The Effect of Employee Participation in Enterprise Social Media on Their Job Performance

This study focuses on employee involvement in enterprise social media (ESM) and the impact of ESM on job performance. Few studies found empirical support for this perspective due to limited sample size either the difficulty of accessing the data on user behavior in ESM and their job performance. We addressed this research gap through a data-sharing agreement with a large, high-tech manufacturing enterprise with internal social media and conducted a cooperative study on the impact of employee behaviors involved in ESM on their job performance. We divided online activities on ESM into information-sharing behaviors, information-seeking behaviors and general usage behaviors and then employed hierarchical regression analysis to investigate how the various usage behaviors of employees on ESM affect their job performance significantly. We find that information-seeking behaviors on ESM have positive effects on job performance, but information-sharing behaviors on ESM have negative effects on job performance. Overall, the usage of social media within enterprise social media use could help improve employee job performance. Moreover, to test whether the timing of ESM usage (during working hours or off-work hours) may affect employee job performance, we add a variety of moderator variables into the model. The results show that information-sharing behaviors, information-seeking behaviors and general usage behaviors during working hours negatively moderate the relationship between ESM usage and job performance. The findings have valuable managerial implications for the use of ESM.