Study of Social media impacts on social capital and employee performance – evidence from Tunisia Telecom

ABSTRACT

Today, social networks have become essential communication tools. The emergence of internal social media platforms and applications in the workplace has created great digital opportunities for employees to communicate, collaborate, exchange work-related information, and share professional knowledge.  Accordingly, the objective of this research is to explore the effect of social media use in the workplace. Specifically, the present study aims to identify the effect of social media use on employees' work performance through their impact on social capital and knowledge sharing. A research model was proposed and empirically tested with an online survey study of 328 working professionals who use social media in a telecommunication company – “Tunisie Telecom„. Results reveal that social media use in the workplace positively influence social capital, which impact knowledge sharing among employees that leads to better work performance. Implications and directions for future work are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Social Media
• social Capital
• knowledge Sharing
• employee Performance
• structural Equation Modelling

Acknowledgments

The Authors appreciate the unknown referee’s valuable comments. The authors express their thanks to the HR Direction of Tunisia Telecom. The opinions of the authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of Tunisia Telecom. Also, the Authors gratefully thank Bank AlBilad of e-Commerce & Saudi Electronic University for the financial award.

Confidentiality declaration

This study is conducted with the approval of Tunisia Telecom. A confidentiality agreement was approved by Authors and HR Direction of Tunisia Telecom to guarantee the employee’s personal data protection and all confidential information.

Declaration of competition interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. We received the revision of major from reviewers. In order to address all the comments of reviewers, some authors provide us help and support. They contributed equally to the manuscript as follows. The research was conducted by the collaboration among all authors. Author 1 (Louati Hanen) designed the research idea into conceptual breakdown, and further Author 2 (Hadoussa Slim) performed the analysis and discussion. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Executive summary

Social media has changed the business environment and has especially affected the HR Management practices and MIS field. Within the digitalisation wave, social media provide interconnected platforms that enhance communication, collaboration and knowledge exchange. These tools create and sustain communities of practice in the wave of today’s digital transformation. However, the rise of social media has sparked discussions regarding its use in the workplace and especially its impact on employee performance. Many companies are blocking employee access to social networking websites at the workplace, nevertheless banning the use of those sites could lead companies to lose a huge number of opportunities for business development.

The insights obtained by this study would be helpful for both researchers and practitioners, as it clarifies some of the main issues surrounding the debate on the effect of using social media in today’s digital workplaces. Based on Social Capital Theory, the study proposes a valid empirical instrument to explore the importance of social media use at the workplace and study its impacts on employee performance.

The empirical test is based on an online survey of 328 working professionals using social media at ‘Tunisie Telecom’. Based on the structural modelling system, the exploratory analyses reveal the positive impacts of social media use at the workplace and its contribution to employee performance. Besides, this research helps managers establish effective policies towards social media use that may help organisations to benefit from those emerging forms of social exchange if correctly controlled and applied. The empirically identified findings can also be extended and used to understand the positive impact of social media use in other cultural and social contexts.

The specific findings of this research contribute to the existing empirical literature by connecting social media use at the workplace with three dimensions of social capital (structural dimension, relational and cognitive dimensions); two forms of knowledge sharing (knowledge collecting and knowledge donating); and employees’ work performance as a result of knowledge sharing.

Highlights

•The Social Capital dimensions impact positively knowledge sharing through social media use at the workplace.

•Social media use at the workplace is a significant contributor to the development of social capital among workers.

•The Social Capital indicators (network ties, shared vision, trust and norms of reciprocity) impact positively knowledge sharing through social media use at the workplace.

•The knowledge-sharing activities through social media use contribute to better work performance.

•To take advantage of social media networking and promote knowledge sharing among organisational members, managers need to provide clear policies and ethical rules on social media use for work purposes.