The Impact of Enterprise Social Media Fatigue on Employee Creativity: A Conceptual Paper

Abstract

In the era of information technology, the rise in popularity of social media is reshaping communication, entertainment, work, and learning. As social media has shown its potential to have a significant impact, organizations are pouring resources into their social media programs to focus on finding or building enterprise-level social media that suits the features of the business. Enterprise social media is proving to be an efficient instrument for improving communication, enhancing collaboration, and accelerating the dissemination of corporate knowledge. However, information and communication technology has been characterized as somewhat of a “double-edged sword”, and as such, there is also growing concern among researchers that enterprise social media use has an undeniable “dark side”. This conceptual paper applies the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) model to explain the potential roles played by “fear of missing out” (FoMO) and privacy concerns as stressors that affect “enterprise social media fatigue” (ESMF); as well as the effect that ESMF may have on employee creativity. Research propositions based on this conceptual framework have also been developed.