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Organizations have widely adopted enterprise social media (ESM) to realize workplace communication visibility linked to employee knowledge management and in-role job performance. Managers still face challenges in understanding whether communication visibility in the workplace stimulates employee extra-role voice behavior. In this study, self-regulation theory is applied to explore the mediating role of feedback-seeking on the association between communication visibility and employee voice.

A questionnaire survey was carried out on 219 working professionals in China who use ESM in their respective organizations.

Results show that employee feedback inquiry considerably mediates the relationship between communication visibility and voice. However, employee feedback monitoring shows no mediating role.

Practitioners and managers must pay greater attention to the effects of communication visibility on employee extra-role voice behavior. In addition, when adopting ESM, employee self-regulation strategies can be implemented to gain the value of communication visibility.

This study presents the relationships among communication visibility, feedback-seeking and employee voice. Knowledge of communication visibility is extended by exploring its effects on employee voice. The current study also reveals the mediating mechanism underlying the associations between communication visibility and employee voice based on self-regulation theory.

This study aims to investigate the impact of enterprise social media (ESM) usage on employee agility through communication quality and visibility. Theory of communication visibility is used to explore the moderating role of ESM-related strain in the relationship among communication quality, visibility and employee agility.

The research model is analyzed using data from 240 Chinese employees of different companies. The proposed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling, hierarchical regression and mediation analysis.

Findings suggest that ESM usage is positively related to communication quality and visibility. Communication visibility mediates the relationship between ESM usage and employee agility. ESM-related strain reduces the relationship between communication visibility and employee agility. However, ESM-related strain has an insignificant moderating effect on the relationship between communication quality and employee agility.

The present study examines how employee agility is associated with ESM usage in the workplace. The mediating effects of communication quality and visibility are explored using a theoretical foundation. This study provides empirical evidence on how the impact of ESM on employee agility is transmitted through communication visibility. Lastly, the current study quantifies the advantages of ESM for organizations and may motivate managers to confidently deploy ESM in the workplace.

Digital technologies, and the affordances they provide, can shape institutional processes in significant ways. In the last decade, social media and other digital platforms have redefined civic engagement by enabling new ways of connecting, collaborating, and mobilizing. In this article, we examine how technological affordances can both enable and hinder institutional processes through visibilization – which we define as the enactment of technological features to foreground and give voice to particular perspectives and discourses while silencing others. We study such dynamics by examining #SchauHin, an activist campaign initiated in Germany to shine a spotlight on experiences of daily racism. Our findings show how actors and counter-actors differentially leveraged the technological features of two digital platforms to shape the campaign. Our study has implications for understanding the role of digital technologies in institutional processes as well as the interplay between affordances and visibility in efforts to deinstitutionalize discriminatory practices and institutions.

This study aims to examine some of the benefits and drawbacks of communication visibility. Specifically, building on communication visibility theory, the authors study how and why message transparency and network translucence may increase knowledge reuse and perceived overload through behavioral responses of vicarious learning and technology-assisted supplemental work.

Drawing on survey data obtained from 1,127 employees of a global company operating in the industrial machinery sector, the authors used structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized model.

The results demonstrate that the two aspects of communication visibility yield somewhat differential benefits and drawbacks in terms of knowledge reuse and communication overload, through vicarious learning and supplemental work practices.

The results demonstrate the relationship between different aspects of communication visibility and knowledge reuse, specifically through vicarious learning. Furthermore, the findings highlight a potential drawback of visibility – communication overload – specifically through technology-assisted supplemental work. Overall, network translucence seems more beneficial compared to message transparency in terms of knowledge reuse and communication overload.

The study connects with recent work on communication visibility by distinguishing differential direct and indirect effects of message transparency and network translucence. It also extends this work by testing relationships between communication visibility and a potential drawback of visibility – communication overload – specifically through technology-assisted supplemental work.

According to extensive analysis, employee agility is influenced by teamwork, coordination and the organizational environment. However, less consideration has been given to the role of work stressors (challenge, hindrance) in influencing employee agility. To address this research gap, this study sheds light on how the use of enterprise social media (ESM) for social and work purposes influences employee agility through work stressors.

This research also explores how ESM visibility enhances the interaction between work stressors and employee agility by using primary data obtained from Chinese workers. A total of 377 entries were analyzed using AMOS 24.10 tools. All the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings revealed that ESM use (social and work) negatively impacts challenge and hindrance work stressors. The results also reflect that challenge stressors have a significant impact on employee agility, whereas hindrance stressors are negatively related to it. Furthermore, the outcome also indicated that increased ESM visibility reinforces the connection between challenge stressors and employee agility. However, ESM visibility did not indicate a significant moderating impact on the link between hindrance stressors and employee agility.

This study describes how ESM usage effects agility of stressed employees. This research also explores how ESM visibility improves the interaction between work stressors and employee agility. The study results contribute to growing research on social media and employee agility and suggest several points of guidance for managers.

