Does social media usage evoke employees' spirituality? A cross-level moderation model of inclusive leadership

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of social media usage (SMU) and relational energy on employees' workplace spirituality within an organization from a psychological perspective.Design/methodology/approachThis study proposes a research model based on self-determination theory. This research model was tested using a cross-level hierarchical regression analysis. Data were collected from 276 knowledge workers on 39 teams in 37 enterprises in China.FindingsSMU has a significant positive impact on employees' relational energy and workplace spirituality. Relational energy partially mediates the relationships of cognitive usage and social usage of social media with workplace spirituality and fully mediates the relationship between hedonic usage of social media and workplace spirituality. Inclusive leadership positively affects workplace spirituality and acts as a negative cross-level moderating variable on the relationship between hedonic usage and workplace spirituality.Practical implicationsThis work suggested that with appropriate SMU implications, enterprises might be able to integrate spirituality into human resource management practices to improve employees' meaningful life experiences within organizations.Originality/valueThe authors’ findings not only help to theoretically clarify the relationship between SMU and workplace spirituality but also enrich the relevant research on SMU in enterprises to improve employees' spiritual life within the organization.

The Impact of Social Media on Employee Mental Health and Behavior Based on the Context of Intelligence-Driven Digital Data

“…In 2020–2022, further progress has been made in research on the impact of employee use of social media on employee attitudes. In terms of positive impact, Zhou and Mou [ 81 ] proposed a cross-level moderation model based on self-determination theory and found that this behavior positively influenced employees’ relational energy and spirituality. Zheng and Davison [ 82 ] concluded that work-related social media use increased employees’ affectionate identification with the team and enhanced the sense of teamwork.…”

“…Wei et al [ 74 ] found from the self-determination theory three basic psychological needs of employees (i.e., need for competence, need for autonomy, and need for relatedness) influencing employees’ social media use. Zhou and Mou [ 81 ] found that this behavior positively influenced employees’ spirituality based on self-determination theory. Wu et al [ 109 ], based on the transactional theory of stress, found that this behavior generates challenging work stress and hinders work stress, while challenging work stress helps employees to be more effective, and hindering work stress has a negative effect.…”

Spiritual Leadership and Job Engagement: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation

“…When in the heavy workload and under time pressure, expressive suppression can weaken the subjective feeling, and be more prone to emotional exhaustion, which cause employees not easy to gain self-esteem and achievement and make them unable to produce a sense of belonging in the organization ( Zhou and Mou, 2021 ), thus reducing the role immersion. Therefore, they tend to show a negative and indifferent attitude at work, which leads to psychological problems and a strong sense of job burnout, thus affecting job engagement.…”

Social media usage and employee creativity: is relational energy a missing link?

“…The extant studies show that SMU in organizations can play a helpful role in marketing, customer relationship management and information collection, which leads to a positive impact on organizations (Tajudeen et al. , 2018; Zhou and Mou, 2021). However, most organizations seem to be confused regarding the usage of social networking sites during business hours for private purposes in organization management strategies.…”