How social networking ties mediate the associations between enterprise social media affordances and employee agility?

Abstract

The rising diffusion of enterprise social media (ESM) platforms worldwide necessitates a deeper understanding of how specific ESM affordances impact contemporary performance parameters such as employee agility. Drawing motivation from the propositions of the affordance theory, social network theory, and the extended scholarly work on ESM, agility, and networking, we conceptualized a sequential model to determine how three ESM affordances—self-expression via microblogging, recognition via paralinguistic digital affordances (PDAs), and network externality—associate with two types of social networking ties (instrumental and expressive) and how these ties further associate with employee agility—measured through proactivity, adaptability, and resilience. Analysis of data collected from 318 Chinese professionals with experience using ESM in their workplaces revealed the following positive relationships: (a) PDAs and externality are associated with both instrumental and expressive ties, while microblogging is associated with expressive ties only; (b) instrumental ties are associated with proactivity, adaptability, and resilience, while expressive ties are associated with proactivity and resilience only; (c) instrumental ties mediate the relationships between PDAs and all agility dimensions, as well as between externality on the one hand and proactivity and resilience on the other; and (d) expressive ties mediate the relationships between the affordances and both proactivity and resilience. These findings yield valuable theoretical and practical insights.