within the organization. This paper outlines the various implications of social media that a board needs to consider. A governance framework is used to help put the issues in perspective. The conclusion is that boards need to take social media seriously and ensure that their organization has a social media risk mitigation strategy for external communications, as well as eDiscovery. Various other strategies and tactics are suggested to help boards address the challenge.
P
ublic sector health boards have a particularly complex role to play because of the politicized environment, the multiple stakeholders, the need to oversee the quality of care, safety, finance, and calls for transparency and accountability. These issues have been further complicated in the 21st century by social media. This article examines how social media is impacting or will impact boards of directors in terms of carrying out their duties as well as the proactive measures they can take. We frame the discussion in terms of the modes of governance, including the impact of the use of social media by the public, the organization, and the board itself. It concludes with some additional board-level suggestions for how organizations can react to these developments. However, we begin by putting social media into context.
SOCIAL MEDIA Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”1 By May 2011, social media sites were used by 51% of 50- to 64-year-old Americans and 33% of those over 65 years of age.2 At the time this article was written, there were innumerable social media platforms used by the public, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Blogspot. There are so many upstarts that relative neophytes, such as Tumblr and Pinterest, are already considered established.
From the Community for Excellence in Health Governance, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Corresponding author: Thomas G. Philpott, MBA, MHA, CHE, Executive Director, Community for Excellence In Health Governance c/o McGill University Health Centre, 2155 Guy Street, Suite 750.11, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (e-mail: [email protected]). Healthcare Management Forum 2012 25:62– 65 0840-4704/$ - see front matter © 2012 Canadian College of Health Leaders. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hcmf.2012.03.004
Internally, these tools are now becoming increasingly prevalent within organizations, with 33% of private sector US companies using social media– enabled communities of practice in 2010.3 There is still significant disagreement around permitting staff to use personal social media, such as Facebook. There are also many customer-facing platforms, such as Jive Software, used by Apple, Cisco, Adobe, Kaiser Permanente, and others. At the board level, an April 2011 survey conducted by KPMG found that half of those surveyed were using board portals to manage communications and documents electronically, up from 35% in 2010 and 9% in 2009. The figure is expected to have reached 70% by the time this article is published.4 Clearly, technology in the boardroom is no longer restricted to innovators. Although the advantages of adopting social media are numerous, there are also numerous changes that can be challenging for organizations. For example, information comes from a multitude of sources; the public, the staff, and the board have much more access to information; the “news” can come from anyone with limited technology savvy; controlling the message is increasingly difficult; internal documents and discussions can more easily be leaked; the quality of information is often suspect; brand management can be much more difficult in a viral world; organizing around grassroots issues is easier; a savvy organization can be proactive around this; employment is increasingly on a contractual basis and workers are increasingly telecommuting; and there are potential cost savings, as well as impacts on loyalty, cultural cohesiveness, and, eventually, organizational values. Individually, these changes are challenging. Together, they represent a revolution in social and organizational hierarchy whose impact is only just beginning to be felt. It is impossible to know what organizations will look like in 20 years, but by 2020 we expect five generations to be working side by side with 50% of the workforce being social media savvy millennials.5 Now let us turn to the role of boards.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE MODES OF GOVERNANCE Although we do not have formal prevalence statistics for the Canadian health sector, we have found, in our course of business, that health facilities across the country are
THE COMPLEXITIES OF GOVERNING IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
either considering or implementing social media technologies to increase efficiencies and transparency. The leading tool appears to be MS Sharepoint 2010 although it is also one of the more complex to implement. The use of these technologies has an impact upon organizational governance and needs to be monitored by the board. There are various models used to describe board governance. To ground our discussion, we will use a triangle framework that contains three modes of governance in which a board can be functioning: fiduciary, strategy, and generative. These modes, originated by Pointer, Orlikoff, and Chait, are ways in which a board can operate at any given time.6,7 The triangle is surrounded by the cultural values of teamwork, innovation, and trust.8 Although social media has a significant impact upon the cultural elements, we will restrict our review to the three modes.
