The Effects of Task Conflict and Relationship Conflict on Workforce Agility: Moderating Role of Social Media Usage

Workforce agility has been considered as an important factor responding to the uncertain environment. However, current research on how to develop workforce agility remains unclear, so identifying the influencing factors for achieving workforce agility is needed. Based on the information processing view, we propose a model to examine how task conflict and relationship conflict affect workforce agility and the moderating effects of social media usage on these relationships. The results show that relationship conflict has a negative effect on workforce agility and task conflict has a positive effect on workforce agility. Additionally, we find the relationship between task conflict and workforce agility is moderated by social media usage, such that the effect of task conflict on workforce agility is weaker when employees use social media frequently. We conclude with implications and suggestions for future research.