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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 28 July 2021
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.693183
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1July 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 693183
Edited by:
Shalini Srivastava,
Jaipuria Institute of Management, India
Reviewed by:
Andry Alamsyah,
Telkom University, Indonesia
Yuan Tang,
University of Electronic Science and
Technology of China, China
*Correspondence:
Din Jong
hi1212@gmail.com
Athapol Ruangkanjanases
athapol@cbs.chula.ac.th
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 10 April 2021
Accepted: 05 July 2021
Published: 28 July 2021
Citation:
Jong D, Chen S-C,
Ruangkanjanases A and Chang Y-H
(2021) The Impact of Social Media
Usage on Work Efficiency: The
Perspectives of Media Synchronicity
and Gratifications.
Front. Psychol. 12:693183.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.693183
The Impact of Social Media Usage on
Work Efficiency: The Perspectives of
Media Synchronicity and
Gratifications
Din Jong 1
*, Shih-Chih Chen 2, Athapol Ruangkanjanases 3
*and Yun-Hsuan Chang2
1Department of Digital Design and Information Management, Chung Hwa University of Medical Technology, Tainan, Taiwan,
2Department of Information Management, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan,
3Chulalongkorn Business School, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
As prevail of mobile networking, social media became ubiquitous in either work or our
personal life. Based on Media Synchronization Theory and transformational framework,
this study proposed a research model and examined how the social media’ attributes
impacting the work effectiveness through the work-oriented or social-oriented usage.
The data of 322 valid questionnaires from respondents was analyzed by SmartPLS 3.2.8.
The results indicated that the features of social media including availability and symbol
variety had the significant influences on their work efficiency through work-oriented
usage of social media. Publicness and symbol variety had impact on work efficiency via
social-oriented usage of social media. In addition, both social media for work-oriented
and social-oriented usage influenced employees’ work efficiency. There were different
considerations when people selected social media for work or for social purpose.
Managers or companies could guide their employees to use the social media in a right
way to increase their work features to complete their work efficiency, and create groups
for employees so the work information could be shared efficiently.
Keywords: social media, media synchronization theory, permanence, publicness, symbol variety, availability,
asynchronicity
INTRODUCTION
Social media were electronic tools that enabled users to communicate and exchange information
and facilitate interactions among different users (Zerfass et al., 2011; Criado et al., 2013; Song and
Lee, 2016). Social media technologies revolutionized the way people communicate and interact
socially within and outside of organizations in relation to the Internet, with considerable impact on
people’s careers and lifestyles (Correa et al., 2010; Turban et al., 2011; Moqbel et al., 2013; Holland
et al., 2016). Social media allowed people to communicate or collaborate online through various
platforms, weblogs, blogs, wikis, broadcasts, pictures, and videos (Broughton et al., 2009). Social
media changed the ways of communication by enabling two-way communication between users
rather than one-way.
The social media use at work attracted numerous attentions (van Zoonen et al., 2014a;
Van Zoonen et al., 2017). However, most of the researches were in a single perspective
(Villanueva et al., 2008), and focused only on social media use (Trainor et al., 2014; Jiang
et al., 2016; Parveen et al., 2016; Drummond et al., 2017), or on social media use at
Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
work (van Zoonen et al., 2014a; Van Zoonen et al., 2017), on
the intensity (Charoensukmongkol, 2014), or on the frequency
(Bretschneider and Parker, 2016) of social media use. Some
scholars investigated social media use at work mainly on the
relationship management (Tajudeen et al., 2018), information
search and sharing (de Zubielqui et al., 2019), job satisfaction, and
job performance (Parveen et al., 2015).
