Investigating the Influence of Social Media on Employee Creativity: A Perspective from Social Network Ties

Abstract

Despite the growing body of research on social media and its effects on employees, few studies have sought to explain the aims of social media users in firms and the mechanisms that link these to employee creativity. From the perspective of social networks, this study argues that using social media for work and social purposes in an enterprise fosters instrumental and expressive links among employees, which in turn fosters employee creativity. The role of instrumental and expressive social ties as mediators was investigated in this study. Furthermore, this research proposes that tie strength moderates the relationship between instrumental and expressive ties and employee creativity. We reveal that specific types of social media usage, such as work- and social-related usage, lead to employees’ instrumental and expressive ties, which promote employee creativity, using a sample of 325 Chinese employees. Furthermore, in our model, an employee’s tie strength serves as a second-stage moderator. The findings of this study substantiated most of our hypotheses which also had important theoretical and practical implications and guided scholars in the proper direction for further research.

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