Chapter 4 deals with the construction of input–output tables from standardized conventions of national economic accounts, such as the widely used System of National Accounts (SNA) promoted by the United Nations, including a basic introduction to the so-called commodity-by-industry or supply-use input–output framework developed in additional detail in Chapter 5. A simplified SNA is derived from fundamental economic concepts of the circular flow of income and expenditure, that is, as additional sectoral details are defined for businesses, households, government, foreign trade, and capital formation, ultimately result in the basic commodity-by-industry formulation of input–output accounts. The process is illustrated with the US input–output model and some of the key traditional conventions widely applied for such considerations as secondary production (multiple products or commodities produced by a business), competitive imports (commodities that are also produced domestically) versus non-competitive imports (commodities not produced domestically), trade and transportation margins on interindustry transactions, or the treatment of scrap and secondhand goods.

Chapter 12 explores the extension of the input–output framework to more detailed analysis of energy consumption associated with industrial production, including some of the complications that can arise when measuring input–output transactions in physical units of production rather than in monetary terms of the value of production. The chapter reviews early efforts to develop energy input–output analysis and compares them with contemporary approaches and examines the strengths and limitations of the alternatives commonly used today. Special methodological considerations such as adjusting for energy conversion efficiencies are developed along with several illustrative applications, including estimation of the energy costs of goods and services, impacts of new energy technologies, and energy taxes. Energy input–output analysis is increasingly being applied to global scale issues, such as the energy embodied in international trade of goods and services. Finally, the role of structural change of an input–output economy associated with changing patterns of energy use is illustrated, building on the more general approaches developed in Chapter 8.

The idea to write this monograph grew out of my panel presentation at the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) conference held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in July 2017. I had been intrigued by the panel proposal titled ‘Self-Presentation and Self-Praise: The Neglected Speech Acts’ put forward by Daria Dayter and submitted my abstract, feeling that the topic was suitable to corporate communication.

After the conference, all the panellists were asked to contribute their papers to a joint volume on self-praise. It was while working on the draft paper that I realised the inability to confine my ideas to an 8,000-word format, within the boundaries of a single research discipline only (i.e. Pragmatics). By then I had already moved a long way from teaching applied linguistics and business English (communication) courses, being more and more drawn towards business as a research and educational field. Currently working in a private business school, teaching business and management courses, as well as instructing students from all over the world how to successfully complete their research projects, and supervising many in a wide range of research topics, as well as engaging in conversations with practitioners representing various industry sectors, I have finally found my interdisciplinary ‘niche’.

Most of my own recent research projects have also tended to be of interdisciplinary nature (combining methods and insights of numerous academic disciplines), with the interest lying specifically in the interconnections between business and society (including technology), and the multi-stakeholder view on business practices. Such an approach is also mostly suitable to the topic at hand for it is impossible to investigate the complexity of self-presentation and self-praise from a single perspective. In order to account to this complexity, an exploration of the interconnectivity of and interdependency between the numerous factors impacting multilayered corporate behaviour, both on the macro and micro levels, incorporating the applied, ‘hands-on’ practitioners’ vantage point, as well as that of theoreticians and academic researchers is necessary.

Introduction: Neoliberalism and the Self

In the current socio-economic climate, where profit increase is not achieved by expansion to new markets anymore but rather by increase in or optimisation of productivity and efficiency, social and economic aspects are becoming combined as a part of the neoliberalism paradigm in which an individual plays an instrumental role in the market, and not vice versa (cf. Precht 2018; Flassbeck & Steinhardt 2018). The primary enablers of the so-called time-tomarket (TTM) strategy (which refers to the time period starting from when a company initially conceives a product or service idea to the point when the actual product or service is accessible to buyers in the market) are information technology (IT) and digitalisation, as reflected in corporate vision and mission statements. Siemens’ Vision 2020+ serves as an example here: ‘Vision 2020+ is our strategy to shape the next-generation Siemens. With Vision 2020+ we are setting the course for long-term value creation through accelerated growth and stronger profitability with a simplified and leaner company structure’ (https://www.dc.siem ens.com/vis ion2 020p lus/).

Consequently, as will be argued below, the pressure to monitor one's digital footprint and manage the ‘cyber-self ‘ and consistently present oneself in a positive light (self-brand) keeps increasing, with the primary objective being that of pursuing individual interests and meeting one's own goals (since no one else will).

As depicted in Figure 1.1, created for the purpose of illustrating the broader background of self-praise, on the micro level of socio-economic developments, neoliberalism and technology impact corporate and workplace communication, facilitating transparency, visibility, and knowledge sharing, further resulting in shifted roles and scope of work responsibilities. These factors constitute important aspects to be addressed, with the focus placed on self-presenting behaviour, mainly of so-called knowledge workers (or ‘nocollar workers’), functioning in the new economy (mainly referring to highgrowth industries that are on the cutting edge of technology and are believed to be the driving force of economic growth and productivity – cf.

