The adoption of enterprise social media (ESM) - web-based platforms that facilitate communication within organisations - has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly in service organisations where leaders and followers often rely on ESM for daily operations. A defining characteristic of effective leadership is the ability to influence followers, yet with the growing use of ESM in leadership, it is often assumed that such practices will be as effective on these digital platforms as they are in person. However, whether leadership processes, such as leaders' use of influence tactics, translate effectively into these settings, and how ESM affordances may shape such processes, remains empirically unclear.
This study therefore investigates leadership in which ESM is used as a primary mode of communication between leaders and their followers in the service sector, in two key ways. First, we explored how transformational and transactional leadership affect their respective influence tactics - consultation and collaboration - which in turn mediate followers' perceptions of leader effectiveness and their extra effort. Second, we examine how the ESM affordance of interdependence, defined as the extent to which ESM enables leaders to foster mutual reliance and coordination and facilitates followers to build on one another's input to complete tasks, moderates this relationship.
Regression analyses of 228 employees across three time points in UK service organisations indicate that transformational leadership positively influences follower extra effort (but not perceived leadership effectiveness) via consultation influence tactics, with this indirect effect strengthening as leaders leverage greater interdependence affordance. In contrast, transactional leadership positively affects perceived leader effectiveness (but not follower effort) via the collaboration tactics, with the indirect effect weakening and eventually disappearing as interdependence affordance increases. This study offers insights about how ESM and its affordance may shape leadership and outcomes, highlighting both their benefits and potential overuse.