From the perspective of prior organizational behavior
research, social media could be divided into two categories:
personal social media and enterprise social media (Van Zoonen
et al., 2017). This study emphases on personal social media
than enterprise social media for the following reasons: First,
there has been extensive research on the use of enterprise
social media in the domain of information systems (IS)
over the past decade (Leonardi et al., 2013; Leftheriotis and
Giannakos, 2014; Huang et al., 2015; Parveen et al., 2015;
Bretschneider and Parker, 2016; Hacker et al., 2017; Wehner
et al., 2017; Archer-Brown and Kietzmann, 2018; Bulgurcu
et al., 2018; Osch and Steinfield, 2018; de Zubielqui et al.,
2019; Fu et al., 2019; Veeravalli and Vijayalakshmi, 2019;
Tamengkel and Rumawas, 2020). Some studies discussed the
impact of enterprise social media use in organizations, such
as organizational rules, norms, and policies, organization type,
and size (Bretschneider and Parker, 2016). The other studies
investigated whether the use of enterprise social media in
organizations could facilitate internal knowledge management
(Behringer et al., 2017; Kane, 2017; Bulgurcu et al., 2018),
communication efficiency (Korzynski, 2014), cross-nation social
networking (Van Osch and Steinfield, 2016), strategic vision of
communicators (Charoensukmongkol, 2014), perceived values of
utilitarianism and hedonism (Leftheriotis and Giannakos, 2014),
innovation (Lam et al., 2016; Kapoor et al., 2018; Papa et al.,
2018), job satisfaction (Charoensukmongkol and Sasatanun,
2017; Song et al., 2019), relationship satisfaction (Sheer and Rice,
2017), job performance improvement (Charoensukmongkol and
Sasatanun, 2017; Song et al., 2019), organizational performance
(Garcia-Morales et al., 2018), or corporate performance (de
Zubielqui et al., 2019; Nisar et al., 2019). Second, unlike enterprise
social media, which is strictly limited used by organizational
employees, personal social media was available for everyone. That
meant that personal social media could easily bridge the gap
between personal and professional lives. The use of personal
social media not only allowed employees to communicate and
connect with their families or handle family matters at work,
but also let employees to receive and complete work assignments
after working hour, in the evening or on the weekends when at
home (Moqbel et al., 2013). Therefore, in synthesis with above
discussion, this study would emphasize to evaluate and explain
the impact of different characteristics of social media on work
efficiency through the work-oriented and social-oriented usage
intention of social media.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Uses and Gratifications Theory
Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) was a mass
communication theory (Eighmey and McCord, 1998) that
had been applied to traditional media to understand customer
behavior. Uses and Gratifications Theory explained the origin
of social and psychological needs that generated expectations of
the media, thus created different patterns of media exposure or
involvement in other activities that lead to satisfaction of needs
(Katz et al., 1973). Uses and Gratifications Theory has received
considerable attention in social media research, especially in the
satisfaction of customer’ needs (Dholakia et al., 2004; Porter and
Donthu, 2008; Chen, 2010).
In recent years, scholars used the UST to explain individuals’
social media use and demand satisfaction. For example, Ali-
Hassan et al. (2015) conceptualized demand and satisfaction
theory through three dimensions of social media use, including
demand, job innovation, social use, hedonic use, and cognitive
use, and examined their effects on practitioner performance.
Their findings indicated that the use of social and cognitive
technologies positively affected employees’ daily work and
innovative work, while the use of hedonic technologies negatively
affected daily work. Based on the UGT, Odoom et al. (2017) found
that the use of social media positively influenced the performance
gains that companies received, and UGT helped to explain why
people choose and respond to different types of media and
information when faced with numerous media and messaging
options (Xu et al., 2019). The principle of UGT to explain user
behavior was that media use was selective and self-conscious,
motivated by individuals’ rational needs. The expectation of their
needs would be met through specific types of media or content
(Ruggiero, 2000). Since the UGT provided a link between choice
and outcome, therefore, it was appropriate for the study to
explore the effects of social media use on productivity.
Social Media Use
Social media could be used for either social or work-related
purposes in enterprises (Gonzalez et al., 2013). Social media
such as WeChat was widely used for work-related purposes in
Chinese enterprises (Zhang et al., 2018). In Taiwan, Apps such
as Line or Facebook Messenger are common to be used in the
workplace. Based on the UGT, Liang et al. (2020) conceptualized
the employee’ needs of using social media into two dimensions:
work-oriented and social-oriented. Their study confirmed that
employees would use social media for social-related or work-
related purposes. The use of social-related motives promoted
employee job satisfaction, while the use of work-related motives
increased employee productivity.
Specifically, social-oriented usage of social media was defined
as the use of social media to establish new social relationships
like making new friends, to identify individuals with common
interests, and to maintain contact with existing friends and
customers. Work-oriented usage of social media was defined as
using social media to discuss work with colleagues, or to share
document and file information within the organization. Since the
UGT provides a link between usage choices and their outcomes
(Liang et al., 2020), UGT could be considered as a framework
for understanding the relationship between motivation and
productivity in the media use (Stafford et al., 2004; Ali-Hassan
et al., 2015).
