Research on the Effect of Employee Use Pattern on Employee’s Job Performance

In the current Internet era, the demand for efficiency and seamless communication in a rapidly developing economy has led to the increasing adoption of enterprise social platforms. This study investigates the relationship between corporate social platform usage patterns and employee performance through a multi-case analysis of seven Chinese enterprises using the WeQia platform. Drawing on Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory, the research identifies four core technical characteristics of Enterprise Social Media (ESM), Timeliness, Flexibility, Accessibility, and Sharing, and proposes a framework linking these characteristics to two distinct usage patterns: task-demand and relationship-demand. The findings indicate that task-demand usage significantly enhances task performance, while relationship-demand usage more strongly influences innovation performance. Furthermore, the choice of usage pattern is influenced by the interplay between organizational formalization and task characteristics. This study provides a practical framework for enterprises to align platform features with organizational needs.

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