Introduction

As indicated in the title, this chapter is devoted to the affordances granted by enterprise social media (ESM) and their role as enablers of self-presentation in the collaborative digital workplace environment. ‘Enterprise collaboration system’ stands for a system of communication among corporate employees that encompasses the use of enterprise social networking tools and the corporate intranet. Business users can trade knowledge, store and exchange files, create and jointly modify documents, and interact with each other in real time in collaborative workspaces. ESM strategies are closely aligned with key business goals and build up on non-corporate social media and gaming practices and behavioural patterns.

Social network collaboration software is one of the tools for internal action-oriented communication in the environment of gamified business processes. As discussed below, in order for the tools to match the way people naturally interact, game-like motivational elements are utilised that centre on the fundamental desires people have for status, reward, achievement, selfexpression, and competition (Burke 2014; Hamari 2015).

Defined as online applications used in business contexts to foster communication, collaboration, and exchange of information among knowledge workers (Cetto et al. 2018; Nissen 2018), the implementation of enterprise social software (ESS) has been increasing, following on the popularity of public social media platforms (Schwade & Schubert 2018).

An important aspect of ESS is that it is adaptable, thus requiring individual sense-making and reflection on the beneficial usage (Richter & Riemer 2013, also cited in Tykholoz et al. 2020).

Self-presentation, as a manifestation of impression management, involves engagement in attempts to lead people to think of one in a particular way, thus creating desired impressions (Schlenker 1980; Leary 1996; Krämer & Winter 2008) that help demonstrate capability since one presenting a confident front can persuade others that they are competent and desirable (Brown 2007; Hogan & Briggs 1986). It is used as a means of achieving corporate success, that is gaining material and social rewards (or avoiding material and social punishments) within an organisation.

Introduction

Although the focus of this book is on self-presentation and self-praise in the context of internal corporate communication, this chapter addresses the academic environment (tertiary education and research), as well as the self-promotional activities by businesspeople (and to a limited extent also researchers) on the professional networking and recruitment platform LinkedIn.

One of the reasons to include the educational context was a pilot study conducted in a university setting in order to determine whether students were in a position to embrace visibility and make use of collaborative tools for self-promotion. Moreover, being a representative of the target population of active users of LinkedIn, the abundance of secondary data on this platform also sparked my interest to explore the topic at hand in this particular context.

According to the social comparison theory, individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how they measure up against others whom they perceive as faring better or worse (Festinger 1954). As Corcoran et al. (2011) point out, such comparison may serve as a trigger of self-praise since comparisons to others can foster self-improvement, self-motivation, and a positive self-image in the process of constant self-evaluation, which in turn can also promote judgemental, biased, and overly competitive or superior attitudes. Furthermore, pressure towards uniformity of opinion may translate into uniformity of self-presentation. This is then reflected in inflated, inaccurate self-assessment setting self-praise in motion.

Social exchange theory proposes that social behaviour is the result of an exchange process (Cherry 2015), here specifically applicable to the exchange (in the form of shares) of self-elevating posts, profile updates, citations, or congratulatory comments. The purpose of this exchange is to maximise the benefits and minimise the costs for those involved. Homans (1958, 1974) notes that people generally weigh the potential benefits and risks of social relationships. When the risks outweigh the rewards, they will terminate or abandon a given relationship.

Introduction

This chapter discusses enterprise social media (ESM) – introduced in Chapter 2 – as well as conference calls, collaborative tools, and corporate websites as channels for remote self-presentation and self-praise in the workplace context. Anonymised secondary corporate datasets as well as primary data have been analysed by means of content and thematic analyses (qualitative research) and descriptive and inferential statistical analyses (quantitative research) with the aim of exploring the under-researched topic of self-praise in the digital workplace context and in order to identify the triggers and antecedents of self-praise as well as to propose its comprehensive typology (for previous linguistic studies on self-praise in the non-business context, see, e.g., Dayter 2014, 2016, 2018; Wu 2011; Krämer & Haferkamp 2011).

Tamir and Mitchell (2012) determined that people devote 30– 40 per cent of speech output solely to informing others of their own subjective experiences. Apparently, individuals are willing to forgo financial incentives to be able to disclose information about the self. Their findings suggest that the human tendency to convey information about personal experience may arise from the intrinsic value derived from self-disclosure.

Speer (2012), drawing on Pomeranz (1978, 89), states that praising oneself is an interactionally delicate matter that may leave one vulnerable to ‘unfavourable character assessment’ or ‘accusations of bragging’. This claim is contested in this book. Speer (2012) provides some evidence of (non-business) practices suggesting a norm against direct self-praise and an interactional preference for embedding positive self-descriptions within a third-party attribution. This norm, however, does not appear to apply to the corporate environment of today, especially that of ESM. It appears that repeating something positive that someone else said about oneself – that is a third-party attribution – is not the only acceptable form of self-praise anymore.

Given ubiquity of social media engagement, self-praise is increasingly becoming a common practice, coupled with the significance given to social proof, as illustrated by polished and filtered – if not fake in some cases – selfies.