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Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
According to the UGT, employees achieved satisfaction when
they chose a specific media that could meet their needs. Social
media had significant impacts on various communication or
management in either workplaces or businesses. Previous studies
had shown that the use of social media in organizations could
facilitate internal knowledge management (Korzynski, 2014;
Behringer et al., 2017; Charoensukmongkol and Sasatanun, 2017;
Kane, 2017), and increased communication efficiency, and even
enhance work performance. Therefore, this study extended the
work of Liang et al. (2020) to classify the type of social media
use for employees, and explored how the characteristics of social
media affected the work efficiency. This would bridge the gap
between theory and practice and provide reference for corporate
decision making.
Media Synchronicity Theory
Media Synchronicity Theory (MST) by Dennis et al. (2008)
suggested that synchronization existed between people
when they worked together. Media Synchronicity Theory
identifies five objective capabilities that could affect the level
of synchronization:
•Transmission speed: the speed at which the media can
transmit messages.
•Parallel processing: the degree to which the media can transmit
messages from multiple senders simultaneously.
•Symbol diversity: the number of ways in which information
can be conveyed.
•Rehearsal: the degree to which the communication media
allows senders to rehearse or adjust messages before
sending; and
•Re-processing: the degree to which messages can be rechecked
or reprocessed by the recipient.
In addition, Dennis et al. (2008) proposed that all tasks were
composed of two communication processes: conveyance and
convergence. The conveyance process focuses on the exchange
of large amounts of new information, while the convergence
process involves consensus on the information already processed.
Media Synchronicity Theory attempts to determine the ideal
match between media capabilities and communication processes
in terms of achieving optimal communication performance. In
addition to explaining how different media capabilities affected
the effectiveness of communication, Media Synchronicity Theory
also examined the differences in the communication process
and the degree to which individuals must be involved in
the transmission and processing of messages in order for
communication to be successful.
RESEARCH METHODS
Research Hypotheses
The literature review on enterprise-based social media use
indicates that social media use can enhance work performance
(Wu, 2016; Brooks and Califf, 2017; Moqbel and Nah, 2017;
Tamengkel and Rumawas, 2020), organizational performance
(Parveen et al., 2015; Tajvidi and Karami, 2017; Garcia-Morales
et al., 2018; Nisar et al., 2019), situational performance (Trainor
et al., 2014; Ng et al., 2016), routine and innovative performance
(Ali-Hassan et al., 2015; Kuegler et al., 2015; Ng et al., 2016). For
example, prior studies examined the potential social, hedonic,
and cognitive outcomes when employees used personal-based
social media (Ali-Hassan et al., 2015; Ali et al., 2019; Cao
and Yu, 2019). Liang et al. (2020) showed that employees
would use personal or corporate social media for work and
social-related purposes. The use of social-related motives can
promote employee job satisfaction, and work-related motives
can increase employee productivity. Therefore, the following
hypothesis is proposed:
H1: Work-oriented usage of social media positively affects
work efficiency.
Work efficiency is the ratio of labor output to time invested in an
event (Sickles and Zelenyuk, 2019). Previous researches focused
on productivity increasement (Liang et al., 2020; Priyadarshini
et al., 2020; Vithayathil et al., 2020), and the factors that
influenced productivity (Sutanto et al., 2018). Regarding the
relationship between social media use and work productivity,
studies has shown that work-related social media use could
enhance the quality of communication and information exchange
among employees, which in turn positively affected their work
productivity (Leftheriotis and Giannakos, 2014).
Social media for social-oriented usage is to exchange personal
information in a social manner, and to gain social and emotional
support through the expression and connection of one’s identity.
When employees used social media for social-related purposes,
they generated online communication and social interaction.
Employees’ motivation for using social media was primarily to
observe the market (i.e., data collection), and secondarily to
maintain contact with customers (i.e., strengthening contacts)
(Leftheriotis and Giannakos, 2014). Based on the above
discussion, the following hypotheses were proposed:
H2: Social-oriented usage of social media positively affects
work efficiency.
