Abstract
Despite the increased use of Enterprise Social Media (ESM) worldwide, its adverse impact on firms’ employees, such as exhaustion, has not been researched sufficiently. This is a critical gap in the literature since employees’ well-being is crucial to maintaining their productivity. The current study addresses this gap by examining whether interruption overload and psychological transition affect the relationship of employees’ socio-instrumental use of ESM with ESM-related exhaustion and employee creativity, respectively. We utilized the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory to conceptualize the mediation effect of interruption overload and psychological transition on the hypothesized associations. We also used the Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT) to propose the moderation effect of promotion and prevention-focus of employees on these associations. Cross-sectional data collected from 323 employees of firms in China were analyzed to test the proposed associations. Our findings suggest that both interruption overload and psychological transition mediate the association of ESM usage with exhaustion and creativity, respectively. Furthermore, the results revealed that promotion-focus strengthens the positive relationship between ESM usage and psychological transition, whereas prevention-focus of weakens the positive relationship between ESM usage and interruption overload. The study contributes key theoretical and practical insights to set an agenda for further research and aid managerial decisions.
Highlights
Enterprise Social Media (ESM) is an organizationally-bound digital platform that allows social networking for information sharing, advice seeking, and facilitating knowledge sharing among coworkers (Leonardi, 2015)
The tested hypotheses posited that the effect of the socioinstrumental use of ESM on ESM-related exhaustion and employee creativity would be mediated by interruption overload and psycholog ical transition
Interruption overload was found to mediate the associa tion of socio-instrumental ESM use with employee creativity
Summary
ESM is an organizationally-bound digital platform that allows social networking for information sharing, advice seeking, and facilitating knowledge sharing among coworkers (Leonardi, 2015). We define socioinstrumental ties as the extent to which employees use ESM for friend ship, expressing emotions (e.g., like or dislike), and seeking and sharing social support, information, and professional advice In this regard, it is important to acknowledge the fact that despite providing psychological support to employees facing work-related challenges (Cai, Huang, Liu, & Wang, 2018), the socio-instrumental. Further more, we find that no prior study has examined the moderation effect of employee regulatory focus on the association of the socio-instrumental use of ESM with interruption overload and psychological transition, respectively. By examining how the regulatory focus of employees impacts the outcome of their ESM usage, the current study provides novel insights regarding how indi vidual differences may affect whether the socio-instrumental use of ESM is beneficial or detrimental. The sixth section discusses these find ings, in turn, and the seventh section deliberates upon the implications, limitations, and future research directions of the present study
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