How enterprise social media usage contributes to employee resilience: moderating role of individual adaptability

Earlier research on the ways in which enterprise social media (ESM) usage contributes to employee resilience is rather limited. Using boundary spanning theory, this paper proposes a research model for investigating how enterprise social media usage contributes to employee resilience. Using Smart PLS 4.0 to analyze the survey data from 370 employees, this study found that, first, when enterprise social media is used for work and social purposes, it has a positive effect on employee boundary spanning, while the effect of social-related ESM usage on employee boundary spanning is larger than work-related ESM usage. Second, employee boundary spanning has the greatest effect on the behavioural dimension of employee-level resilience, followed by the cognitive dimension of employee-level resilience and the contextual dimension. Third, employees’ boundary spanning acts as a partial mediator between enterprise social media and employees’ different levels of resilience. Finally, it is interesting to find that individual adaptability can weaken the relationship between work-related ESM usage and employee boundary spanning, while individual adaptability can strengthen the relationship between social-related ESM usage and employee boundary spanning. The research findings suggest ways of using enterprise social media for specific purposes to increase employees’ different levels of resilience in organisations.