Media synchronization theory was used to describe and evaluate
physical media functions (Muhren et al., 2009; Davison et al.,
2014). This theory identified five physical media functions that
may affect media synchronization. They were 1. transmission
speed, 2. parallel processing, 3. symbol diversity, 4. rehearsability,
and 5. reprocessing. Previous studies found that the functions of
social media had impact on work performance (Leftheriotis and
Giannakos, 2014; Wang et al., 2016; Salehan et al., 2017). Based
on the social media features proposed by Nesi et al. (2018), this
study consolidated them into five social media features that may
affect the motivation of social media use: asynchronicity, work
efficiency, publicness, accessibility, and symbol variety.
The aspect of asynchronicity has long been emphasized in
the study of psychology or media influence (Valkenburg and
Peter, 2011; McFarl and Ployhart, 2015). Berger (2013) stressed
the inherent asynchronous nature of non-verbal communication,
which is more prevalent in social media. Social media varied
in the response time when communication. For example,
video communication provided nearly perfect synchronization,
whereas email was in an asynchronous manner, leaving more
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Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
time for the user to read or construct the message to be
replied to. Although some researches treated instant messaging
as a synchronous communication, Münzer and Borg (2008)
suggested that social media often could not provide immediate
interpersonal feedback (e.g., the time interval in constructing
the message).
As described in media synchronization theory (Dennis et al.,
2008), the media for communication should have a variety of
functions, including the speed at which messages are delivered
(transmission speed), the degree to which interactions can
occur simultaneously (parallel processing), and the degree to
which messages can be crafted (rehearsability). As one of the
basic functions of social media was for social-oriented usage,
it could fulfill the need for employees to create and maintain
social relationships through social networking or communities
of interest (Wu, 2013). Social media can connect individuals with
family, friends, associates, or colleagues anytime, anywhere. As
the number of social relationships embedded in social networks
grows, employees might receive a large number of messages from
their virtual friends in social media. In order to maintain a large
social network for gaining support and belonging, individuals
might frequently check their social media to respond messages as
quickly as possible (Cao et al., 2016). In light of the above studies,
the following hypotheses were proposed:
H3a: Asynchronicity negatively affects social media for work-
oriented usage.
H3b: Asynchronicity negatively affects social media for social-
oriented usage.
Permanence referred to the extent to which content or
messages remained accessible after interaction or posted (McFarl
and Ployhart, 2015). Media with permanence feature could
automatic record or archive things presented online. User
must be aware of the permanence feature of social media
before posting content, because social media like Facebook
that posted photos could be searched years later. However,
social media like Instagram, the posted content would be
removed from other users’ cellphones in 24 h after it was
sent. No matter these posted contents could be retrieved or
erased, viewers could easily snapshot the screen and stored
it. This study proposed that permanence is a driving force
for social media use, because of its searchability (Boyd, 2010),
retrievability and replicability (Boyd, 2010; Peter and Valkenburg,
2013). Similarly, permanence gave the users the opportunity
to re-examine previously shared content—reprocessing (Dennis
et al., 2008), and to examine or verify information—verifiability
(McFarland and Ployhart, 2015). Thus, permanence is a broadly
encompassing feature of social media that is described in
previous discussions (Dennis et al., 2008; Peter and Valkenburg,
2013; McFarland and Ployhart, 2015). The following hypotheses
are presented.
H4a: Permanence positively affects social media for work-
oriented usage.
H4b: Permanence positively affects social media for social-
oriented usage.
Social media allowed information to be shared within a large
group of people simultaneously. McFarl and Ployhart (2015)
described this phenomenon as interdependent. Since the content
was not send to designated recipients, some studies focused
on larger audiences or potentially invisible audiences (Berger,
2013). The function of the social media was referred as
publicity because workers could communicate publicly with
their supervisory colleagues, customers, or even strangers that
could not be done offline. For employees to promote or
publicize their personal information might met the expectation
of their audiences (Boyd, 2014; Underwood and Ehrenreich,
2017).
It is obvious for some social media activities that has the
public nature (e.g., posting photos on Instagram or Snapchat).
The public nature can also occur in forums or LINE groups,
etc. For example, in thread forums or group chats, people
can easily communicate with 10–20 friends or more groups at
the same time. For employees, promoting or publicizing their
personal information might create audiences and satisfied their
expectation (Boyd, 2014; Underwood and Ehrenreich, 2017).
