Online identity: how companies shape employees' LinkedIn profiles

Paul Richard, doctoral researcher at the DRM laboratory (MOST team) of Université Paris Dauphine - PSL, supervised by François-Xavier de Vaujany, has published an article in the journal Human Relations on how companies shape their employees' presence on LinkedIn.

More and more organizations offer training programs and internal guidelines that encourage employees to treat their LinkedIn profile as an asset to be maintained, expected to pay off in the future.

Based on a two-year study of a LinkedIn training program in a French state-owned enterprise, the article shows that the training first presents the profile as a mere work tool, unrelated to the person, and then invites participants to bring a personal dimension back into it, within the frame thus set.

The study also shows that a profile transformed in this way can keep serving the organization long after the person has stopped engaging with it.

Reference
Richard, P. (2026). 'Don't forget to post it on LinkedIn': Identity regulation and the assetization of employees' online selves. Human Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267261490718