How do Teleworkers Relieve Negative Emotions to Improve Job Performance Through Enterprise Social Media? The Conservation of Resources Theory View

Abstract

The primary aim of this paper is to study the impact of teleworkers’ psychology on their job performance and how teleworkers relieve negative emotions to improve job performance through enterprise social media (ESM) from the conservation of resources theory perspective. An online survey was sent to 835 teleworkers from industries such as finance, automobile, IT, construction, and logistics from March to May 2022 in China. Useful data from 218 respondents were collected and analyzed to test the hypothesized relationships by partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method. The findings show that family-to-work conflict and social isolation positively influence employees’ emotional exhaustion and emotional exhaustion further negatively influences their job performance. The visibility affordance and association affordance of ESM can reduce family-to-work conflict and social isolation, thus reducing teleworkers’ emotional exhaustion. The employees’ psychological resilience negatively moderates the positive effects which family-to-work conflict and social isolation have on emotional exhaustion. This paper studies the relieving effects of ESM affordance on teleworkers’ emotional exhaustion and reveals their defending mechanism for avoiding entering into the negative psychological state. Furthermore, this paper supplies beneficial practical suggestions for managers and teleworkers to improve job performance when working from home.