The majority of studies had explicitly declared that computer-
mediated communication as a relatively more private way to
obtain or provide support for team communication (Wright,
2015). Comparing with online support groups, communication
in the community had a higher degree of publicness, in means of
that the possibility that one person’s behavior will be observed by
others or may learn the number of other perpetrators (Leary and
Kowalski, 1990).
Public announcements on social media can attract a wider
audience, expand the space for interpersonal communication,
and redefine the context in which support is sought and given
(Treem and Leonardi, 2013). Given the different influences of
users on interpersonal relationships, this may further affect the
outcome of users seeking support on social media (Bazarova,
2012; Liu and Kang, 2017). In the social media communication
environment, publicness could change the way users viewed their
empathy or support from their audiences, or affect the likelihood
of providing support on social media externally (Liu and Wei,
2018). Under the working environment setting, employees might
want to disclose their personal information, moods, etc., on the
social media to connect more people or customers. Therefore, the
following hypotheses are proposed:
H5a: Publicness positively affects social media for work-
oriented usage.
H5b: Publicness positively affects social media for social-
oriented usage.
The availability was defined as the ease of posting or sharing
content regardless of its physical location. The accessibility
provided the possibility of easily initiating connections or joining
social networks, which greatly facilitates the ease of social
media communication (Valkenburg and Peter, 2011; McFarl and
Ployhart, 2015). For example, picking up the phone or sending
a text message to friends requires less effort than driving to
a friend’s house and talk. Similarly, it needs much less effort
chatting with strangers online than attending a party to meet
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Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
someone new. Employees in certain industries requires extensive
and strong social networks. The higher the demand for human
interaction, the more frequent the relationships and connections
need to be.
The media synchronization theory had emphasized that
social media synchronization affects social intimacy (Park et al.,
2019). Given the focus on the impact of social media on
worker efficiency, this study believed that employees’ ability to
quickly access or share content with customers was a result of
availability. In conjunction with publicness, the availability of
specific social media could enable “scalability.” That has the
potential for content to be highly visible, through reposting a
“fast-moving” message or video (Boyd, 2010). Therefore, the
following hypotheses were proposed:
H6a: Availability positively affects social media for work-
oriented usage.
H6b: Availability positively affects social media for social-
oriented usage.
Symbol variety represented the various ways the media have to
encode information for communication (Dennis et al., 2008).
People use different types of symbols to convey meanings in
the communication process. Therefore, symbol variety is of
paramount importance. In face-to-face conversations, people
could communicate in a variety of ways, such as handshakes,
facial expressions, head movements, and tone of voice. However,
text-based real-time communication such as SMS services were
relatively limited, as cue absence was one of the characteristics
of social media (Nesi et al., 2018). Cue absence originated from
the theory of cue filtering in computer-mediated communication
(Culnan and Markus, 1987) and the concept of anonymity and
social presence described in various fields (Subrahmanyam and
Šmahel, 2011; Valkenburg and Peter, 2011; Berger and Iyengar,
2013; McFarland and Ployhart, 2015). In social media, the aspects
that lack of physical presence such as voice, body touch, gestures,
and facial expressions, excluded the possibility of interpersonal
cues/clues, and reduced the amount of message or symbol variety.
Media synchronization theory found that the media with
higher symbol variety provided higher perceptual interaction
during communication because it took the least time and effort
to encode and decode messages (Dennis et al., 2008). The
symbol variety of social media contains multiple symbols of text,
video and audio with a variety of features that provide users
with enhanced functionality. It complements the missing cues,
thus minimizing confusion and uncertainty in communication.
Therefore, people could avoid unexpected misunderstandings
and create a harmonious communication environment, thus
enhancing inter-personal intimacy (Tang et al., 2013). Thus, the
following hypotheses were proposed:
H5a: Symbol variety positively affects social media for work-
oriented usage.
H5b: Symbol variety positively affects social media for social-
oriented usage.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of
social media features on work efficiency. Based on previous
studies, the social media use either for work or for social was
summarized. In order to understand the relationship between
several configurations, several hypotheses were proposed and
examined in Figure 1.
Research Subjects and Data Collection
The respondents were those who had experience in using social
media such as Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Line,
Whatsapp, or Wechat in Taiwan. A screening question was set
at the beginning of the questionnaire (as shown in Appendix
Table A1) to ensure that only respondents with experience that
using social media at work could participate in the survey.
