Social Media Use in the Workplace: A Study of Dual Effects

Social media use in the workplace may simultaneously contribute to productive behaviors (taskoriented and relationship-building) as well as unproductive behaviors (deviance) at work. Building on channel expansion theory the authors examine the impact of using social media on these organizational behaviors. Using a sample of 220 working individuals they found that intensity of social media use contributed to greater task-oriented social media behaviors, more relationship-building social media behaviors, and more deviant social media behaviors. Further, the authors examined the moderating effect that preoccupation with social media has on these direct relationships and found that preoccupation diminishes the effect of social media use on both productive and un-productive behaviors. KEyWORDS Channel Expansion, Intensity of Use, Preoccupation, Social Media, Workplace Deviance