Organizational members’ use of social networking sites and job performance: An exploratory study

There is considerable debate among academics and business practitioners on the value of the use of social networking by organizational members. Some, fearing presenteeism (i.e. being at the workplace but working below peak capacity), claim that the use of social networking sites by organizational members is a waste of time, while others believe it leads to improvements in job performance, partly due to employees’ successful efforts to balance work‐life realms. This paper aims to inform this debate by examining the use of social networking sites by organizational members and its effect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance.

The exploratory study is based on a survey of 193 employees, focusing on the following constructs: social networking site use intensity, perceived job satisfaction, perceived organizational commitment, and job performance. The authors’ proposed model was evaluated using variance‐based structural equation modeling (SEM), a latent variable‐based multivariate technique enabling concurrent estimation of structural and measurement models under nonparametric assumptions. This study used WarpPLS 2.0 to assess both the measurement and the structural model.

The results show that social networking site use intensity has a significant positive effect on job performance through the mediation of job satisfaction, and that this mediating effect is itself mediated – in a nested way – via organizational commitment. The findings suggest that social networking site use, rather than causing presenteeism, may be a new way through which employees balance their work‐life realms, in turn benefitting their organizations.Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze, in an integrated way, the relationship between those theoretical constructs.