The survey was conducted in the end of 2020, and data were
collected anonymously. After removing 7 invalid responses, a
total of 322 questionnaires were collected. Partial least square
structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was widely used in various
research fields and could be used to perform simultaneous cross-
construct measurements and structural model tests (Chin et al.,
2003). Partial least square structural equation model was suitable
for relatively early theoretical development studies, and it was
possible to process statistical analyses between study sections
and variables with more robust parametric results than other
statistical methods, even with small or medium-sized samples
(Chin, 1998; Chin et al., 2003). The summarized information of
the respondents was shown as Table 1.
RESULTS
This study used PLS to conduct a validated factor analysis (CFA)
to extract the average variables extracted (AVE) for the construct
questions, compose reliability values (CR) and Cronbach’s alpha
(Gefen et al., 2000) to assess the convergent validity and to
measure the reliability of this reliability of the study questions.
Model Reliability and Validity Analysis
The results of the factor loadings and reliability tests for each
of the study’s constructs were summarized in Table 2. The AVE
values were greater than the recommended value of 0.5 (Fornell
and Larcker, 1981; Gefen et al., 2000), and the Cronbach’s
alpha values and composite reliabilities for all constructs were
>0.7, meeting the criteria for academic studies (Fornell and
Larcker, 1981; Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994; Gefen et al.,
2000). Therefore, the convergent validity and reliability of the
measurement model passed the examination.
In this study, both convergent validity and discriminant
validity tests were conducted. According to Fornell and Larcker
(1981), the factor loadings of variables >0.5, the average
variable extraction (AVE) must be >0.5, and the reliability
must be >0.7. From Table 3, it indicated that all constructs
in this study had convergent validity. The square root of
AVE for each construct was greater than the correlation
coefficient between the constructs, therefore all constructs in
the measurement model had discriminant validity (Fornell and
Larcker, 1981).
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Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
Hypothesis Tests and Path Analysis
In this study, SmartPLS 3.2.8 performs structural pattern analysis.
The results of the path analyses were shown in Figure 2, and the
hypothesis test results were in Figure 1. At 95% confidence level,
6 of the 12 proposed research hypotheses were supported.
The results showed that all hypotheses were supported except
hypotheses 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b, 5a, and 6b, which were not supported
(as shown in Table 4). Specifically, the impact of work-oriented
usage (t=12.933, p<0.01) and social-oriented usage (t=
2.287, p<0.05) on work efficiency were positively correlated.
Regarding the effect of social media features on work use, only
symbol variety (t=4.195, p<0.01) was positively related to
work use, while asynchronicity (t=0.390, p>0.10), permanence
(t=0.385, p>0.10), publicness (t=1.418, p>0.10), and
availability (t=1.455, >0.10) had no significant effect on work
use. About the effect of social media features on social-oriented
usage of social media, only publicness (t=2.921, p<0.01) and
symbol diversity (t=3.064, p<0.01) were positively related to
social-oriented usage, while asynchronicity (t=1.042, p>0.10),
permanence (t=1.683, p>0.10) and availability (t=1.455,
FIGURE 1 | Research model and hypothesis.
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Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
p>0.10) had no significant influence on social-oriented usage
of social media.
Research Findings and Discussion
The results supported hypothesis 1 that the social media for work
use has a significant impact on work efficiency. This finding
suggests that practitioners’ work efficiency can be improved
when using social media as a workplace tool. This conclusion is
consistent with previous research on the use of social media in
the workplace (Wu et al., 2006; Mansi and Levy, 2013).
The results of this study indicated that hypothesis 2 is
supported. Socially oriented social media use, such as casual
conversations with colleagues, can lead to smoother social
interactions and increased awareness of social capital (Ali-Hassan
et al., 2015), leading to an increase in utilitarian use (Song et al.,
2019). Practitioners can use social media to meet new people or
even to explore new clients to increase work proficiency.
Hypothesis 5b that publicness has a positive impact on social-
oriented usage of social media was supported. Social media users
can take advantage of the publicness to present themselves.
They can also browse other users’ public information to find
TABLE 1 | Sample demographic.
Attribute Types Sample (N=322) Percentage
(%)
Sex Male 174 54
Female 148 46
Age 20 and under 18 6
21–30 176 54
31–40 64 20
41–50 45 14
51 and above 21 6
Social media
used in work
Line app 287 40
Facebook 158 22
Instagram 116 16
Facebook
Messenger
98 14
Wechat 44 6
Whatsapp 19 3
communities or groups with similar interests, and make new
friends or meet other people who are not easy to meet in real
life. Thus, publicness has a positive effect on social media for
social usage.
