How Enterprise Social Media Shapes Employee Job Performance: A Technology Affordance Lens
Abstract
The widespread permeation of social media platforms into organizations is changing the way employees communicate and work. To understand the role of enterprise social media in shaping employee job performance, we adopted the technology affordance lens to examine how various affordances of enterprise social media impact employee job performance. By conducting a multi-wave multi-source survey, we found that the association and visibility affordances of enterprise social media can enhance job performance via psychological empowerment, while the editability and persistence affordances of enterprise social media can improve job performance via structural empowerment. This study contributes new insights into the influence of enterprise social media on worker outcomes. The findings suggest that to achieve effective regulation and utilization of enterprise social media in the workplace, managers should pay more attention to its key affordances, besides the usage frequency and usage purpose of enterprise social media.
