Corporate blogs evaluation using corporate leadership discourse and followers' characteristics

Although some studies have analyzed corporate blogging, very little academic attention has been given to the phenomena of Corporate Blogs and their content from a leadership perspective. Based on posts and comments found in two Fortune 100 Corporate Blogs, we have used content analysis to obtain specific corporate leadership characteristics (analyzing posts) as well as to obtain followers' characteristics (analyzing comments). Then, we have used correspondence analysis to identify relationships among them. The findings show empirical evidence that corporate leadership styles, expressed in Corporate Blogs, match with the kind of followers that they have. Furthermore, the company with bad results (GM) has transactional and transformational leadership styles, and the company with positive profits (Wells Fargo) has task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership styles. These results suggest that the company with negative profits tries to reinforce the innovation and the development of new opportunities to attempt to enhance its results, whereas the company with positive profits has enough strength to take care personal activities of its followers. Finally, to explain the matching pattern, we propose three possible explanations: Corporate Blogs attract readers/followers with compatible characteristics; the audience adopts the characteristics expressed in each Corporate Blog; or leaders and followers exert influence between them to converge, in a homogenization process, to a hybrid result of styles. The discussion is open.