Assessing the Curvilinear Relationship in Employee Digital Performance: A Task-Technology Fit Perspective

Abstract

In the context of the digital economy, one of the most important issues facing business managers is that of how to improve employee digital performance (EDP), however, extant studies exploring this problem are quite limited. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the characteristics of task and technology represented by enterprise social media (ESM) affect task-technology fit (TTF), which in turn affects EDP. Using TTF theory, this paper proposes a research model to validate the research question. An ordinary least squares method is used to analyze 284 questionnaire responses drawn from 33 provinces in China. The results indicate that task complexity has an inverted U-shaped effect on TTF, whereas task interdependence has no effect on TTF. Work-related function of ESM has a U-shaped effect on TTF, while social-related function of ESM has a positive effect on TTF. TTF positively influences both employee digital-enabled task performance and employee digital-enabled innovative performance. Employee digital literacy strengthens the impact of TTF on employee digital-enabled task performance, but does not moderate the relationship between TTF and employee digital-enabled innovative performance. Organizational digital culture strengthens the impacts of TTF on both employee digital-enabled task performance and employee digital-enabled innovative performance. From a theoretical perspective, this paper makes a contribution to TTF theory by revealing the curvilinear relationship between the characteristics of task, the characteristics of ESM technology and TTF. This paper also contributes to the EDP literature by clarifying how TTF affects EDP, and by identifying the boundary conditions (namely employee digital literacy and organizational digital culture) between TTF and EDP. From a practical point of view, this paper provides managers with the insights to improve EDP in terms of task assignment, employee training, enterprise culture building, etc.