An empirical study on the influence of social media addiction on employee engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour among public service workers in Zambia

Abstract

Background: Employee positive behaviours in the form organisational citizenship behaviours determines how well the organisation can compete because employees who exhibit extra role behaviours helps other workers to go an extra mile in terms of their input.  Extra role behaviours play a critical role in determining the competitiveness of any organisation as well as the financial performance of the organisation hence the importance of determining its antecedents in the Zambian context and how these determinants   normologically relate. This study was motivated by the fact that little attention has been directed at examining the three variables namely social media addiction, job engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour in Zambia.

Methods: A quantitative survey design was used to achieve the research objectives. Item analysis was performed to determine reliability while dimensionality analysis was used to investigate the factor structures underlying the dimensions of the three variables. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed for the measurement model and through structure equation modelling (SEM) the postulated structural model was investigated.

Results: High levels of reliability were found among the scales except for one OCB sub scales. Uni-dimensionality of the subscales was demonstrated through exploratory factor analyses. Research results revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between job engagement and OCB.  Negative but statistically insignificant relationship between social media addiction and job engagement as well as between social media addiction and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) was established.

Conclusion: Academically the study makes a significant contribution to industrial psychology, human resource management and public administration literature. The results of this study have provided empirical support to the proposition that job engagement is a predictor of employee performance specifically extra role work behaviours. Secondly negative path coefficients between social media addiction and job engagement and OCB implies that human resource practitioners ought to pay attention to interventions that would curb unwarranted social media usage among employees for it negatively affects their performance by first impacting on how engaged there are due to misplaced energies.