Hypothesis 6a that availability has a positive effect on social
media for work use. However, hypothesis 6b that availability
TABLE 2 | Reliability tests for constructs and items.
Constructs Items Factor
loadings
Cronbach’s
alpha
Composite
validity (CR)
Average
variance
extracted (AVE)
Asynchronicity ASY1 0.788 0.723 0.843 0.644
ASY2 0.757
ASY3 0.859
Permanence PER1 0.893 0.848 0.908 0.768
PER2 0.891
PER3 0.843
Publicness PUB1 0.881 0.885 0.929 0.813
PUB2 0.925
PUB3 0.897
Availability AVA1 0.892 0.902 0.939 0.836
AVA2 0.925
AVA3 0.926
Symbol variety SYM1 0.850 0.824 0.885 0.660
SYM2 0.668
SYM3 0.875
SYM4 0.841
Social-oriented
usage of social
media
SOC1 0.877 0.870 0.913 0.724
SOC2 0.876
SOC3 0.907
SOC4 0.734
Work-oriented
usage of social
media
WOR1 0.833 0.868 0.910 0.717
WOR2 0.897
WOR3 0.864
WOR4 0.789
Work efficiency WEF1 0.954 0.912 0.945 0.851
WEF2 0.950
TABLE 3 | Correlation coefficient matrix between latent variables.
Constructs Asynchronicity Permanence Publicness Availability Symbol variety Social usage Work usage Work efficiency
Asynchronicity 0.802
Permanence 0.623 0.876
Publicness 0.397 0.225 0.901
Availability 0.681 0.581 0.402 0.915
Symbol variety 0.392 0.388 0.282 0.461 0.813
Social usage 0.387 0.358 0.332 0.411 0.39 0.851
Work usage 0.516 0.458 0.362 0.74 0.468 0.477 0.847
Work efficiency 0.593 0.484 0.358 0.744 0.45 0.434 0.723 0.923
The bold diagonal value is the square root of the AVE of each latent variable.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 7July 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 693183
Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
FIGURE 2 | Result of path analysis. Note: *p-value <0.05; **p-value <0.01.
has no positive influence on the social media for social usage.
Availability in social media allows practitioners to connect and
join other communities easily. However, it is possible that this
social media characteristic of “being able to easily connect
with customers” causes some practitioners to view it as part
of their job. Therefore, availability has a positive effect on
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 8July 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 693183
Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
TABLE 4 | Hypotheses tests.
Hypotheses/Structural path Path coefficient t-Value P-value 95% Confidence interval Results
H1: Work usage→work efficiency 0.667** 12.933 0.000 (0.558, 0.759) Supported
H2: Social usage→work efficiency 0.116* 2.287 0.022 (0.019, 0.217) Supported
H3a: Asynchronicity→work usage −0.024 0.39 0.697 (−0.145, 0.094) Not supported
H3b: Asynchronicity→social usage 0.084 1.042 0.297 (−0.068, 0.251) Not supported
H4a: Permanence→work usage 0.023 0.385 0.700 (−0.089, 0.146) Not supported
H4b: Permanence→social usage 0.115 1.683 0.092 (−0.026, 0.242) Not supported
H5a: Publicness→work usage 0.064 1.418 0.157 (−0.018, 0.151) Not supported
H5b: Publicness→social usage 0.164** 2.921 0.004 (0.058, 0.270) Supported
H6a: Availability→work usage 0.648** 10.965 0.000 (0.527, 0.753) Supported
H6b: Availability→social usage 0.124 1.455 0.146 (−0.036, 0.283) Not supported
H7a: Symbol variety→work usage 0.151** 4.195 0.004 (0.056, 0.259) Supported
H7b: Symbol variety→social usage 0.209** 3.064 0.002 (0.076, 0.350) Supported
Note: *p-value <0.05; **p-value <0.01.
practitioners for work purposes, but not significantly enough for
social use.
