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Virtual Communities' Impact on Industrial Relations and Employer Branding

Research on Virtual Communities (VCs) is diversified, covering various disciplines and perspectives. Besides strong research efforts in the field of sociology, VCs with an economical impact are intensely studied in the context of e-business. Considering common VC-actors and their respective relations in the e-business field, at least two things become apparent: firstly, peer-to-peer relations are neglected, secondly, various relations in regard to the human resources (HR) function are rarely considered. Likewise, browsing the Internet reveals numerous examples for various kinds of HR-relevant virtual communities (VCHR), making it worth to study this phenomenon and to analyze potential benefits and threats. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to draw the awareness on VCHR and potential implications. The focus of this paper is on company-external VCHR such as applicant communities and company-spanning employee communities. A conceptual framework is developed to analyze the impact of company-external VCHR on employer branding and industrial relations.