Enterprise Social Media Use and Employee Innovation: The Role of Employee Capital and Empowering Leadership

This study investigates the relationship between employees’ task-oriented and social-oriented use of enterprise social media (ESM) and their innovation performance through the accumulation of employees’ social, human, and psychological capital. Integrating Self-Determination Theory and Social Learning Theory, we propose a multiple-mediation framework in which ESM serves as a resource-building infrastructure that supports innovation indirectly by strengthening employee capital. We test the model using survey data from 613 employees in Chinese knowledge-intensive enterprises. Results show that both ESM use orientations are positively associated with all three forms of capital; however, neither orientation has a significant direct effect on innovative performance once the capitals are included. Instead, the ESM–innovation link is transmitted through these capitals, indicating an indirect-only mediation pattern. We further find that empowering leadership amplifies the extent to which human and psychological capital translate into innovative performance, whereas its moderation on the social capital–innovation relationship is comparatively weak. Overall, the findings position ESM as a digital infrastructure that enables a multi-capital pathway to employee innovation in contemporary work settings.