Knowledge transfer which refers to the communication of knowledge from a source so that it is learned and applied by a recipient has long been a challenge for knowledge management. The purpose of this study is to understand influencing factors of transactive memory system (TMS) and knowledge transfer.

Drawing on the theories of communication visibility, social distance and flow, this study develops a research model. Then, data are collected from users of the social media mobile App. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is employed to analyze data.

TMS is a valid second-order construct in the social media mobile app context, which is more reflected by credibility. Meanwhile, communication visibility and social distance each have positive effects on TMS which further has a positive effect on knowledge transfer. Flow has a positive effect on knowledge transfer.

Developers of the mobile App should carefully consider the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in supporting TMS and knowledge transfer. They should consider recommendation algorithm so that the benefit of communication visibility can be retained. They should design the feature to classify users based on similarity so as to stimulate users' feeling of close social distance. They should keep on improving features based on users' holistic experience.

This study incorporates the perspectives of communication visibility, social distance and flow to understand TMS and knowledge transfer, presenting a new lens for research.

Scholars in the field of higher education take many approaches to apply theory in empirical research. However, this wide array of theoretical applications has prompted confusion among scholars who seek to integrate and understand how theory is situated in higher education research. This chapter explores the conceptualization, application, and visibility of theory in higher education research by presenting discourse from field leaders and discussing methodological definitions of theory, theoretical frameworks, and conceptual frameworks. Additionally, we conducted a summative content analysis of 239 empirical articles from the Review of Higher Education over a 10-year period, with the goal of understanding how theories were framed and applied in a subset of research. We conclude by reiterating the importance of theory in the study of higher education and providing strategies for effective theory application.

Drawing upon the theory of communication visibility, this research intends to investigate the direct effect of enterprise social media (ESM) usage on team members’ knowledge creation capability (KCC) and the mediating effects of psychological safety and team identification. In addition, it aims to untangle how the efficacy of ESM usage varies between pre- and post-COVID-19 periods.

Using two-wave survey data from 240 members nested within 60 teams, this study utilizes a multilevel approach to test the proposed hypotheses.

We discover that ESM usage enhances team members’ KCC. More importantly, the results show that psychological safety and team identification mediate the ESM–KCC linkage. Interestingly, we further find that the impacts of ESM usage on team members’ KCC, psychological safety, and team identification are stronger in the pre-COVID-19 period than those in the post-COVID-19 period.

This research sheds light on the ESM literature by unraveling the mechanisms of psychological safety and team identification underlying the linkage between ESM usage and team members’ KCC. Moreover, it advances our understanding of the differential efficacy of ESM usage in pre- and post-COVID-19 periods.

Corporations are increasingly expected to act responsibly. The purpose of this paper is to examine two types of corporate responses to these expectations: overt and covert responses. Specifically, it examines oil companies’ involvement in multi-stakeholder initiatives and sponsorships (overt responses) and their monitoring of critics, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activist organisations (covert responses).

Theoretically, the paper draws on theories of visibility and post-political regulation. Empirically, it focuses on case studies of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Shell and BP, drawing on qualitative methods.

The paper demonstrates that overt responses create an impression of consensus between antagonistic interests and that covert responses support this impression by containing deep-seated conflicts.

Corporate responses have implications for the role of the corporation as a (post-)political actor. By containing antagonism and creating an impression of consensus, the interplay between overt and covert responses open up further possibilities for the proliferation of soft governance and self-regulation through participation in voluntary transparency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Data on covert practices of corporations are difficult to access. This impedes possibilities for fully assessing their extent. The findings of this paper support trends emerging from recent research on covert corporate intelligence practices, but more research is needed to provide a systematic overview.

The paper contributes to the understudied area of covert corporate activity in research on the political role of multinational corporations.

Organisations have widely adopted enterprise social media (ESM) to improve employees' task performance. This study aims to explore the mediating role of perceived task structure on the relationship between ESM usage and employee task performance. The authors investigate the moderating effects of perceived team diversity on the relationship between ESM usage and perceived task structure.

The authors conducted a questionnaire survey in China on 251 working professionals who use social media in their respective organisations.

Results showed that employees' perception of task structure considerably mediates the relationship between ESM usage and task performance. Findings also confirmed that perceived team diversity negatively affects the relationship between ESM usage and perceived task interdependence.

Practitioners and/or managers should pay attention to the effect of ESM usage on employee's perceived task structure. Furthermore, they should focus on the level of team diversity when adopting ESM to enhance task performance.

This study contributes to the knowledge of perceived task structure in explaining the effect of ESM usage on task performance based on communication visibility theory. This work presents the relationship among ESM usage, perceived task structure, perceived team diversity and task performance. Moreover, this research enriches the literature on ESM usage by investigating the moderating roles of perceived team diversity whilst presenting the negative effects of perceived team diversity.