Examination of how social aspects moderate the relationship between task characteristics and usage of social communication technologies (SCTs) in organizations

Because of the increasing significance of social communication technologies within an organization, they have become a new form of information processing, resulting in business process transitions and increased benefits. By applying media richness theory and social theories, this study investigated how social communication technologies (SCTs) can be used by an employee to fit his/her task characteristics. Additionally, it also examined how the employee's social relationships moderated media usage in the current job environment and how this usage influenced the task performance. Five media were selected in this study (telephone, video conferencing, email, instant messaging, and blog). Using a hierarchical regression approach, we found that task characteristics were related to media usage, whereas social factors (social influence and social affinity) moderated the degree of the relationships. A few particular media and technologies seemed to perform well, however these are influenced by the social aspects. Moreover, the usage of social technologies results in positive task performance. The performance of a few specific technologies demonstrated binding effects (email performance was associated with instant messenger performance). In summary, we found that the usage of SCTs is instrumentally determined by the interaction between the task and social relationships.     

Social media overload,exhaustion, and use discontinuance: Examining the effects of information overload,system feature overload,and social overload

While users’ discontinuance of use has posed a challenge for social media in recent years, there is a paucity of knowledge on the relationships between different dimensions of overload and how overload adversely affects users’ social media discontinuance behaviors. To address this knowledge gap, this study employed the stressor–strain–outcome (SSO) framework to explain social media discontinuance behaviors from an overload perspective. It also conceptualized social media overload as a multidimensional construct consisting of system feature overload, information overload, and social overload. The proposed research model was empirically validated via 412 valid questionnaire responses collected from Facebook users. Our results indicated that the three types of overload are interconnected through system feature overload. System feature overload, information overload, and social overload engender user exhaustion, which in turn leads to users’ discontinued usage of social media. This study extends current technostress research by demonstrating the value of the SSO perspective in explaining users’ social media discontinuance.     

商业银行员工工作特征的现状透视

工作特征不仅会影响到员工的工作绩效、工作满意度和内在动机,而且也会影响到组织的效能和整体竞争力。通过对179名商业银行员工进行问卷调查,并对调查结果进行统计分析发现商业银行员工工作特征的均值较低,其中以技能多样性和任务完整性两个维度最低,工作特征的部分维度在人口统计变量上存在着显著性差异。因此有必要增加工作本身给员工带来的满足,以提高员工的工作绩效,为银行在激烈的竞争中赢得竞争优势。     

Enhancing team creative performance through social media and transactive memory system

Effective teamwork, knowledge coordination, and knowledge creation are recognized as essential sources of team effectiveness and creativity in modern organizations. Nowadays, social media is significantly modifying the patterns in the use of technology to support knowledge management practices in teams. At the same time, the literature shows that transactive memory system (TMS), which refers to how team members share their distributed knowledge and expertise, is an important factor affecting team performance. However, minimal effort has been made to elaborate on the precise role of social media in supporting TMS for enhancing absorptive capacity (ACAP) and knowledge creation capability (KCC) of the team, which in turn might influence team creative performance (TCP). Therefore, to address this gap in the literature, a theoretical model is developed and validated. Survey data collected from 334 members of 68 knowledge work teams indicated that social media use at work has a positive relationship with TMS and both social media use at work and TMS are positively related to ACAP and KCC of the team. Results further indicated that ACAP positively influenced KCC, and both have a direct relationship with TCP. This study shows that careful investment in social media by an organization can enhance meta-knowledge of “who knows what” within teams. Finally, exploring external knowledge alone is not enough. Instead, organizations must ensure external knowledge is utilized to create new knowledge to improve TCP.     

组织工作——家庭支持与工作满意度的实证研究

研究检验了组织正式（工具性支持）与非正式（职业生涯后果、上级支持）的工作-家庭支持措施对员工相关的结果变量的影响,包括工作-家庭冲突感知、离职意向和工作满意度.数据采用问卷调查法收集,被试来源于202名不同行业的全职员工.回归结果表明工具性支持与工作满意度正相关;职业生涯后果与工作-家庭冲突感知正相关,与工作满意度负相关;上级支持与离职意向负相关.     

