Leveraging Work-Related Stressors for Employee Innovation: The Moderating Role of Enterprise Social Networking Use

Enterprise social networking (ESN) techniques have been widely adopted by firms to provide a platform for public communication among employees. This study investigates how the relationships between stressors (i.e., challenge and hindrance stressors) and employee innovation are moderated by task-oriented and relationship-oriented ESN use. Since challenge-hindrance stressors and employee innovation are individual-level variables and task-oriented ESN use and relationship-oriented ESN use are team-level variables, we thus use hierarchical linear model to test this cross-level model. The results of a survey of 191 employees in 50 groups indicate that two ESN use types differentially moderate the relationship between stressors and employee innovation. Specifically, task-oriented ESN use positively moderates the effects of the two stressors on employee innovation, while relationship-oriented ESN use negatively moderates the relationship between the two stressors and employee innovation. In addition, we find that challenge stressors significantly improve employee innovation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.