Excessive Enterprise Social Media Use Behavior at Work: Role of Communication Visibility and Perspective of Uses and Gratifications Theory

Abstract

As the popularity of enterprise social media (ESM) increases in organizations, recent studies have shown that ESM may be excessively used at work, triggering negative consequences for employees and organizations. Drawing on uses and gratifications theory (UGT), we propose a theoretical model to test how the communication visibility-message transparency and network translucence-enabled by ESM affects employees' excessive use of ESM at work by satisfying their different needs (i.e., social, content, and hedonic needs); the gratifications of these needs are reflected through employees' perceived values, including perceived social, information, and hedonic values. We analyzed a valid sample consisted of 301 Chinese employees using ESM through smart-PLS to verify the model. The data analysis results indicate that both message transparency and network translucence are positively correlated with employees' perceived social, information, and hedonic values. Perceived social value and perceived information value exert positive influences on excessive ESM use by employees, whereas perceived hedonic value has no significant effect on employees' excessive use of ESM. The findings also show that the relationship between ESM communication visibility affordance and employees' excessive ESM use is fully mediated by their perceived social value and perceived information value. These findings enrich the existing research on ESM and excessive use behavior and help inspire organizations to guide and manage the use of ESM by employees.