Creative Exposure or Distraction? The Impact of Social Media Use on Employee Creativity

Even though organizations dictate policies on social media use at work—some forbidding it, others allowing it—we lack theory and empirical evidence justifying either approach. We present a theoretical model that explicates the mixed effects of social media use on employee creativity. On the one hand, we argue that social media use enhances employees’ creative exposure (observing the creativity of others), which improves their creativity at work. On the other hand, we propose that social media use can distract employees from their work tasks, which reduces their creative output. Importantly, we also investigate creativity requirements as a key boundary condition such that social media use leads to more creative benefits in jobs that require higher levels of creativity. We find general support for these predictions across two field studies. We also demonstrate creative exposure and task distractions as mechanisms of social media use’s effect on creativity over and above established informational (information search), psychological (creative self-efficacy), and emotional (positive affect) predictors. Our research fulfills an important need by explaining how social media use affects creativity and how organizational leaders can manage employees’ use of it to better reap its benefits while deterring its costs.  

Zoom link: https://eur-nl.zoom.us/j/94516204198 

Meeting ID: 945 1620 4198