Fiduciary The fiduciary mode requires a board to act in honesty and good faith in the best interest of the corporation for which they are legally responsible. There is a duty of loyalty and duty of care that must be considered when evaluating if a board has performed its duties.9,10 Risk management is paramount in this mode, and its capacity to execute is impacted by a board’s structure and composition. Social media impacts governance at the fiduciary level primarily in terms of community stakeholder relations and eDiscovery, a term used to describe the legal obligation of collecting and storing electronic information that may be used as evidence.11 Community stakeholder relations involve looking at social media from an external perspective. If governors lack the sophistication to use the technologies, they are at risk of making either the wrong decisions or no decisions at all when one should have been made. Examples of this have been recently seen in the United States Congress in the debates over the intellectual property and antipiracy legislation, where social media was effectively used by millions of US and non-US citizens to protest a bill proposed to defend the interests of traditional business.12 In Canada, the federal government faced a similar reaction with the increased rights to Internet user information it was seeking through Bill C-30.13 Although these are legislative debates, they can also be taken as early indicators to health boards of the potential consequences of misunderstanding or underestimating the power of social media. This is especially true of public sector organizations in which citizens feel they have a right to contest the leadership of those in power, including boards. Organizations can expect to see this through an increased use of social media, such as Facebook groups, to organize activities. A board’s obligations around social media data management should not be underestimated. In February 2012, Forbes media published a piece entitled The Next Governance
Frontier: Social Media.14 The author argued that social media usage represented a significant board-level risk in terms of information governance and eDiscovery litigation, which involves the use of information exchanged in an electronic format. This new development, similar to the issues surrounding e-mail implementation in the 1990s, requires a new set of policies and procedures around the usage, collection, and preservation of social media content.
Strategic Returning to our external stakeholders, this time from a strategic perspective, a community relations strategy is essential for any organization. It will help define the objectives, roles, responsibilities, and risk mitigation strategies for an organization. Incorporated into this plan, there needs to be a social media strategy. This strategy will help define who and how social media will be used, including, for example, setting up a Facebook presence and the governance that will apply to those that manage it. Objectives can include using social media to gain insights into how their organization is perceived and the patient/client experience and test the community’s reaction to new programs being considered. An possible objective is to increase transparency because it can provide a defence against social media attacks. Each objective will then have its associated risks. For example, a Facebook account where anyone can post can create trust and increase community engagement, but it can also lead to a hijacking by an activist group. How will this be handled? A social media strategy will also define who is allowed in an organization to set up such a presence. Can each department set one up? What about department chiefs conducting fundraising for pet projects? Will an organization view this positively or negatively? There are many issues that need to be thought through. It is up to management to create this plan and the board to review and challenge it during a strategic planning process. We believe that social media will transform organizations from within, just as it has transformed our private relationships. A board in today’s environment needs to ensure management’s strategic planning process has adequately considered if and how to use social media technologies in the organization. This includes the selection of the technology and a rollout plan with adequate change management planning, particularly around understanding the end-user experience and what will motivate the user to employ the technology. Although organizational hierarchies will remain in place and there will remain an official leadership structure, the unofficial sources of leadership will be increasingly developed and enhanced through the use of social media in an enterprise setting. This will allow communities within and between organizations to form based upon interest, as opposed to rank or formal association. The experts will be established, over time, as much by the quality of the
Healthcare Management Forum ● Forum Gestion des soins de sante´ – Summer/Été 2012
63
Philpott and Swettenham
commentary as by any other factor. A good overview of the potential impact of this can be found in Don Tapscott’s Macrowikinomics.15 Although this has proved to be challenging for those comfortable with the status quo, it can be very empowering for the organization that understands and embraces it, greatly accelerating learning and adaptability.
