The Impact Of Enterprise Social Media On Work Engagement And Work-family Conflict

With the continuous development of information technology,social media is widely used in the workplace.This kind of social media applied within the enterprise is called enterprise social media(ESM).According to the research report of We Chat Work,the total number of enterprises using We Chat Work has increased by 180%and the number of users has increased by 500% in 2018.And about 80% of Chinese top 500 enterprises have launched it.As ESM is widely used,employees’ working habits have been revised.For example,employees could achieve colleagues’ helps and feedbacks with speed and efficiency via ESM platform.However,job demands for employees have also been intensified due to the phenomenon provided by ESM.First,through ESM tools,employees are confronted much more information they could meaningfully process,it may generate information overload;Second,as workplace norms increasingly value speed and the ability to complete multiple tasks at once,work overload may be increased.In addition,job demands can be communicated at any time,which will blur the boundaries between work and social life.Currently,little attention has been paid to the job demands in such context.Therefore,this study proposes the concept of “job demand from ESM”.On the basis of the conservation of resource theory and the job demandresource model,work-related elements can be divided into job demands and job resources.Past studies have shown that constant job demands drain individual resources and lead to emotional exhaustion.Job resource,however,can alleviate the motivated impact of job demands on emotional exhaustion.As introduced above,ESM tools create an online platform to encourage communication and knowledge sharing among employees.Employees could also be encouraged to provide sufficient support to their colleagues via ESM application.Thus,emotional exhaustion will be relieved.In parallel,ESM can also arouse information overload and create blurred boundaries between work and family life.Accordingly,employees’ working pressures will be motivated and their emotional exhaustions are also increased.So,this study believes that different degrees of job demand from ESM may have effects on employees’ emotional exhaustion differently.To be specific,when the job demand from ESM is low,it is difficult for employees to get enough support from colleagues and resources by ESM,they are in a state of resource scarcity,resulting in high emotional exhaustion.On the other hand,When the job demand from ESM is high,the resources of employees are consumed faster by information overload,work overload and blurred boundaries between work and social life,which cause high emotional exhaustion.Only when the job demand from ESM are moderate,employees can not only make effective use of ESM as resources,but also do not have to face excessive job demands,at this time the level of emotional exhaustion is at its lowest point.Therefore,this study will solve this conflict by introduce the U-shape relationship concept.Specifically,the conservation of resources theory points out that when individuals face the threat of a net loss of resources or the net loss of resources,they will feel pressure and tend to use resources in a more conservative way.So,when employees cope with the job demand from ESM by consuming resources,it will lead to emotional exhaustion.In order to prevent further aggravation of resource loss,individuals will allocate resources more rationally and cautiously and reduce their own efforts in work and work engagement;Similarly,when individuals are in the state of emotional exhaustion,they will also be unable to meet family demands due to lack of resources,resulting in work-family conflict.Previous studies have shown that job demands can lead to emotional exhaustion,which in turn affects work engagement and work-family conflict.Therefore,this study argues that the mediated role of emotional exhaustion in the relationship between job demand from ESM and work engagement and work-family conflict.To conclude,based on the conservation of resource theory together with the job demand-resource model,this study introduced emotional exhaustion mediating the relationship between job demand from ESM and work engagement and work-family conflict.Doing so could extend the job demand-resource burnout model to ESM usage.To test these relationships,this study recruited 223 Chinese employees working in the financial industry and collected longitudinal data within two months to reduce the possible concerns of common method bias.This study further tested the hypotheses using the method of Boostrapping with the support of the softwares of SPSS24.0 and Mplus 7.4.Based on the empirical research,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)the U-shaped relationship between job demand from enterprise social meia and emotional exhaustion;(2)emotional exhaustion negatively affects work engagement;(3)emotional exhaustion positively affects work-family conflict;(4)emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between the job demand from enterprise social media and work engagement;(5)emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between the job demand from enterprise social media and work-family conflict;...