知识更新对员工创造力的影响

知识员工是企业赖以生存和发展的宝贵财富。随着知识老化速度日益加快,知识更新成为知识员工普遍面临的压力。基于挑战—阻断性压力分类理论和压力交互理论,探讨知识更新要求对女性知识员工创造力的影响,分析了挑战性压力评估和个体技能发展的链式中介作用和工作家庭冲突的调节作用。运用结构方程模型和Bootstrapping方法对假设进行检验,结果表明：知识更新要求对员工创造力有显著正向影响,包括直接影响和间接影响;在间接影响方面,挑战性压力评估和个体技能发展在知识更新要求与员工创造力关系中起部分链式中介作用;在直接影响方面,工作家庭冲突在知识更新要求与员工创造力关系中起调节作用。     

A symbolic interactionism perspective of using social media for personal and business communication

Achieving the anticipated business benefits of a social medium is important as organizations diligently invest in different social media platforms. While much previous research assumes that social media helps organizations to communicate with customers, less is known about whether customers embrace using social media to interact with organizations. It is important to understand the role of social media for business communication from the customers’ perspective, as this may significantly deviate from the organizations’ own communicative intentions. In this exploratory case study of the Moon Struck hotel in China, we investigate both how customers interpret the hotel’s use of WeChat official account for business communication and how customers respond to messages received from Moon Struck’s WeChat account. Adopting a symbolic interactionism perspective, we surprisingly find that WeChat personal accounts and Moon Struck’s official account offer radically different meanings to followers. Specifically, WeChat personal account symbolizes a sociality-oriented meaning (e.g., relationship and image building), while Moon Struck’s WeChat official account symbolizes information broadcasting-related meaning (e.g., selling, advertising, and branding). Both technological features and the distance of relationships among users contribute to the constructed symbolic meaning of technology, subsequently affecting users’ WeChat use patterns. The theoretical implications of this study are discussed and recommendations are made for future research and practice.     

Empowering teams through social network ties

Effective teamwork and knowledge coordination are becoming increasingly important for all kinds of organizations given the growing use of teams to tackle competitive challenges and sustain competitive advantage. In this study, we develop and validate a model of how two types of social network ties – expressive and instrumental – contribute to team efficacy and performance, mediated by three dimensions of a transactive memory system (TMS) – specialization, credibility and coordination within teams. We test the model in an empirical study drawing on data from 66 teams in a variety of organizations. The results suggest that both instrumental and expressive ties within teams can facilitate the formation of TMS and the three dimensions of TMS are all, even though to different extents, positively related to team efficacy. Team efficacy is also a powerful predictor of team performance. The findings in our study bridge the literature gap about social networks and TMS and explain the underlying process and mechanisms by which social network ties exert their influence on team outcomes. The results have implications for organizations that wish to leverage teams to take advantage of team members’ differentiated expertise and coordinate their work more effectively and efficiently.     

工作特征对知识员工敬业度作用的实证研究:基于内在动机视角

运用问卷测量的方法,以346名知识员工为被试,探讨了核心工作维度和社会支持两类工作特征作用于敬业度过程中内在动机的中介作用。结构方程模型分析显示:核心工作维度对知识员工敬业度以直接促进作用为主,社会支持对知识员工敬业度为间接促进作用;核心工作维度和社会支持对知识员工内在动机均有促进作用,社会支持作用较大;内在动机在核心工作维度与敬业度间具有部分中介作用,在社会支持与敬业度间具有完全中介作用。     

IT engagement as a blessing and a curse? Examining its antecedents and outcomes in organizations

Information technology (IT) engagement is defined as a need to spend more time using IT. Practice-based examples show that IT engagement can have adverse effects in organizations. Although users can potentially get more work done through IT engagement, observations show that the users might jeopardize their well-being and hamper their work performance. We aimed to investigate this complexity in the research on IT engagement by examining its potential antecedents and outcomes in organizations. Considering the potentially mixed outcomes, we developed a model to examine the effects of IT engagement on personal productivity and strain. We also aimed to explain the antecedents of IT engagement by drawing on the collective expectations for IT use. In particular, we examined the extent to which normative pressure on IT use drives users’ information load and IT engagement. Finally, we sought to understand whether users’ attempts to avert dependency on IT use reduced their IT engagement. Several hypotheses were developed and tested with survey data of 1091 organizational IT users. The findings help explain the role of normative pressure as a key driver of IT engagement and validate the positive and negative outcomes of IT engagement in organizations.     

