Mechanisms of different purposes of social media usage on employees’ job performance

Abstract

Most previous studies have explored the effect of employees’ usage of social media from a single perspective and resulted in inconsistent findings. In addition, some studies ignored the possible interactions among different characteristics of social media usage, leading to an incomplete understanding of social media. Therefore, this study attempts to examine two characteristics of social media usage, integrate the two paths of resource buffer and resource gain, and explore the influence mechanism of social media usage on employees’ job performance. Specifically, based on the job demands-resources theory, social media has an impact on an organization as a job resource. From the perspective of resource gain path, employees can obtain information about their work through social media to improve their working ability; In addition, the increase in interactive communication through social media deepens mutual understanding and enhances trust. From the perspective of resource buffer path, social media provides employees with a wealth of professional and personal resources. These resources help employees cope with the demands of the workplace, such as distractions and conflicts. Therefore, from the two paths, we assume that work state and interpersonal relationships can act as parallel multiple mediations between social media usage and job performance, respectively. Using a “leader-subordinate” pairing survey, 519 questionnaires were distributed in enterprises in Shanghai and Henan, and 369 valid questionnaires were collected. We found that work-based and social-based social media usage both affect job performance through work engagement. Additionally, the social-based social media usage also affects job performance through relationship conflict mediation. Interaction effect tests further suggest that work-based and social-based social media usage are mutual substitutions for influencing work performance through work engagement. This study has three main contributions to the literature. First, this study investigates the influencing mechanisms of different types of social media usage. Second, the study draws on the job demands-resources theory to explain the impact of social media usage on job performance, enhancing our understanding of reasons we use social media. Finally, the study highlights the substitution between different types of social media usage, offering clarification on the internal mechanism between social media usage and job performance.