‘Use your megaphones’- Managers in the Role of Corporate Ambassadors on LinkedIn

Abstract: The primary purpose of the study is to get a deeper understanding about managers inheriting the role of corporate ambassadors on LinkedIn, and how it impacts their sense of managerial identity. One aspect of this topic is the interrogation of the blurred lines between the professional and private identities of the managers. The study was conducted in line with the qualitative research technique while following an interpretative perspective and adopting an abductive research approach. We adopted a cross-case approach to get a deeper understanding of the phenomena of corporate ambassadors and conducted eight semi-structured interviews via zoom. The theoretical perspective of our study discusses literature about identity, managerial identity, identity work, corporate ambassadorship, boundary management, and control. The study focused on these major themes in the online world of social media, mainly on LinkedIn. Besides our empirical results, findings of identity intrusion of employees working as ambassadors by Andersson (2019) and identity regulation by Alvesson & Willmott (2002) provided us with a deeper understanding of the managers’ role as corporate ambassadors and the identity work resulting from it. This study contributes to the existing literature about corporate ambassadorship on LinkedIn by examining the impact of this role on managers and their identity work with regard to normative control, boundary work and identity regulation.