Excessive Use of WeChat at Work Promotes Creativity: The Role of Knowledge Sharing, Psychological Strain

Abstract

The pervasive nature of social media can result in excessive use and addiction, but whether excessive use of social media is good or bad for individuals' creativity is unclear. This study explored the direct and indirect impact of excessive use of WeChat on individuals' creativity in workplace, focusing on how excessive use of WeChat promotes or restrains creativity through knowledge sharing and psychological strain. Based on the person–environment fit model and motivation theory, this study examined the three paths of excessive WeChat use affecting individuals' creativity in workplace. We used the structural equation model to test our research model. A survey of 364 employees revealed that excessive WeChat use directly promotes creativity and indirectly improves creativity via knowledge sharing, but excessive WeChat use does not lead to psychological strain. These findings, obtained by theoretically and empirically investigating the positive outcomes of excessive WeChat use, suggest an upside to excessive WeChat use. The implications and limitations of this study and future research on excessive-use behavior are also discussed.

The Values Supporting the Creativity of Employees

“…The assessed values (which are considered significant for the application of creativity in the enterprise) were set according to current research studies about employees' creativity. The compiled list of values consists from: A1: the meaningfulness of work (employees know the meaning of their work) (Yeh-Yun Lin and Liu, 2012; Pirola-Merlo and Mann, 2021; Zhang H. et al, 2021); A2: engagement according to González-González and García-Almeida (2021) and Özdemir et al (2021); A3: enthusiasm resp. passion (González-González and García-Almeida, 2021; Görzen, 2021;Muñoz-Pascual et al, 2021); A4: cooperation (Muñoz-Pascual et al, 2021;Ozer and Zhang, 2021;Zhang H. et al, 2021;Zhang Y. et al, 2021); A5: recognition (public, personal) (Gong et al, 2009;Oyedele, 2013;Görzen, 2021;Zhang H. et al, 2021); A6: open communication (Oyedele, 2013;González-González and García-Almeida, 2021;Muñoz-Pascual et al, 2021;Zhang H. et al, 2021); A7: support (Gong et al, 2009;Yeh-Yun Lin and Liu, 2012;Özdemir et al, 2021); A8: autonomy (Muñoz-Pascual et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2021); A9: emphasis on health (Oyedele, 2013;Özdemir et al, 2021); A10: trust (Baldé et al, 2018); A11: responsibility (inner sense of responsibility) (Görzen, 2021;Muñoz-Pascual et al, 2021).…”

“…Wang et al (2021) used a questionnaire survey to show that there is a relationship between an individual's creativity, self-confidence, and set goals. Through a questionnaire survey, Zhang H. et al (2021) revealed that the ability to acquire new knowledge and the willingness to share that knowledge positively affects social curiosity, sensitivity to deprivation, and the joy of discovery. According to their outputs, the willingness to pass on knowledge has a direct impact on the level of creativity in the company.…”

“…A new factor that can influence the creativity of employees is the application of the values of open communication, support, and trust through the use of Internet applications. Zhang H. et al (2021) investigated the effect of using WeChat at work on employee creativity. Using empirical research and the use of a structural equation model, they revealed that the excessive use of WeChat directly promotes creativity (open communication and meaningfulness) and indirectly improves creativity through knowledge sharing (collaboration and recognition).…”

Analysis on the Influence Path of User Knowledge Withholding in Virtual Academic Community – Based on Structural Equation Method-Artificial Neural Network Model

“…Secondly, this study takes China's virtual academic community as the research object. Due to China's unique social culture (Zhang H. Q. et al, 2021), which may have an additional impact on the phenomenon of individual knowledge withholding. Finally, although the virtual academic community is a representative kind of community with knowledge exchange as the core, and the research on the phenomenon of user knowledge withholding has certain reference significance for the virtual community, the conclusion is based on a single type of virtual community must have some limitations.…”

Work Stress and its Impact on Employees’ Psychological Strain

“…DISTRIBUTION ACROSS COUNTRIES (Weinberg, 2015), effort-reward imbalance (Weiss & Suss, 2017;Mayerl et al 2021), longer work hours (Liu et al 2019), excessive use of WeChat at workplace (Zhang et al 2021), psychological demands (Bakker et al 2021, the severity of work (Bianchi & Schonfeld, 2020), perceptions of demand, control, effort, reward and emotional exhaustion level (Fernandez-Castro et al, 2017) as well as emotional dissonance (Prem et al 2016). While psychosocial work characteristics were reported as less social support (Liu et al 2019), less supervisor and co-worker support, and acts of offensive behaviour (Bakker et al 2021), perception of political bureaucratic control (Garcia et al 2018), a regulatory job that refers to time pressure, planning and decision making (Prem et al 2016) and performance appraisal (PA) context (Dhiman, 2021).…”