Integrating the bright and dark sides of communication visibility for knowledge management and creativity: The moderating role of regulatory focus

Abstract

Integrating the bright and dark sides of communication visibility in enterprise social media for knowledge management and creativity: The moderating role of regulatory focus. Computers in Human Behavior, 111(October), 106421.

Excessive Enterprise Social Media Use Behavior at Work: Role of Communication Visibility and Perspective of Uses and Gratifications Theory

“…The communication visibility of ESM means that communication among employees in the workplace can be visible to a wider organizational audience [22,62,63]. At the same time, through communication visibility, employees can learn about the communication contents, or messages, as well as connections, or networks among their coworkers [6,62], which enables them to quickly locate experts in a specific field and identify colleagues with shared interests [63,69]. Through the field research of ESM use in a financial service organization, Leonardi [62] proposed the communication visibility theory and identified two dimensions of visibility: message transparency and network translucence.…”

“…Specifically, message transparency makes it easy for employees to see the content posted on the ESM and even the exchanged messages among their colleagues [62]. The content of routine communication among employees benefits not only employees directly involved in communication but also those who are not involved in the communication [6,19]. They can learn more about their colleagues by observing what others communicate or post, and get the information they need or are interested in.…”

“…Network translucence indicates that ESM enables employees to make their communication network public and visible to other colleagues, and it allows third parties to observe and infer connections among other employees [6,62]. Network translucence not only helps employees understand more clearly how colleagues and activities are related to each other [6] but also provides a major way for employees to establish, enhance, and maintain their social relationships [21,70].…”

“…With the continuous development of information technology (IT), social media has gradually penetrated all areas of human social life, such as people's daily life [1], education [2], and work [3]. More and more companies are aware of the development potential that social media brings to the workplace and are committed to deploying enterprise social media (ESM) internally to improve the current working environment by promoting communication and collaboration within organizations [4][5][6][7]. Based on the research of Leonardi, et al [4], ESM is defined as the "webbased platforms that allow workers to (1) communicate messages with specific coworkers or broadcast messages to everyone in the organization; (2) explicitly indicate or implicitly reveal particular coworkers as communication partners; (3) post, edit, and sort text and files linked to themselves or others; and (4) view the messages, connections, text, and files communicated, posted, edited and sorted by anyone else in the organization at any time of their choosing.…”

“…Furthermore, Liang, et al [24] indicate that communication visibility captures the propensity of users to use technology. However, although communication visibility has been well explicated by emerging theories for its intuitive meaning, it has rarely been empirically tested [6]. To address this research gap, our study explores the relationship between communication visibility enabled by ESM and its excessive use by employees at work and conducts empirical analysis to test it.…”