Research pick: Employee agility - "Effect of enterprise social media and psychological safety on employee’s agility: mediating role of communication quality"

Enterprise social media (ESM) is an open and public platform that facilitates employee discussions about work-related matters. However, there are known disadvantages. Now, writing in the International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, researchers reveal their findings with regards to the impact of ESM and employee psychological wellbeing and the modulating role played by communication quality in this context.

Abdul Hameed Pitafi of the School of Management, at the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei, Anhui Province, China, Shamsa Kanwal of the School of Public Affair there, and Adnan Pitafi of the Mehran University Institute of Science, Technology and Development (MUISTD), in Sindh, Pakistan, explain how researchers and even practitioners are rather vague about the advantages of ESM. The teams carried out a study based on information processing theory to investigate whether or not an employee’s “psychological safety” is positively correlated with their “agility”; agility being their ability to react to and to adopt environmental changes rapidly and in an appropriate manner.

A study of 167 employees who adopted ESM in the workplace, lends new understanding to the team’s hypotheses. “The existing investment in ESM is insufficient to achieving better employee agility,” the team says. “Managers should take appropriate steps in implementing ESM and improving the psychological safety and, consequently, the employee’s agility. The findings in this study are an important attempt to provide guidance and knowledge to managers regarding the positive side of ESM.”

Pitafi, A.H., Kanwal, S. and Pitafi, A. (2019) ‘Effect of enterprise social media and psychological safety on employee’s agility: mediating role of communication quality’, Int. J. Agile Systems and Management, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.1–26.