Team social media usage and intra-team competition and cooperation: a social information processing perspective
Release time:2021-05-13
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DOI number:10.1108/ITP-02-2020-0058
Journal:Information Technology & People
Key Words:Social media usage; Cooperation perception; Competition perception;Trade-off, Social information processing theory
Abstract:Purpose–This study aims to explore how team task-related social media usage (TSMU) and social-relatedsocial media usage (SSMU) affect employees’perceptions of intra-team cooperation and competition andfurther individual creativity.Design/methodology/approach–This study conducted a questionnaire survey on enterprises in China thathave implemented social media and obtained 348 useable questionnaires from 55 work teams.Findings–The results revealed that employees’perceptions of intra-team cooperation and competition canpromote employees’creativity. Employees’cooperation perception can be significantly positively affected byTSMU and SSMU, whereas employees’competition perception can be significantly positively affected byTSMU. Regarding congruence, the results indicated that the more balanced between TSMU and SSMU, thestronger the competition perception.Practicalimplications–Managers should pay critical attention to the role of team social media usage (SMU)in shaping employees’perceptions of their team environments. They should realize the different outcomes andthe joint effects of the different types of SMU.Originality/value–This study contributes to the social media literature by explaining the impact of teamSMU on employees’perceptions and evaluations of team environments based on the social informationprocessing theory. The study presents the relationships among team SMU, employees’perceptions ofcooperation and competition and employee creativity. Moreover, this study expands research on the trade-offof SMU by exploring the impact of balanced and imbalanced SMU in a work team.
Co-author:Qian Huang,Hefu Liu,Youying Wang
First Author:Shuqin Zhang
Indexed by:Journal paper
Discipline:Management Science
Document Type:J
Volume:35
Issue:1
Page Number:410-434
Translation or Not:no
Date of Publication:2021-12-24
Included Journals:SSCI
