The interactive effects of individual boundary spanning and boundary buffering when using enterprise social media

Enterprise social media (ESM) provides convenient channels for employees to access enterprise-wide work resources but also exposes employees to potential distractions. Prior studies have confirmed this “two-sided” role of ESM usage on employee work performance. Ongoing studies are exploring possible methods to alleviate side effects of ESM usage. Drawing on boundary management literature and information processing theory, we propose the concept of individual boundary spanning to capture employees’ information-obtaining behaviors via ESM and identify two mediating mechanisms—mindfulness and information overload—through which an individual's boundary spanning affects work performance. We also propose the concept of individual boundary buffering to capture protective actions by individuals that prevent them from becoming disturbed or overloaded with ESM requests. We further investigate the interaction effects of these two boundary activities in the ESM context. We conducted a survey and collected data from 202 ESM users from a research and development enterprise in China. The results suggest that individual boundary spanning triggers mindfulness in individuals that benefits their work performance but also increases information overload, harming work performance. Individual boundary buffering can enhance the positive relationship between individual boundary spanning and mindfulness, and mitigate the positive relationship between spanning activity and information overload.