The Influence Of Social Media Use On Innovative Performance Of Government Employees

As a new style of public life, social media are penetrating all aspects of social interaction, social participation, goods producing and consuming. With this fashion, social media show their influences in the workplace as well. However, there may be both potential benefits and risks for employers when employees use social media in the workplace. Thus, there are continuous debates lying in the topic toward the effect of employees' social media use on job performance. The study tries to explore the influencing mechanism of government employees obtaining workplace support through social media on innovative performance, integrating the variables as job satisfaction, work engagement, affective commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior towards individual. Moreover, based on organizational climate theory, the study investigates the antecedents of obtaining workplace support through social media, by employing the variables as supportive organizational climate, task interdependence, perceived usefulness. The study analyzed all hypotheses with the data from 981 government employees in Hubei Province.The study finds some notable results:obtaining workplace support through social media has a direct and positive effect on innovative performance, and organizational citizenship behavior toward individual. Obtaining workplace support through social media indirectly affects innovative performance through serveal mediating meschanisms: (1) partial mediation of organizational citizenship behavior toward individual; (2) double mediation of job satisfaction and work engagement; (3) double mediation of affective organizational commitment and work engagement; (4) multiple mediation of job satisfaction, work engagement, and affective organizational commitment. Obtaining workplace support through social media not only directly and positively affects affective commitment, but indirectly promotes affective commitment through the mediating mechanism of job satisfaction. Job satisfaction fully mediates and affective commitment partially mediates the effects of obtaining workplace support through social media on work engagement. Obtaining workplace support through social media enhances work engagement through the double mediating mechanism of job satisfaction and affective commitment. Supportive organizational climate not only directly enhances government employees obtaining workplace support through social media, but indirectly exerts this impact through the mediating mechanism of perceived usefulness. Perceived usefulness partially mediates the effects of task interdependence on government employees obtaining workplace support through social media.The study has some limitations:(1) the cross-sectional data is not helpful to infer the causality relationship; (2) the study collected the data through the way of self-report, which may result in inaccuracy and potential bias, although the study had tested the common method bias; (3) the study did not examine the effects of government employees' social media use on negative work outcomes, such as turnover intention, and job burnout. Future studies can make additional contributions by:(1) collecting the data through others-report, such as peer-rated, and supervisor-rated; (2) using longitudinal data; (3) exploring the effects of government employees' social media use on negative work outcomes; (4) examining the effects of government employees' social media use on different aspects of individual work performance; (5) comparing employees from different sectors.