Introduction

The instability of the external environment has greatly increased the survival pressure for enterprises, and they urgently need to actively seek effective solutions for risks and crises. In this context, resilience, as a core ability to cope with an uncertain environment, has garnered increasing attention from organizational managers (Li et al., 2024; Park and Seo, 2024; Quintana et al., 2021). A recent survey by McKinsey shows that resilient companies not only outperform their peers during disruptions caused by external shocks or economic downturns but also accelerate into the new reality, leaving their competitors far behind (McKinsey, 2023). The construction of a resilient organization is largely rooted in the level of employee resilience within the organization, because employees are the foundation of organizational growth (King et al., 2016; Li and Zhang, 2022). Employee resilience, an essential ability to bounce back from failures, setbacks, conflicts, or threats, is considered vital for enterprises to survive and grow in highly turbulent and uncertain market environments (Caniëls and Hatak, 2019; Chapman et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2024). Employees with high resilience can often successfully adapt to and cope with unfavorable situations, and even mature in adversity, which plays an extremely important role in organizational production (Hartmann et al., 2021). Thus, it is important for academia and practice to effectively improve employee resilience (Caniëls and Hatak, 2019).

The widespread use of digital technologies, typified by Enterprise Social Media (ESM) platforms, offers opportunities to develop employee resilience (Ma et al., 2025b). ESM refers to an information technology based on Web 2.0 technology, which enables organizational members “to communicate messages with specific or all colleagues; reveal or indicate particular colleagues as communication members; post, edit, and sort text linked to other organizational members or themselves; and browse the texts and files published, edited and organized by colleagues” (Leonardi et al., 2013; Masood et al., 2022).

Different from traditional communication technologies, ESM provides a unique technical ability known as “communication visibility” that enables employees to view information from other employees on their communication networks, which brings various benefits to organizations and employees (Leonardi, 2014). Communication visibility can significantly promote knowledge transfer (Leonardi and Meyer, 2015; Zhao et al., 2020) and social interaction (Leonardi et al., 2013), thus helping them to obtain various resources to improve their performance and ability (Chen and Wei, 2020; Chen et al., 2020; Sun et al., 2025b). These studies have hinted at a potential link between communication visibility and employees’ resilience, as the cultivation of resilience requires various external resources (Cooke et al., 2019b; Cooper et al., 2019). However, some emerging studies have emphasized the dark side of communication visibility, as it can trigger information hiding behavior within organizations and reduce employee work engagement (Chen et al., 2020; Pitafi et al., 2023; Sun et al., 2025a), which could further damage employee resilience (Cooper et al., 2019; Çop et al., 2021).

Considering these conflicting viewpoints, further exploration of the influence of communication visibility on employees’ resilience is warranted, as it helps to provide guidance for optimizing and effectively using the ESM platform to foster employee resilience. Extant research on the impact of ESM on employee ability or performance generally examines ESM use (e.g., frequency of ESM usage) for work-related aspects such as communication and knowledge sharing (Sun et al., 2025). This may conceal the differences in how employees use ESM and the differences in the effects of ESM use on employee performance (Sun et al., 2024; Treem et al., 2020). An increasing number of studies have called for conceptualizing ESM use based on technical capabilities or features to generate deeper insights into the impact of ESM platforms on employees and organizations (Cai et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2020b; Sun et al., 2025). Our study conceptualizes ESM use based on communication visibility, a key technical capability, to examine its impact on employee resilience.

A crucial prerequisite for understanding the potential association between communication visibility and resilience is to clarify the underlying mechanisms by which communication visibility influences employee resilience. Social network theory has long been considered an important theoretical lens to reveal the association between ESM and employee performance (Chen et al., 2019; Leonardi, 2014), which also lays the foundation to discuss the influence of communication visibility on employee resilience. Communication visibility helps facilitate knowledge information among employees and enhances their social network ties within the organization (Leonardi, 2014), thereby enabling various positive outcomes, such as innovation (Chen et al., 2020; Leonardi, 2014), agility (Talwar et al., 2023), and work efficiency (Yang et al., 2021). By developing social network ties within the organization, employees can utilize those ties for resource acquisition (Chen et al., 2019; Zhu et al., 2021), so as to better withstand external shocks and achieve individual resilience (Cooper et al., 2019; Hartwig et al., 2020). However, the intrinsic connections between communication visibility, employee social networks, and employee resilience have not received research attention.

Further, while discussing the connections between communication visibility, employee social network ties, and resilience, the moderating effect of performance pressure should also be considered. Due to the volatile and competitive market environment, increasing performance has become the most inevitable workplace experience for employees as organizations strive for performance excellence (Zhu et al., 2023). However, performance pressure can both enable and inhibit employee behavior and performance (Mitchell et al., 2018a; 2018b, Zhu et al., 2023), which may impact the relationship between social network ties and employee resilience. Performance pressure is regarded as a challenge stressor to boost employees’ work motivation associated with job performance (Zhu et al., 2023) but may also lead to exhaustion that undermines their work engagement (Mitchell et al., 2018a; 2018b).

Overall, our study investigates whether and how communication visibility influences employee resilience. To achieve our objectives, we build an integrated model emphasizing employee social network ties and performance pressure. Our study contributes to the literature on ESM communication visibility, employee resilience, and employee social network ties. In addition, our findings also enrich the relevant research on performance pressure by exposing its moderator role.

