Social Media Acceptance in the Workplace : A Conceptual Model

For decades, information has been a key resource of our society. Recently, with the rise of Social Media, the nature of information and information diffusion has changed, thus obliging the workforce to cope with new premises. New technologies, applications and media channels enable practitioners to access more information than ever before. At the same time, organizations and individuals are more than ever confronted with their limited capacity to process and filter information. This paper posits that in order to determine how able today's workforce is to cope with this dilemma, traditional notions on information technology adoption and use must not only be adapted to the new information situation, but they must also be complemented by mental aspects. Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), this empirical paper develops and tests an integrated model of the determinants of individual level Social Media adoption and use. Founded on an Internet-based survey of 1383 European marketing and communications practitioners, we identify and confirm mental aspects such as technostress and overload as influential drivers of Social Media acceptance in modern work environments