The effects of job demands of enterprise social media on employees' outcomes: a curvilinear mediated model
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2021-0310 |
| Published date | 18 October 2022 |
| Date | 18 October 2022 |
| Pages | 409-433 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
| Author | Shiqi Liu,Tao Shen,Yuliang Wu,Yang Chen,Yifan Li,Yumeng Tang,Lu Lu |
The effects of job demands
of enterprise social media
on employees’outcomes:
a curvilinear mediated model
Shiqi Liu and Tao Shen
School of Business Administration, Faculty of Business Administration,
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China
Yuliang Wu
The Blockchain Research Center of China,
School of Economic Information Engineering,
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China and
Emergency Management Institute, Chengdu University, Chengdu, China, and
Yang Chen, Yifan Li, Yumeng Tang and Lu Lu
School of Business Administration, Faculty of Business Administration,
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China
Abstract
Purpose –Extant research has paid considerable attention to the effects of enterprise social media (ESM) on
employees’work attitudes and outcomes, yet the authors know little about the influence of job demands arising
from the implementation of ESM. Drawing on resource allocation theory, the purpose of this study is to unravel
how ESM-related job demands influence employee outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach –This study conducts a two-wave time-lagged survey of 223 employees
from 53 teams in 14 financial service firms in China to test the conceptual model.
Findings –The findings of this paper indicate that ESM-related job demands have indirect effects on employee
outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction and work–family conflict), and emotional exhaustion plays an intermediary role in
these relationships. Specifically, ESM-related job demands have a U-shaped effect on emotional exhaustion.
Originality/value –Thisstudy combines jobdemands with ESM researchand clarifiesthe mechanism behind
how ESM-related job demandsat different intensityaffect employeeoutcomes froma new perspective. Moreover,
this study’sfindings suggest several beneficialcourses of action for managers to take advantage of ESM.
Keywords ESM-Related job demands, Emotional exhaustion, Job satisfaction, Work–family conflict,
Resource allocation theory
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Over the pastfew years, enterprisesocial media (ESM),such as Microsoft Yammer,Zoom, and
DingTalk,has rapidly permeatedworkplaces and gained widespread adoption. ESM is a web-
basedplatform with a rangeof communicativefunctions, throughwhich employeesare allowed
to participate in both work andsocial activities (Leonardi et al., 2013;Lu et al., 2015). With the
affordances of ESM, employees can work in new ways by creating or accessing domain-specific
information without time or space limitations and engaging in work-related learning online
(Leonardi, 2014;Pee, 2018;Yingjie et al., 2019), and b uild personal networks of mutual trust
throughdaily interactionsand visible meta-knowledge(Huang et al., 2015;Leonardi and Meyer,
Effects of job
demands
of enterprise
social media
409
Funding: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education in China (Research Project of
Humanities and Social Sciences; Award Number: 21YJA630007).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0263-5577.htm
Received 21 May 2021
Revised 7 September 2021
31 December 2021
Accepted 17 January 2022
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 123 No. 2, 2023
pp. 409-433
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-05-2021-0310
2015;M€
antym€
aki and Riemer, 2016). Although various topics about ESM thus far have been
discussed, there are few investigations into the job demands created by ESM. Research on
information and communication technology (ICT) highlighted the significance of specific ICT
demands in explaining their impacts on employee outcomes (e.g. job satisfaction and work–
familyconflicts)(e.g. Day et al., 2012;O’Driscollet al., 2010). However, asan emerging formof ICT
demand, ESM-related job demands have received little attention in theextant literature. ESM-
relatedjob demands, in comparison to generaljob demands, yieldadditional resource loads and
dailyhassles, blurrole boundaries,require instantaneity, andtighten employeesupervision(Cao
and Yu, 2019;Day et al., 2012;van Zoonen et al., 2016). Investigation into ESM-related job
demands and their effects could potentially help practitioners develop their understanding of
ESM adoptionand optimize ESM job design. However, there is relatively little research in this
area, except for works on the overload s caused by excessive ESM use (Charoensukmongkol,
2014;Chen and Wei, 2019;Ding et al., 2019). The lack of understanding about the outcomes of job
demandsfrom ESM may negativelyaffect organizations’endeavorsto use ESM. It is therefore
critical to investigate theinfluence of ESM-relatedjob demands.
Previous research findings on the consequences of ESM use have been inconsistent and
somewhat conflicting. Some scholars have highlighted that work- and non-work-related ESM
use contribute to a work-balance condition and employees’job satisfaction and performance
throughefficient interactionsamong collaboratorsand knowledge management (Fu et al., 2019;
Leonardi, 2014;Moqbel et al., 2013). However,changes around demandon employees that arise
out of ESM usecan lead to opposing attitudes and behaviors (Ali-Hassanet al., 2015;Leonardi,
2014). For example,ESM is expected to increaseexpectationsfor employee’s availabilityduring
off-hours and capability requirement when processin g extended workloads and relationships
(Chen and Wei, 2019), whichmay trigger work–family conflict (Liu et al., 2016;Van Zoonen et al.,
2016) and hamper employees’active behaviors (Kane, 2015;Moqbel and Koch, 2018). These
contradictory findingsimply that ESM use may havetwo-sided effects on employee outcomes
such as job satisfaction andwork–family conflict,both of which are criticalfactors influencing
employees’work performance (Judge et al.,2001;Liu et al., 2016). However,none of such effects
have been discussed regarding ESM-related job demands, further highlighting the necessity to
investigate the role of ESM-related jobdemands in employee outcomes.
Given the implications of ESM-related job demands and relevant research gaps, this study
aims to address the following research questions: (1) how do ESM-related job demands affect
employee’s job satisfaction and work–family conflict; and (2) what is the mechanism of these
effects? To answer these questions, we use resource allocation theory as a theoretical grounding to
explain how ESM-related job demands affect employee’sjob satisfaction and work–family conflict
indirectly via emotional exhaustion. Specifically, we propose that ESM-related job demands
influence emotional exhaustion in a U-shaped relationship. That is, ESM-related job demands help
reduce emotional exhaustion at low to moderate intensity, but after reaching the optimal level,
emotional exhaustion begins to increase, ultimately affecting employees’job satisfaction and
work–family conflict. Hence, we develop a mediation model that ESM-related job demands act on
employee outcomes through emotional exhaustion and present a U-shaped pattern.
This study should contribute to this growing area of research in the following ways. First,
our work sheds new light on the consequences of ESM use (Majchrzak et al., 2013)by
incorporating job demands into the ESM research area and clarifying how the different extent
of ESM-related job demands affect employees. ESM has been widely used in enterprises,
while the influence of job demands arose from ESM has been rarely examined. It is
worthwhile to examine the outcomes of ESM-related job demands to better understand how
they shape employee outcomes. Second, we ground on resource allocation theory to
illuminate the curvilinear mediated mechanism of emotional exhaustion, which helps to
understand the paradoxical ESM effects and the essence of why and how ESM-related job
demands shape employee’s work-related outcomes, namely job satisfaction and work–family
IMDS
123,2
410
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