Generative In the generative mode, a board adds value by bringing its diverse experience and expertise to brainstorm on the large challenges facing the organization.16 Here, social media offers some exciting prospects to a board. Up until now, the board is directing or reacting to the use of social media by others, but here the board itself can employ it. In traditional governance, there are periodic board meetings with subcommittee meetings in between, reporting findings to the board and making recommendations. This was necessary because of the limits of communications technology, which have been largely obliterated. We believe that governance as it evolves will no longer be limited to these formal, periodic meetings. Although they will still be required for fiduciary purposes, they will be increasingly supplemented by exploratory discussions on issues between meetings. This has the potential to greatly increase the quality of discussion as well as the solutions. Although some solutions to help govern in a social media environment were presented earlier, there are a few more worth mentioning.
ADDITIONAL STRATEGIES AND TACTICS Governance education Partially because of the environment of increased scrutiny social media creates, there is a greater emphasis on governors to operate at a high level. Many boards will operate with gaps in their knowledge of their various roles and responsibilities as well as techniques to operate more effectively in the various modes of governance. This often means that governance education is in order, and that resources are dedicated to improving governance on an ongoing basis. Interestingly, distance learning solutions using social media technology offer an affordable way to learn as well as be supported on an ongoing basis.
Board capabilities and competencies To boost their skills and knowledge, boards can have presentations or working sessions given by tech-savvy board members or communications staff on the various social media sites and how they might be used by the public to comment on care or other issues of interest. They can also become part of social network groups of like-minded board members, which will not only increase their comfort 64
with technology but also improve their governance knowledge. A board that has the liberty to select its members based on skills can add social media literacy to its board member selection skills matrix. Because many public sector boards are still politically appointed, the demand may have to be made to the ministry to seek members who have this skill set. In the event that no board members have this literacy, it will have to be made up for by education sessions alone.
Board portals The use of a board portal is a more powerful step. More sophisticated than e-mails or web-based document sharing technologies, such as Dropbox and Box.net a board portal is a communication and information system platform. With some platforms, a board can access a virtual agenda, created by their board administrator, with the relevant documents attached “live” to the specific agenda item. A portal has many other benefits: facilitating eDiscovery for board communications; decreases on-boarding time of new board members through easily accessible, organized, and searchable archives; decreased paper wastage; requires less staff time; and provides a secure place to use social media tools for administrative or generative governance purposes. A networked board portal can even leverage the Internet to allow board members to contact the members of other organizations that subscribe to the same service. A board portal can be developed by an organization willing to devote the resources to it or can be purchased as a service. Directors Desk, BoardVantage and Dilligent are market leaders, although more affordable solutions exist.
CONCLUSION As is often said, the board’s role is not getting any easier. On top of the increasing accountability demands of government, are the increased pressures on organizational leaders to respond to social media pressures from without and within the organization. These new pressures impact the three modes of governance in which a board operates: fiduciary, strategic, and generative. Some strategies boards can use involve overseeing the development of external and internal social media plans, board member selection and education, and the adoption of a board portal. Doing this will better enable an organization to leverage social media rather than be victim to it. It will allow an organization to better engage with the community and staff as well as increase efficiency and effectiveness. The board itself can also improve its functioning through the employment of social media. As we know, the technology is not going away; we hope that boards will see the
Healthcare Management Forum ● Forum Gestion des soins de sante´ – Summer/Été 2012
THE COMPLEXITIES OF GOVERNING IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
positive aspects of embracing the technology for the benefit of all.
REFERENCES 1. Kaplan AM, Haenlein M. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social Media. Bus Horiz. 2010;53: 59 – 68. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S0007681309001232. Accessed March 21, 2012. 2. Rozgonyi B. How gray is social networking. WiredPRWorks. September 7, 2011. Available at: http://wiredprworks.com/ social-media-marketing/how-gray-is-social-networking/#. Accessed March 21, 2012. 3. O’Leonard K. Investments in social learning. Bersin and Associates Research Bulletin. March 24, 2011. 4. Crowe K. The path towards a paperless boardroom. Corporate Board Member, first quarter 2012. Available at: http://www. boardmember.com/The-Path-Toward-a-Paperless-Boardroom. aspx. Accessed March 21, 2012. 5. Meister JC. Managing a Multigeneration Team. Available at: http://2020workplace.com/blog/. Accessed March 21, 2012. 6. Chait RP, Ryan WP, Taylor BE. Governance and Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards. 1st ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons; 2004. 7. Orlikoff JE, Pointer DD. Board Work: Governing Health Care Organizations. 1st ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons; 1999. 8. Nininger JR, Swettenham J. Governance development Program: The Health Governors’ Foundation series. The Commu-
9. 10. 11.
