Moderating role of enterprise social media use in work engagement

Abstract

Enterprise social media (ESM) enables employees to participate in both work- and nonwork-related (social and hedonic) activities during working hours, providing possibility of it to be an information technology (IT)-based intervention for employees’ work engagement. Drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, we develop a research model to examine the moderating roles of work- and nonwork-related ESM use in the relationship between work stressors (i.e., challenge stressors and hindrance stressors) and work engagement. The research model was tested using 1104 valid responses collected through an online questionnaire in China, and the empirical results indicate the following: (1) challenge stressors are positively associated with work engagement while hindrance stressors are negatively associated with work engagement; (2) the relationship between challenge stressors and work engagement exhibits a U-shaped effect under the moderation of work-related ESM use but shows an inverted U-shaped effect under the moderation of nonwork-related ESM use; and (3) the relationship between hindrance stressors and work engagement also exhibits a U-shaped effect under the moderation of nonwork-related ESM use. This study contributes to the JD-R model and literature on ESM use and work engagement interventions. Our findings also inform mangers about leveraging ESM for enhancing employees’ work engagement.