工作情境下社会化媒体的多重采纳行为研究:S-O-R视角

【目的/意义】社会化媒体已经成为企业和组织工作中的一种新兴趋势,但少有研究在工作情境下探讨社会化媒体采纳的具体行为和其影响机制。【方法/过程】将工作情境下的社会化媒体使用行为分为强化使用和多样使用两类,以S-O-R理论为基础框架,结合技术接受模型和动机理论,构建工作中使用社会化媒体的两类动机及其对使用行为影响的研究模型,同时还讨论了惯性对意图与两类使用行为影响的调节作用。【结果/结论】通过实际工作中的问卷数据进行实证分析,研究结果表明:个人层面和任务层面的动机在使用者采纳社会化媒体中扮演着积极的角色;使用者的惯性确实能够调节意图与行为之间的关系。     

Analyzing the role of national culture on content creation and user engagement on Twitter: The case of Indian Premier League cricket franchises

The content generation strategy of a sports franchise determines whether the user engagement increases or decreases on social media platforms. Thus, the role of Chief Operating Officer (COO) is profound who generally decides and governs social media policies of the franchises. We show that the cultural differences between local-COO vis-à-vis foreign-COO-governed sports franchises reflect in their content generation strategy and are also associated with user engagement. We use Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory and extract relevant features from the tweets. Overall, the results show that user engagement is more when the content generation strategy is in alignment with fans’ national culture. The first contribution of our work is towards showing the incremental impact of power distance, individualism and collectivism on user engagement. The second contribution of our work is towards feature construction, feature selection and building authorship attribution classifiers to understand the content generation strategy. Prior literature shows that national culture impacts writing of online reviews. We investigate the role of national culture in social media content generation and user engagement and extend the literature. Our study is useful for organizations to understand the role of national culture in content generation and how it is related to user engagement.     

企业环境责任绩效对员工心理联系的影响机制

企业通过创新创业活动取得良好的环境绩效(CEP)是建设生态文明的必要途径,而员工对企业的心理联系是员工生产效率、创造能力与企业绩效的基础条件。把组织承诺这一心理联系确定为由员工工作伦理判断、工作投入意愿、情感承诺、继续承诺和职业承诺等多种因子构成的复杂心理系统,该研究通过规范实证的方法检验了CEP对员工心理联系的影响机制。研究结果表明,CEP对员工工作投入意愿等组织承诺因子均存在显著的积极影响。其中,员工工作伦理判断是CEP改变组织承诺的基石,工作投入意愿是关键中介变量,CEP通过工作伦理和工作投入意愿对情感承诺、继续承诺和职业承诺产生积极影响。     

Moderating role of enterprise social media use in work engagement

Enterprise social media (ESM) enables employees to participate in both work- and nonwork-related (social and hedonic) activities during working hours, providing possibility of it to be an information technology (IT)-based intervention for employees’ work engagement. Drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, we develop a research model to examine the moderating roles of work- and nonwork-related ESM use in the relationship between work stressors (i.e., challenge stressors and hindrance stressors) and work engagement. The research model was tested using 1104 valid responses collected through an online questionnaire in China, and the empirical results indicate the following: (1) challenge stressors are positively associated with work engagement while hindrance stressors are negatively associated with work engagement; (2) the relationship between challenge stressors and work engagement exhibits a U-shaped effect under the moderation of work-related ESM use but shows an inverted U-shaped effect under the moderation of nonwork-related ESM use; and (3) the relationship between hindrance stressors and work engagement also exhibits a U-shaped effect under the moderation of nonwork-related ESM use. This study contributes to the JD-R model and literature on ESM use and work engagement interventions. Our findings also inform mangers about leveraging ESM for enhancing employees’ work engagement.     

In the hearts and minds of employees: A model of pre-adoptive appraisal toward artificial intelligence in organizations

Organizations face increasing pressure to implement artificial intelligence (AI) within a variety of business processes and functions. Many perceived benefits surround AI, but a considerable amount of trepidation also exists because of the potential of AI to replace human employees and dehumanize work. Questions regarding the future of work in the age of AI are particularly salient in pre-adoption organizations, before employees have the opportunity to gain direct experience with AI. To cope with this potentially stressful situation, employees engage in cognitive appraisal processes based on their own knowledge and personal use of AI. These pre-adoptive appraisals of AI influence both affective and cognitive attitudes, which in turn trigger behavioral responses that influence an organization’s ability to leverage AI successfully. Our survey of 363 Taiwanese employees shows that perceptions of AI’s operational and cognitive capabilities are positively related to affective and cognitive attitudes toward AI, while concerns regarding AI have a negative relationship with affective attitude only. Interaction effects of employee knowledge and affective attitude are also observed. This work’s main contribution lies in the development of an empirically-tested model of the potential impact of AI on organizations from an employee perspective in the pre-adoption phase. These results have practical implications for how organizations prepare for the arrival of this transformative technology.     