12.
13.
14.
15. 16.
nity for Excellence in Health Governance. January 19, 2012. Available at: http://learning.myhealthboard.ca/. Accessed March 21, 2012. Gill MD. Governing for Results: A Director’s Guide to Good Governance. 1st ed. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing; 2005. Hansell C. What Directors Need to Know: Corporate Governance. 1st ed. Toronto, ON: Carswell; 2003. KPMG. eDiscovery services. Available at: http://www.kpmg.com/ca/ en/whatwedo/specialinterests/ediscovery-services/pages/default. aspx. Accessed March 21, 2012. Tsukayama H, Halzack S. Senators drop support of piracy bill after protests. The Washington Post. January 18, 2012. Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/ senators-drop-support-of-piracy-bill-after-protests/2012/01/18/ gIQA848M9P_story.html. Accessed March 21, 2012. Gurney M. Vic Toews should step down. National Post. February 21, 2012. Available at: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/ 2012/02/21/matt-gurney-vic-toews-should-step-down/. Accessed March 21, 2012. Murphy B. The next governance frontier: social Media. Forbes. February 28, 2012. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ barrymurphy/2012/02/28/the-next-governance-frontier-socialmedia/. Accessed March 21, 2012. Tapscott D, Williams A. Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. 1st ed. New York, NY: Penguin Group; 2010. Available at: http://www.greatboards.org/newsletter/reprints/ chait_interview.pdf. Accessed March 21, 2012.
Healthcare Management Forum ● Forum Gestion des soins de sante´ – Summer/Été 2012
65
The complexities of governing in a social media world Thomas G. Philpott, MBA, MHA, CHE; Julie Swettenham, MA
Abstract—The complexity of governing has increased with the Internet’s introduction of social media. Boards need to be aware of social media impact upon external stakeholder relations, as well as legal responsibilities within the organization. This paper outlines the various implications of social media that a board needs to consider. A governance framework is used to help put the issues in perspective. The conclusion is that boards need to take social media seriously and ensure that their organization has a social media risk mitigation strategy for external communications, as well as eDiscovery. Various other strategies and tactics are suggested to help boards address the challenge.
P
ublic sector health boards have a particularly complex role to play because of the politicized environment, the multiple stakeholders, the need to oversee the quality of care, safety, finance, and calls for transparency and accountability. These issues have been further complicated in the 21st century by social media. This article examines how social media is impacting or will impact boards of directors in terms of carrying out their duties as well as the proactive measures they can take. We frame the discussion in terms of the modes of governance, including the impact of the use of social media by the public, the organization, and the board itself. It concludes with some additional board-level suggestions for how organizations can react to these developments. However, we begin by putting social media into context.
SOCIAL MEDIA Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”1 By May 2011, social media sites were used by 51% of 50- to 64-year-old Americans and 33% of those over 65 years of age.2 At the time this article was written, there were innumerable social media platforms used by the public, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Blogspot. There are so many upstarts that relative neophytes, such as Tumblr and Pinterest, are already considered established.
