Social media usage and employee’s job performance. The moderating role of social media rules
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-02-2019-0090 |
| Published date | 21 October 2019 |
| Date | 21 October 2019 |
| Pages | 1908-1925 |
| Author | Rana Muhammad Sohail Jafar,Shuang Geng,Wasim Ahmad,Ben Niu,Felix T.S. Chan |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Social media usage and
employee’s job performance
The moderating role of social media rules
Rana Muhammad Sohail Jafar
College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
Shuang Geng, Wasim Ahmad and Ben Niu
Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China, and
Felix T.S. Chan
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Abstract
Purpose –This era is an era of social media (SM); thus, it is an essential tool for communication among
individuals and organizations. The excessive use of SM by employees has raised many questions about their
job performance. Therefore, there is a dire need to investigate the effects of SM use on an employee’s job
performance mediated by knowledge exchange. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is to examine how the
organization’s SM rules can moderate the relationship between personal and work-related use of SM with
information sharing and obtaining information.
Design/methodology/approach –Quantitative methodology was used and randomly 1,200 questionnaires
data were collected physically from the employees of the public and private sectors in Pakistan. To examine
the hypothesized relationships, partial least squares (PLS), rather than covariance-based structural equation
modeling, was used to analyze the data. For this reason, multivariate technique, Smart PLS-3.2.1, was used for
data analysis.
Findings –The findings of this study demonstrated that personal and work-related use of SM could enhance
employees’job performance through knowledge exchange, and SM rules have adverse impacts on the
relationships between SM use and knowledge exchange.
Originality/value –This study provides a novel model for the investigation of whether SM use affects
employees’job performance. Furthermore, it will help the policy makers and researchers regarding the
management of SM use at work.
Keywords Information sharing, Social media, Obtaining information, Social media rules,
Employee’s performance
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Social media (SM) is a tool that provides a facility for social and commercial
communication (Parveen et al., 2015) that was built on the technological foundations of
Web 2.0 (Habibi et al., 2016). Recently, SM sites such as WeChat, Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram and YouTube have become popular around the globe for sharing and obtaining
information (Berthon et al., 2012). Individuals and organizations are using SM for their
social and commercial purposes by creating, sharing and exchanging information with
their friends, family, colleagues and customers (Shi et al., 2013). Organizations can take the
advantage of the potential of SM to effectively engage with their employees, customers
and other patrons for business value creation and collaboration (Naudé et al., 2014).
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 119 No. 9, 2019
pp. 1908-1925
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-02-2019-0090
Received 18 February 2019
Revised 12 July 2019
Accepted 27 August 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
This work is partially supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants
Nos 71971143, 71571120), Project Supported by Guangdong Province Higher Vocational Colleges &
Schools Pearl River Scholar Funded Scheme 2016, and Project supported by Innovation and
Entrepreneurship Research Center of Guandong University Student (2018A073825).
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IMDS
119,9
Therefore, the effective use of SM can enhance employees’capabilities associated with
employees’job performance and organizations (Nisar and Prabhakar, 2018). SM platforms
are becoming more collaborative and interactive for users because of the increasing trends
of use. Therefore, these applications can be accessed on the web and through mobile
technology (Siamagka et al., 2015).
Nowadays, individuals can share their experiences and check other posts, and these
processes can be performed with minimal effort and time (Osatuyi, 2013). Usually,
employees share and obtain information from friends and colleagues to maintain a sense of
social relationship, and this is how knowledge sharing or obtaining phenomenon positively
influences job performance and learning capabilities (Eid and Al-Jabri, 2016). The first
important measure of an employee’s progress in the workplace is work performance, that is,
whether an employee is working efficiently. Similar to other emerging technologies, SM use
has also been contentious in the workplace. Studies (Tajvidi and Karami, 2017; Bennett et al.,
2010) have claimed that SM use in the workplace improves employee work performance.
In contrast, other studies (Meshi et al., 2013; Shepherd, 2011) have reported that SM use is a
waste of time and reduces employee’s productivity because of personal messaging.
However, most studies have focused on the impact of using enterprise SM to measure the
overall work performance, and these studies have been conducted using college and
university students’data (Clark and Roberts, 2010); thus, their results might not be
generalizable to business firms and organizations.
Keeping the existing research in mind, we found significant research gaps in the literature
that most studies explored the general perspective of SM use or just focused on work-related
use of SM that did not demonstrate the mechanism for employee’s performance. Notably, there
has been little knowledge regarding the belongings of SM use in organizations about
employees’job performance. Additionally, there is also a lack of research that describes the
mediating and moderating factors that influence the motivations of employee’sSMuseand
their job performance. Specifically, existing literature has not considered how SM use can
intensify employee’s job performance via knowledge exchange behaviors and how such causal
relationships are moderated by the perceptions of employees about SM rules. Based on these
research gaps identified, we assert that an investigation of the underlying mechanisms for the
effects of SM use on employees’job performance and potential moderators for such effects is
necessary. Recently, organizational implementation of SM policy has been increasing (O’Connor
et al., 2016), and one fundamental question is how well do employees know and appreciate their
employer’s rules, and how this knowledge can be useful for organizations. Therefore, the key
objectives of this study are to investigate the underlying knowledge exchange mechanisms that
mediate the relationship between employee’s personal and work-related use of SM and job
performance. Additionally, this study investigates the moderating role of SM rules, that is, how
it influences the relationships between employee’s SM use and knowledge exchange behaviors.
In summary, to address the research question regarding what factors influence
employees’performance when using SM in organizations, we put forward an innovative
approach that integrates social exchange theory (David Gefen, 2002). Based on how SM
applications or social networking sites (SNS) are used, this study proposes two categories of
SM use (i.e. personal and work -related) and two types of kn owledge exchange
(i.e. information sharing and obtaining information). We then examined how the two
categories of SM use affect employee’s job performance through the two types of knowledge
exchange, and how such effects are moderated by employees’perception of organizational
SM rules. To sum up, this study aims to answer the following questions:
RQ1. How do the personal use of SM and work-related use of SM affect employee’s
performance via knowledge exchange behaviors?
RQ2. How do the perceptions of organizational SM rules moderate the effects?
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