Dialectic Tensions of Information Quality: Social Networking Sites and Hiring

The hiring process is challenging as the lack of quality information limits the discovery of the true nature of candidates, potentially leading to adverse impacts. Social networking sites (SNSs) have emerged as a potential source for candidate information with more than one billion profiles online. While abundant, the quality of this information for hiring is questionable. Utilizing qualitative interview data, the paper finds issues of quality to be complex as these technologies provide affordances that contradict one another. Tensions within dimensions of information quality were found to consist of dialectic poles: accessibility (open-restricted), contextual (relevant-unsuitable), and intrinsic (reliable-questionable). Understanding these tensions is necessary to explain the nature of perceptions of SNS information quality in the hiring context.