The relationship between social media usage in the workplace and employee productivity in the public sector: Case study of government departments in Harare

Abstract

Orientation: The advent of social media has taken new dimensions becoming one of the most significant methods of how people communicate all over the world. In particular, the usage of social media and networking sites is a phenomenon that has brought great negative and positive impact to organisations and employees nowadays.Research purpose: The primary aim of the study sought to determine the relationship between social media usage in the workplace and employee productivity in the public sector with particular reference to government departments in Harare.Motivation for the study: There have been rising concerns about the use of social media sites in the workplace because of loss of labour productivity through time wasted at work.Research approach/design and method: The study adopted a positivist research approach because it had ontological assumptions of representationalism and objectivism. Because of the nature of the research objectives, a descriptive research design was found to be necessary. A sample size of 278 management and employees from five selected government departments was targeted. Structured questionnaires were used for the collection of relevant primary data.Main findings: The study revealed that social media usage in the workplace resulted in significant drop in employees’ productivity because of time spent online keeping in touch with friends, sharing pictures and communicating with colleagues.Practical/managerial implications: As social media cannot be completely eradicated during working hours, the human resources departments need to monitor deadlines and job deliverables with the need to ensure that jobs are performed efficiently.Contribution/value-add: The study sought to fill the existing research gaps with regard to the use of social media at workplace and employee productivity.

Team Social Media Usage and Team Creativity: The Role of Team Knowledge Sharing and Team-Member Exchange

“…The past few years have witnessed growing academic interest in social media usage (e.g., Brooks, 2015 ; Haddud et al, 2016 ; Van Zoonen et al, 2017 ; Sun et al, 2019 ; Liu et al, 2020 ; Ma et al, 2020 ), but few studies have focused on the relationship between TSMU and team creativity (e.g., Leonardi, 2014 ; Cheng and Krumwiede, 2018 ; Wushe and Shenje, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Korzynski et al, 2020 ). Basing on communication visibility theory and social exchange theory, this study craft a theoretical framework to understand how and when TSMU exerted positive effect on team creativity.…”

“…For example, individual brows his colleagues personal homepage (such as Facebook) or microblog (such as Twitter and Sina Weibo) to learn about their personal information. Furthermore, network translucency enables employees to expand the range of members through reactivate dormant ties and maintain a set of “latent ties” ( Ellison et al, 2011 ; Levin et al, 2011 ; Ou and Davison, 2016 ; Cheng and Krumwiede, 2018 ; Pitafi et al, 2018 ; Wushe and Shenje, 2019 ). Therefore, relationship-related TSMU will lead to closer network connection in the team, so as to ensure close connection among team members and enhance team creativity ( Joo et al, 2012 ).…”

“…In addition, when team members are in different places, Tencent meeting—another social media popular in China—enables teams to implement online meetings to discuss work items. Some researchers held the perception that social media usage can help individuals generate novel and useful ideas concerning products, services, and work methods ( Leonardi, 2014 ; Cheng and Krumwiede, 2018 ; Wushe and Shenje, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Korzynski et al, 2020 ). However, research on the relationship of TSMU and team creativity has been scarce.…”

Three-way interaction effect of social media usage, perceived task interdependence and perceived participative leadership on employee creativity

“…Over the past decades, employee creativity has attracted a great deal of attention among researchers and practitioners and, after decades of research and practice, it is still regarded as an important organizational advantage (Roberts et al , 2016; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). In recent years, as many organizations are offering social media in their portfolio of IT applications, increasing research have supported the perception that social media usage (SMU) can help employees generate novel and useful ideas concerning products, services and work methods (Wushe and Shenje, 2019; Cheng and Krumwiede, 2018). However, although social media has been widely utilized in organizations, employees are not benefiting equally from SMU, suggesting the effect of SMU on creativity is a complex process.…”

The effects of job demands of enterprise social media on employees' outcomes: a curvilinear mediated model

“…Conversely, at a moderate-to-high level, ESM-related job demands may compel employees to spend more resources, such as off-hours invasions, frequent distractions of attention, and increased emotional investment in relationship maintenance online Wushe and Shenje, 2019), and further activate their self-regulation, depriving those job demands of needed resources. This subsequently triggers the aggravation of emotional exhaustion.…”