The influence of informal social media practices on knowledge sharing and work processes within organizations

Contemporary information technologies such as social media have invigorated the way knowledge is shared within organizations to the extent that we have to rethink and reassess our understanding of the role and influence of technology in organizational processes and knowledge sharing. This paper uses the strategy as practice lens guided by the interpretivist philosophy to understand the influence of informal social media practices on knowledge sharing and work processes within an organization. The paper uses empirical evidence from the case study of a telecom organization in Tanzania to gain theoretical insight into informal social media practices and knowledge sharing. This research contributes to the Information Systems (IS) literature by asserting that organizational processes are achieved by mundane knowledge sharing mediated by informal social media use within the organization. Also, the study contributes to IS literature by highlighting how emerging informal practices are essential to daily processes within organizations.     

Spillover of workplace IT satisfaction onto job satisfaction: The roles of job fit and professional fit

With information technology (IT) increasingly penetrating in workplaces, employee satisfaction with workplace IT becomes an integral part of work and significantly influences work-related outcomes. Scant attention, however, has been paid to whether and how employees’ IT satisfaction plays a role in generating job-related attitudinal changes among employees. Drawing upon satisfaction spillover theory, we developed and empirically tested a model to examine the relationship between individual satisfaction with workplace IT and job satisfaction. Specifically, we introduced two elements of user-task-technology fit—namely, job fit and professional fit—to examine the transition in employees’ satisfaction from the technological domain to overall satisfaction with work. We found that job fit not only mediated but also strengthened the effect of workplace IT satisfaction on job satisfaction, whereas professional fit did not play a moderating role in the relationship between workplace IT satisfaction and job satisfaction. The findings suggest that practitioners should emphasize workplace IT as a crucial ingredient of the work context and improve employee experiences with using IT. More importantly, the fit of IT with employees’ job and professional requirements is critical for this transition in satisfaction.     

发展型人力资源管理实践对工作绩效的影响:人-组织匹配和职业承诺的作用

随着无边界职业生涯的兴起,实施发展型人力资源管理实践显得尤为重要,而相关的实证研究并不多见。本文通过在中国企业调研获取的320套员工样本,考察了发展型人力资源管理实践对工作绩效的影响机制,检验了人-组织匹配的中介作用和职业承诺的调节作用。结果发现：发展型人力资源管理实践既对工作绩效产生直接正向影响,也通过人-组织匹配的中介效应对工作绩效产生间接影响;职业承诺对发展型人力资源管理实践与工作绩效的关系具有非线性调节效应,具体而言,当职业承诺经历低、中、高三种水平时,发展型人力资源管理实践与工作绩效的关系呈现倒U型关系。     

高绩效工作实践系统、知识扩散与突破性创新

突破性创新已成为企业盈利和增长的关键性力量。针对既有文献对突破性创新驱动因素的研究不足,考察了高绩效工作实践系统和知识扩散对跨国公司在华突破性产品创新的影响关系。基于165家在华跨国公司高层管理人员填写的调查问卷,采用因子分析和结构方程模型对研究假设进行检验。实证结果揭示了高绩效工作系统的三种实践:工作轮换、员工培训和跨部门沟通对突破性产品创新的前置效应以及知识扩散对突破性产品创新与企业绩效的传导机制,同时,本文还发现突破性创新导向的技术战略可以显著提高在华跨国公司的运营绩效。最后,论述了本文的理论贡献、实践价值、不足和进一步研究的方向。     

员工满意度与顾客满意度传导机制的实证研究

高顾客满意度是高顾客忠诚度的必要备件,如何提高顾客满意度,学术界普遍认为员工满意度是影响顾客满意度的积极因素之一,但员工满意度影响顾客满意度的方式,是否存在中间传导机制的研究并不多见。为此,本文在文献综述的基础上,选取员工忠诚度、组织承诺和工作绩效为中间变量,建立员工满意度和顾客满意度传导机制的概念模型,运用结构方程对汽车维修服务企业的调查数据进行了分析研究。笔者发现员工满意度与顾客满意度没有直接关系,它直接影响着员工忠诚度、组织承诺和工作绩效,而员工忠诚度和组织承诺又直接影响着工作绩效,进而影响顾客满意度,即工作绩效是员工满意度与顾客满意度传导机制的关键。