Analyzing the employees' new media use in the energy industry: The role of creative self-efficacy, perceived usefulness and leaders' use

Abstract

Good management of companies in the energy industry is critical to the world's sustainable development as they are the guarantor of social lives and the cornerstone of economic development. This study tries to figure out how to improve the management of energy companies from the angle of new media use. It is widely known that the emergence of new media has provided more opportunities for the development of various entities in society, especially in improving the interaction mode of "enterprise-employee" and "enterprise-consumer", and boosting the efficiency of information transmission. However, the technical and cutting-edge features of those new media have also resulted in some obstacles in their promotion among employees. To address this problem, this paper took the perspective of the social influence theory and the technological acceptance model (TAM), and sampled 20,161 employees from the energy industry in China to explore the effects of creative self-efficacy, perceived usefulness in information acquisition and perceived usefulness in communication on employees' use of new media. Results have shown that both creative self-efficacy and perceived usefulness have positive effects on new media use of employees, and perceived usefulness mediates the relationship between creative self-efficacy and new media use. Leaders' use moderates the mediation relationship, while it weakens the relationship between perceived usefulness and new media use. Our study enriches the knowledge regarding new media promotion and thereby offers insightful and practical implications for corporate managers.