Hypothesis 7a and 7b were both supported that symbol variety
has significant impact on social media for both work-oriented
and social-oriented usage. Different social media provides diverse
services. The social media with limited symbol variety can send
text-only messages or photos that provide less interpersonal
cues (no facial expressions, tone of voice, or gestures). Previous
study finds that the level of perceived symbol variety in non-
enterprise social media positively influences users’ use for both
social and work purposes. When people use instant messaging
for either personal or business purposes rather than for specific
purposes, the use of emojis and photo images can increase social
intimacy between the communicating parties (Park and Lee,
2019).
LIMITATIONS
Several research limitations are shown as follows. First, all
participants in this study were from Taiwan, and it is uncertain
whether our findings can be generalized to other countries.
Moreover, the online survey instrument in this study was
intended to distribute to the employees who use social media.
However, the answers from the respondents might not reflect
the situation set by the purpose of the study. Second, the
inference of the results may be limited because of the features
of different social media. In this study, non-enterprise social
media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Line App, etc. were the main
social media investigated. However, a more private concerned
corporate social media, such as Skype, Slack, etc., which may
bring different results due to their different features. Third,
although some studies attempted to identify the antecedents
and consequences of social media use in enterprise (Parveen
et al., 2015; Jiang et al., 2016), most of these studies treat
employees as homogeneous entities and ignore the potential
group differences (Krasnova et al., 2017). Earlier research has
found significant gender differences in IT social media use
patterns (Muscanell and Guadagno, 2012). This suggested that
the outcomes of social media use in the enterprise may also
differ between male and female employees. Finally, this study
categorized social usage and work usage as the application of
social media by practitioners. In fact, the motivation of social
media use could be divided into different categories, such as
hedonic needs and knowledge needs (Ali-Hassan et al., 2015).
Future research could explore the multiple effects of social media
use for the other purposes and examine the results. Finally, this
paper examined the direct relationship between social media use
and work efficiency, but did not explore the process between
independent variables and outcome variables. Other mediating
variables related to the use of social media might influence the
results of the study.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be
made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
ETHICS STATEMENT
Ethical review and approval was not required for the
study on human participants in accordance with the
local legislation and institutional requirements. Written
informed consent for participation was not required for this
study in accordance with the national legislation and the
institutional requirements.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
DJ: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, and
writing—review and editing. S-CC: formal analysis, and
supervision. Y-HC: investigation. AR: writing—original
draft preparation. DJ, S-CC, AR, and Y-HC: validation.
All authors contributed to the article and approved the
submitted version.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 9July 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 693183
Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
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Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 12 July 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 693183
Jong et al. Social Media and Work Efficiency
APPENDIX
TABLE A1 | Measurement items.
Construct Item Measurement
Asynchronicity ASY1 I can receive replies from my clients immediately after sending them a message via social media.
ASY2 I reply as soon as I receive a message in social media.
ASY3 Social media can help me communicate with customers immediately.
Permanence PER1 I can read past messages to clearly understand the previous conversations with customers.
PER2 I read past messages to help recall previous conversations with clients.
PER3 If the message is very long and complicated, I can read the message carefully.
Publicness PUB1 I don’t think the personal information disclosed on social media affects my current work.
PUB2 I don’t think the personal information disclosed on social media affects the perception of my customers.
PUB3 I don’t think that public postings on social media affects my professional image.
Availability AVA1 I think social media can facilitate my work.
AVA2 I think social media makes it easy for me to contact my clients.
AVA3 I think using social media makes it easier for my clients to contact me.
Symbol variety SYM1 I think it is more friendly to have emoticons in conversations with my clients.
SYM2 Only use text to online talking is not enough to express my emotions or feelings when I use social media.
SYM3 I use other features in social media (e.g., emoticons, images, video clips) to express emotions when
communicating with clients.
SYM4 When using social media to communicate with clients, I am aware of the options for using other features of
social media (e.g., emojis, images, videos).
Social-oriented usage of social media SOC1 I can make friends in the organization through social media.
SOC2 I can find like-minded people through social media.
SOC3 I can meet new friends through social media.
SOC4 I use social media in order to meet friends/clients I have never met.
Work-oriented usage of social media WOR1 I discuss work with colleagues through social media.
WOR2 I use social media to contact customers.
WOR3 I use social media for work.
WOR4 For work, I think social media is one of the tools that must be used.
Work efficiency WEF1 After using social media, my daily work is more efficient.
WEF2 I am able to communicate with my clients better through social media.
WEF3 I think it is more efficient to use social media to communicate with clients.
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