From the Community for Excellence in Health Governance, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Corresponding author: Thomas G. Philpott, MBA, MHA, CHE, Executive Director, Community for Excellence In Health Governance c/o McGill University Health Centre, 2155 Guy Street, Suite 750.11, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (e-mail: [email protected]). Healthcare Management Forum 2012 25:62– 65 0840-4704/$ - see front matter © 2012 Canadian College of Health Leaders. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hcmf.2012.03.004
Internally, these tools are now becoming increasingly prevalent within organizations, with 33% of private sector US companies using social media– enabled communities of practice in 2010.3 There is still significant disagreement around permitting staff to use personal social media, such as Facebook. There are also many customer-facing platforms, such as Jive Software, used by Apple, Cisco, Adobe, Kaiser Permanente, and others. At the board level, an April 2011 survey conducted by KPMG found that half of those surveyed were using board portals to manage communications and documents electronically, up from 35% in 2010 and 9% in 2009. The figure is expected to have reached 70% by the time this article is published.4 Clearly, technology in the boardroom is no longer restricted to innovators. Although the advantages of adopting social media are numerous, there are also numerous changes that can be challenging for organizations. For example, information comes from a multitude of sources; the public, the staff, and the board have much more access to information; the “news” can come from anyone with limited technology savvy; controlling the message is increasingly difficult; internal documents and discussions can more easily be leaked; the quality of information is often suspect; brand management can be much more difficult in a viral world; organizing around grassroots issues is easier; a savvy organization can be proactive around this; employment is increasingly on a contractual basis and workers are increasingly telecommuting; and there are potential cost savings, as well as impacts on loyalty, cultural cohesiveness, and, eventually, organizational values. Individually, these changes are challenging. Together, they represent a revolution in social and organizational hierarchy whose impact is only just beginning to be felt. It is impossible to know what organizations will look like in 20 years, but by 2020 we expect five generations to be working side by side with 50% of the workforce being social media savvy millennials.5 Now let us turn to the role of boards.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE MODES OF GOVERNANCE Although we do not have formal prevalence statistics for the Canadian health sector, we have found, in our course of business, that health facilities across the country are
THE COMPLEXITIES OF GOVERNING IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
either considering or implementing social media technologies to increase efficiencies and transparency. The leading tool appears to be MS Sharepoint 2010 although it is also one of the more complex to implement. The use of these technologies has an impact upon organizational governance and needs to be monitored by the board. There are various models used to describe board governance. To ground our discussion, we will use a triangle framework that contains three modes of governance in which a board can be functioning: fiduciary, strategy, and generative. These modes, originated by Pointer, Orlikoff, and Chait, are ways in which a board can operate at any given time.6,7 The triangle is surrounded by the cultural values of teamwork, innovation, and trust.8 Although social media has a significant impact upon the cultural elements, we will restrict our review to the three modes.
Fiduciary The fiduciary mode requires a board to act in honesty and good faith in the best interest of the corporation for which they are legally responsible. There is a duty of loyalty and duty of care that must be considered when evaluating if a board has performed its duties.9,10 Risk management is paramount in this mode, and its capacity to execute is impacted by a board’s structure and composition. Social media impacts governance at the fiduciary level primarily in terms of community stakeholder relations and eDiscovery, a term used to describe the legal obligation of collecting and storing electronic information that may be used as evidence.11 Community stakeholder relations involve looking at social media from an external perspective. If governors lack the sophistication to use the technologies, they are at risk of making either the wrong decisions or no decisions at all when one should have been made. Examples of this have been recently seen in the United States Congress in the debates over the intellectual property and antipiracy legislation, where social media was effectively used by millions of US and non-US citizens to protest a bill proposed to defend the interests of traditional business.12 In Canada, the federal government faced a similar reaction with the increased rights to Internet user information it was seeking through Bill C-30.13 Although these are legislative debates, they can also be taken as early indicators to health boards of the potential consequences of misunderstanding or underestimating the power of social media. This is especially true of public sector organizations in which citizens feel they have a right to contest the leadership of those in power, including boards. Organizations can expect to see this through an increased use of social media, such as Facebook groups, to organize activities. A board’s obligations around social media data management should not be underestimated. In February 2012, Forbes media published a piece entitled The Next Governance
Frontier: Social Media.14 The author argued that social media usage represented a significant board-level risk in terms of information governance and eDiscovery litigation, which involves the use of information exchanged in an electronic format. This new development, similar to the issues surrounding e-mail implementation in the 1990s, requires a new set of policies and procedures around the usage, collection, and preservation of social media content.
