Social Media in the Workplace: Influence on Employee Agility and Innovative Behavior

Abstract

Despite the increasing adoption of enterprise social media (ESM), little research has examined the link between ESM use and job outcomes. We examine this link, highlighting the role of agility at an individual level. We adopt two measures of use – deep structure use (view, create, and respond) and cognitive absorption use. We develop and operationalize work agility and communication agility as primary benefits of ESM use, which are hypothesized to affect employees' innovative behavior outcomes. Using two waves of surveys from a Fortune 500 company, we found that create and respond were significant for work agility, while create and view were significant for communication agility. Cognitive absorption use influences both work and communication agility. Counter-intuitively, we found a negative effect of communication agility on innovative behavior, while work agility was positive as expected. This research sheds light on the underlying influence mechanism of ESM use from the dual perspective of system use.