Facebook Uses, Boundary Spanning Activities, and Social Capital

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine whether the use of Facebook in the workplace impacts on employees’ boundary spanning activities (BSA) and social capital. Two types of social capital are examined: bonding and bridging. The sample consisted of 399 full-time white-collar workers in Taiwan. A snowball sampling technique was used to recruit participants to complete an online survey. The results indicated that employees who are allowed to use Facebook in the workplace did not have a higher level of overall BSA than the non-user group. In terms of the associations between Facebook use and social capital, the Facebook user group did not have a higher level of bonding social capital than the non-user group, but they did have a higher level of bridging social capital than the non-user group. In terms of the associations between BSA and social capital, the correlation results indicated positive significant relations between BSA and bonding social capital, and between BSA and bridging social capital.