Strategic Returning to our external stakeholders, this time from a strategic perspective, a community relations strategy is essential for any organization. It will help define the objectives, roles, responsibilities, and risk mitigation strategies for an organization. Incorporated into this plan, there needs to be a social media strategy. This strategy will help define who and how social media will be used, including, for example, setting up a Facebook presence and the governance that will apply to those that manage it. Objectives can include using social media to gain insights into how their organization is perceived and the patient/client experience and test the community’s reaction to new programs being considered. An possible objective is to increase transparency because it can provide a defence against social media attacks. Each objective will then have its associated risks. For example, a Facebook account where anyone can post can create trust and increase community engagement, but it can also lead to a hijacking by an activist group. How will this be handled? A social media strategy will also define who is allowed in an organization to set up such a presence. Can each department set one up? What about department chiefs conducting fundraising for pet projects? Will an organization view this positively or negatively? There are many issues that need to be thought through. It is up to management to create this plan and the board to review and challenge it during a strategic planning process. We believe that social media will transform organizations from within, just as it has transformed our private relationships. A board in today’s environment needs to ensure management’s strategic planning process has adequately considered if and how to use social media technologies in the organization. This includes the selection of the technology and a rollout plan with adequate change management planning, particularly around understanding the end-user experience and what will motivate the user to employ the technology. Although organizational hierarchies will remain in place and there will remain an official leadership structure, the unofficial sources of leadership will be increasingly developed and enhanced through the use of social media in an enterprise setting. This will allow communities within and between organizations to form based upon interest, as opposed to rank or formal association. The experts will be established, over time, as much by the quality of the
Healthcare Management Forum ● Forum Gestion des soins de sante´ – Summer/Été 2012
63
Philpott and Swettenham
commentary as by any other factor. A good overview of the potential impact of this can be found in Don Tapscott’s Macrowikinomics.15 Although this has proved to be challenging for those comfortable with the status quo, it can be very empowering for the organization that understands and embraces it, greatly accelerating learning and adaptability.
Generative In the generative mode, a board adds value by bringing its diverse experience and expertise to brainstorm on the large challenges facing the organization.16 Here, social media offers some exciting prospects to a board. Up until now, the board is directing or reacting to the use of social media by others, but here the board itself can employ it. In traditional governance, there are periodic board meetings with subcommittee meetings in between, reporting findings to the board and making recommendations. This was necessary because of the limits of communications technology, which have been largely obliterated. We believe that governance as it evolves will no longer be limited to these formal, periodic meetings. Although they will still be required for fiduciary purposes, they will be increasingly supplemented by exploratory discussions on issues between meetings. This has the potential to greatly increase the quality of discussion as well as the solutions. Although some solutions to help govern in a social media environment were presented earlier, there are a few more worth mentioning.
ADDITIONAL STRATEGIES AND TACTICS Governance education Partially because of the environment of increased scrutiny social media creates, there is a greater emphasis on governors to operate at a high level. Many boards will operate with gaps in their knowledge of their various roles and responsibilities as well as techniques to operate more effectively in the various modes of governance. This often means that governance education is in order, and that resources are dedicated to improving governance on an ongoing basis. Interestingly, distance learning solutions using social media technology offer an affordable way to learn as well as be supported on an ongoing basis.
Board capabilities and competencies To boost their skills and knowledge, boards can have presentations or working sessions given by tech-savvy board members or communications staff on the various social media sites and how they might be used by the public to comment on care or other issues of interest. They can also become part of social network groups of like-minded board members, which will not only increase their comfort 64
with technology but also improve their governance knowledge. A board that has the liberty to select its members based on skills can add social media literacy to its board member selection skills matrix. Because many public sector boards are still politically appointed, the demand may have to be made to the ministry to seek members who have this skill set. In the event that no board members have this literacy, it will have to be made up for by education sessions alone.
