Title: Effect of enterprise social media and psychological safety on employee's agility: mediating role of communication quality

Authors: Abdul Hameed Pitafi; Shamsa Kanwal; Adnan Pitafi

Addresses: School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, 96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei, Anhui Province, China ' School of Public Affair, University of Science and Technology of China, 96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei, Anhui Province, China ' Mehran University Institute of Science, Technology and Development (MUISTD), Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan

Abstract: Enterprise social media (ESM) is an open and public platform that facilitates employee discussions on work-related issues. However, researchers and practitioners are vague about the advantages of ESM usage in the workplace to handle the work related uncertainties. This study investigated whether and how ESM usage, psychological safety can be positively associated with employee's agility. Employee's agility is the ability of the employee to react and adopt environmental changes more promptly and appropriately. Based on information processing theory, this study examines employee agility by considering the mediating effect of communication quality. Data was collected from 167 employees who adopted ESM in the workplace, the existing study supports our proposed hypotheses and mediating effect. The findings confirm the significant role of ESM usage and psychological safety in improving employee agility through communication quality. This research study contributes to the existing ESM literature by investigating communication quality and its role in developing employee's agility in the context of ESM and suggesting managerial implications of ESM usage in improving the employee's agility.

Keywords: enterprise social media; ESM; digital platform; employee's agility; workplace; China; organisations; information processing; psychological safety; agile work performance; communication quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2019.098708

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 2019 Vol.12 No.1, pp.1 - 26

Received: 10 Nov 2017
Accepted: 26 May 2018
Published online: 01 Apr 2019 *

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