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Social networking sites have become important part of daily activities of many individuals around the world (Ferreira, 2010; Rauniar, Rawski, Yang, & Johnson, 2014). There is dramatic increase of social media users due to the ubiquity of internet and development of mobile technology. Every country of the world reported about an increase of 1 million new users each day in 2017. Annually, social media sites are observing an increase of 13% in their user base globally (Kemp, 2018). Social Network Sites (SNSs) have become the fastest emerging tool for networking and has been attracting mounted attention of practitioners as well as research scholars (Charoensukmongkol, 2014). People use social media sites for different purposes including entertainment, communication, sharing information and spending leisure time. Various aspects associated to social media use have been the focus of academic investigation for the past few years (D. Wills & Reeves, 2009). Social networking sites use on societal and psychological outcomes is one of the focal areas in research (Trepte & Reinecke, 2013).
Conflicting views have been reported by the scholars regarding the outcomes of social media use during work. Some studies reported positive effects of social media use at workplace such as high morale, improved productivity, low turnover intentions, increased innovative behaviors, high organizational commitment (Bennett, Owers, Pitt, & Tucker, 2010; Bernoff & Li, 2008; D. Leidner, Koch, & Gonzalez, 2010; Patel & Jasani, 2010). On the other hand, other researchers concluded that use of social network sites may lead to negative outcomes including loss in employee productivity, interpersonal aggression, sexual harassment and identity theft (Computing, 2009; North, 2010; O'Murchu, Breslin, & Decker, 2004; Shepherd, 2011).
Majority of the research studies that have examined use of social media and its outcomes were conducted in educational institutions and selected students as sample (Chang & Heo, 2014; Clark & Roberts, 2010; Dwyer, Hiltz, & Passerini, 2007; Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Mainier & O’Brien, 2010; Claybaugh, Haried, & Yu, 2015). Additionally, studies that have investigated the use of social media sites by employed population are few in number and majority are US and UK focused (Ali-Hassan, Nevo, & Wade, 2015; El Ouirdi, El Ouirdi, Segers, & Henderickx, 2015). Literature suggests that such studies are inconsistent in findings and lack rigor as they have not comprehensively examined the effects of social networking sites usage on work outcomes (Charoensukmongkol, 2014; Parveen, Jaafar, & Ainin, 2015; Kock, Moqbel, Barton, & Bartelt, 2018; Moqbel & Kock, 2018). Considering all these factors and lack of research in Asian countries motivated this study to verify whether findings of previous studies would be consistent under different culture.