Board portals The use of a board portal is a more powerful step. More sophisticated than e-mails or web-based document sharing technologies, such as Dropbox and Box.net a board portal is a communication and information system platform. With some platforms, a board can access a virtual agenda, created by their board administrator, with the relevant documents attached “live” to the specific agenda item. A portal has many other benefits: facilitating eDiscovery for board communications; decreases on-boarding time of new board members through easily accessible, organized, and searchable archives; decreased paper wastage; requires less staff time; and provides a secure place to use social media tools for administrative or generative governance purposes. A networked board portal can even leverage the Internet to allow board members to contact the members of other organizations that subscribe to the same service. A board portal can be developed by an organization willing to devote the resources to it or can be purchased as a service. Directors Desk, BoardVantage and Dilligent are market leaders, although more affordable solutions exist.
CONCLUSION As is often said, the board’s role is not getting any easier. On top of the increasing accountability demands of government, are the increased pressures on organizational leaders to respond to social media pressures from without and within the organization. These new pressures impact the three modes of governance in which a board operates: fiduciary, strategic, and generative. Some strategies boards can use involve overseeing the development of external and internal social media plans, board member selection and education, and the adoption of a board portal. Doing this will better enable an organization to leverage social media rather than be victim to it. It will allow an organization to better engage with the community and staff as well as increase efficiency and effectiveness. The board itself can also improve its functioning through the employment of social media. As we know, the technology is not going away; we hope that boards will see the
Healthcare Management Forum ● Forum Gestion des soins de sante´ – Summer/Été 2012
THE COMPLEXITIES OF GOVERNING IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
positive aspects of embracing the technology for the benefit of all.
REFERENCES 1. Kaplan AM, Haenlein M. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social Media. Bus Horiz. 2010;53: 59 – 68. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S0007681309001232. Accessed March 21, 2012. 2. Rozgonyi B. How gray is social networking. WiredPRWorks. September 7, 2011. Available at: http://wiredprworks.com/ social-media-marketing/how-gray-is-social-networking/#. Accessed March 21, 2012. 3. O’Leonard K. Investments in social learning. Bersin and Associates Research Bulletin. March 24, 2011. 4. Crowe K. The path towards a paperless boardroom. Corporate Board Member, first quarter 2012. Available at: http://www. boardmember.com/The-Path-Toward-a-Paperless-Boardroom. aspx. Accessed March 21, 2012. 5. Meister JC. Managing a Multigeneration Team. Available at: http://2020workplace.com/blog/. Accessed March 21, 2012. 6. Chait RP, Ryan WP, Taylor BE. Governance and Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards. 1st ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons; 2004. 7. Orlikoff JE, Pointer DD. Board Work: Governing Health Care Organizations. 1st ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons; 1999. 8. Nininger JR, Swettenham J. Governance development Program: The Health Governors’ Foundation series. The Commu-
9. 10. 11.
12.
13.
14.
15. 16.
nity for Excellence in Health Governance. January 19, 2012. Available at: http://learning.myhealthboard.ca/. Accessed March 21, 2012. Gill MD. Governing for Results: A Director’s Guide to Good Governance. 1st ed. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing; 2005. Hansell C. What Directors Need to Know: Corporate Governance. 1st ed. Toronto, ON: Carswell; 2003. KPMG. eDiscovery services. Available at: http://www.kpmg.com/ca/ en/whatwedo/specialinterests/ediscovery-services/pages/default. aspx. Accessed March 21, 2012. Tsukayama H, Halzack S. Senators drop support of piracy bill after protests. The Washington Post. January 18, 2012. Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/ senators-drop-support-of-piracy-bill-after-protests/2012/01/18/ gIQA848M9P_story.html. Accessed March 21, 2012. Gurney M. Vic Toews should step down. National Post. February 21, 2012. Available at: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/ 2012/02/21/matt-gurney-vic-toews-should-step-down/. Accessed March 21, 2012. Murphy B. The next governance frontier: social Media. Forbes. February 28, 2012. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ barrymurphy/2012/02/28/the-next-governance-frontier-socialmedia/. Accessed March 21, 2012. Tapscott D, Williams A. Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. 1st ed. New York, NY: Penguin Group; 2010. Available at: http://www.greatboards.org/newsletter/reprints/ chait_interview.pdf. Accessed March 21, 2012.
Healthcare Management Forum ● Forum Gestion des soins de sante´ – Summer/Été 2012
65