Literature has revealed that companies are growingly implementing social media (SM) to communicate an immense selection of news to consumers and other stakeholders (Jha and Verma, 2022). Many firms put in substantial capitals in applying SM to increase workers’ collaborative and communicative activities for enhancing their work performance (Bodhi et al., 2022). It proposes that SM are deemed to deliver significant advantages for firms (Bodhi et al., 2022) as scholars reported that personal and professional-associated SM use positively and significantly affect workers’ job performance (Dantas et al., 2022). In Indonesia, there were more than 191 million people use SM actively in 2022, putting this country on the 3rd position in the Asia Pacific following India and China (Nurhayati-Wolff, 2023). A current tendency shows that a growing number of companies in Indonesia have been employing SM for their brand advertisement as more than 80% of SM consumers in the nation affirmed that they would find more info regarding the services/brands that their influencers endorsed on SM (Nurhayati-Wolff, 2023). Besides, existing studies emphasize the significance of communication via social media (CSM) though proposing that consumers have been growingly considering SM contents, especially contents issued by company’s workers, as they form links and decide to buy (Ancillai et al., 2019).
SM allows the exchange and creation of user-produced contents (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2020) and facilitates workers to exchange, share, circulate, and create info in various set-ups and with many people (Infante and Mardikaningsih, 2022). This study especially emphasizes the way SM is utilized for expert objectives, and signify workers’ job-associated CSM as communication conducts where workers distribute news, report and info regarding their job, companies, careers, or businesses via public networks (viz. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn), usually via personally possessed accounts (van Deursen et al, 2019). Those SM apps have been used by workers for personal and professional objectives (Dantas et al., 2022), and by companies for human-resources training and recruitment (Vardarlier and Ozsahin, 2021; Korzynski et al., 2020) and selling achievement (Ancillai et al., 2019), and improving company’s status (Etter et al., 2019). Such SM apps have been utilized by workers for many types of work; however, studies about the usage of these SM apps in the workplace remains scarce (Olfat et al., 2020),
The development of communicating job-associated contents using SM among workers has been changing office and work life because it has been altering the duty to communicate to company’s personal fellows from the initially head office (Kietzman et al, 2011). Thus, workers’ capability in communicating via SM has increased substantial relative benefit for personal workers and their companies (Korzynski et al., 2020).
For proficient and self-assured communicative workers and their managers, SM delivers a rostrum for carrying wanted reputation (Erhardt & Gibbs, 2014), information distribution, making contacts, forming societal capitals, and interacting with large viewers such as prospective consumers, managers and other patrons, accordingly supporting job accomplishment (Ancillai et al., 2019). Workers are regarded as reliable and accurate sources of knowledge as they understand the inner parts of the firms (van Zoonen & van der Meer, 2015). Thus, it is rational that workers’ SM capabilities significantly affect company’s image (Walsh et al., 2016).
Despite the advantages and abundant use of SM, companies still face risks from SM usage by workers. Baccarella et al. (2018) suggested that companies have difficulty to count the costs of ‘SM dark side’ while its effects may be terrible. Thus, some studies have emphasized the insinuations of job-associated SM usage among workers at a personal stage (van Zoonen et al., 2016), and company stage (Korzynski et al., 2020; Baccarella et al., 2018), whereas other studies have assessed the determinants and effects of CSM concerning managing brands (Wagner et al., 2017). Scholars Baccarella et al. (2020) suggested dual approaches, i.e., regulating and sensitizing to handle the frequently-ignored bleakness of SM, like addiction and technological distress.
The increasing popularity of CSM at workplaces needs novel competences and expertise (van Laar et al., 2019). Also, workers need to understand the possible challenges in SM usage (Baccarella et al., 2020). Nevertheless, earlier publications showed the significant variation in the degrees of digital literacy and communication capabilities of the workers (van Laar et al., 2019). It is ironic as workers’ failure in performing proper communication via SM can cause undesirable effects on their companies (Baccarella et al., 2018). Besides, improper SM usage will cause significant harm to the reputations of workers and companies (Baccarella et al., 2018), and can even cause job loss (Matthews et al., 2022).
Because of the enhanced significance of SM usage in organization, researchers have paid more attention to workers’ communicative performance. Previous studies have examined the technological affordances, viz. the possibilities of a behaviour that technologies deliver, allowing those conducts (such as Ronzhyn et al, 2023), management practice supporting workers’ job-associated SM usage and the possible advantages gained by companies from workers’ SM usage (Korzynski et al., 2020). Nevertheless, very few studies have emphasized personal workers’ trust in their capabilities to perform (i.e., self-efficacy -SE) in the new SM setting. However, this topic is vital to examine because it can enable workers to perform better communication and have improved skill to handle SM issues, and circumvent undesirable side of SM usage (such as Baccarella et al., 2020).
Consequently, the research seeks to enrich the literature on SM usage in company’s perspectives. Particularly, this study emphasizes the function of SE as a mediating variable in the link of personal and company’s elements and workers’ job-associated communicative performance. This study examines the extent to which SM practical knowledge, coaching, company’s support for workers’ CSM and clearness of communication functions affect job-associated SM usage via workers’ SE based on Bandura’s SCT of SE (Kaoutroubas and Galanakis, 2022).