Theoretical background

Employee resilience

Individual resilience in the context of organizational management is conceptualized as the ability of employees to recover from failures, setbacks, conflicts, or threats they experienced (Chapman et al., 2020). Prior studies have confirmed that employees with high resilience can adapt, respond, and recover quickly when faced with adverse circumstances or major challenges relative to others (Hartmann et al., 2021), thereby achieving higher individual performance (Cooper et al., 2019; Quintana et al., 2021) and organizational performance (Hossan et al., 2024; Salamzadeh et al., 2023). Prior studies have identified various factors that affect employee resilience, including leadership style (Ahmad et al., 2021; Li and Zhang 2022; Mao et al., 2022), human resource management practice (Khan et al., 2019; Lu et al., 2023), high-performance work systems (Hanu and Khumalo, 2024), work resources (Cooke et al., 2019a), work stressor (Crane and Searle, 2016), personality traits (Athota et al., 2020), organizational climate (Caniëls and Baaten, 2019), learning organization (Malik and Garg, 2020), and individuals’ self-efficacy (Kabbara et al., 2025, Prayag and Dassanayake, 2023). Further, social support (Dryglas and Salamaga, 2023; He et al., 2024) and digital competencies (Dryglas and Salamaga, 2023) have also proven to be key factors in enhancing resilience as they provide individuals with resources necessary to resist adverse environments. However, factors related to ESM use have not received attention in the context of resilience although ESM platforms have become an important tool for enterprises to improve the ability and performance of employees due to its powerful technical capability, which offers the possibility to improve resilience through online social support and social ties among employees (Cooke et al., 2019a; Ma et al., 2025a; Ma et al., 2025b).

Communication visibility

Communication visibility theory suggests that ESM technology provides information transparency and network translucence for employees, which increases the meta-knowledge of employees (Leonardi, 2014). Information transparency emphasizes the extent to which employees know and monitor the content communicated by their colleagues on ESM platforms, which implies that the content of communication between employees on ESM platforms is visible to others who may not have participated in the interactions (Leonardi, 2014; Yang et al., 2021). Network translucence reflects the extent to which employees are aware of and monitor the relationships between other colleagues by observing their interactions (Leonardi, 2014; Yang et al., 2021), although the nature and strength of the relationships may not be clearly known (Leonardi, 2014).

Extant studies on communication visibility have hinted at a positive role of ESM communication visibility in interpersonal trust (Cramton et al., 2007; Liang et al., 2020), creativity (Chen et al., 2020), knowledge transfer (Leonardi, 2014), and workplace efficiency (González-Rojas et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2021), because it effectively promotes meta-knowledge of organization members (Engelbrecht et al., 2019; Leonardi, 2014). However, recent research has also exposed the dark side of communication visibility. For example, Kane (2017) argues that information transparency afforded by ESM inhibits employee collaboration to some extent because employees are reluctant to share innovative ideas that violate company norms when information is monitored. Chen et al. (2020) argue that the regulatory focus of employees determines whether communication visibility promotes knowledge sharing or hiding.

Social network ties

Individuals or groups often form various social ties through interaction with other objects in social networks. Social network ties can be instrumental or expressive (Huang et al., 2013; Lin, 2007). Instrumental ties are generally formed when individuals perform formal work roles that promote the exchange of information, advice, or resources needed to accomplish tasks in an organization (Manev and Stevenson, 2001; Talwar et al., 2023). The instrumental ties between employees are strengthened when they access information, knowledge, or advice from other colleagues in order to complete a task (Zhong et al., 2012). Instrumental ties are generally regarded as utilitarian and therefore present unstable properties (Zhu et al., 2021). Expressive ties originate from affections and therefore present persistent and stable properties, as it develops from the emotional exchange between employees and provide them with interpersonal care and emotional support (Manev and Stevenson, 2001; Zhu et al., 2021). Instrumental ties are beneficial for individuals to obtain support when performing tasks, while expressive ties can provide psychological support for individuals when they encounter pressure or difficulties (Zhong et al., 2012). These types of social network ties may not be mutually exclusive, but may overlap and affect employee performance simultaneously (Huang et al., 2013).

Prior literature has generally acknowledged the benefits of social network ties in ESM environments. Chen et al. (2019) found that the four types of ESM affordance can promote employees’ social network ties, thereby improving their performance. Zhu et al. (2021) confirmed that in a high ESM visibility environment, task characteristics significantly promote employees’ social network ties and their agility. Talwar et al. (2023) also revealed that ESM affordances are beneficial to the construction of the social network of employees to enhance their agility.

Overall, social network theory is considered to be the key perspective in revealing how organizational IT affects employee performance and abilities. However, the impact of communication visibility on employees’ instrumental ties and expressive ties has not been examined. Moreover, although employees can benefit from extensive social network ties, it is unclear whether these ties contribute to cultivating employee resilience. This study explores the role of employees’ social network ties in promoting the impact of ESM communication visibility on their resilience.

Job demands-resources theory

The job demand-resource (JD-R) theory was initially proposed by Demerouti et al. (2001) to explain the antecedents of job burnout. It proposes that job characteristics in the working environment can be divided into two categories: job demands and job resources. Job demands refer to the factors in the working environment that cause individual physiological and psychological costs, such as work overload and performance pressure, which may lead to physical or psychological exhaustion and result in various negative outcomes (Demerouti et al., 2001; Zhu et al., 2024). Job resources refer to those factors that offer employees the means to complete tasks, mitigate demands, and/or promote personal growth, such as autonomy and social support, which may increase job performance, employee well-being, and other positive outcomes (Demerouti et al., 2001; Hossan et al., 2024; Zhu et al., 2024). Second, job demands and job resources yield an interactive effect on individual outcomes. Job resources can buffer the adverse impact of job demands on the depletion of individual resources, thereby weakening the negative impact of job demands on individual outcomes (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; van Zoonen et al., 2017), while job demands can strengthen the driving effect of job resources on individual motivation, thereby enhancing the positive impact of job resources on individual outcomes (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Bakker et al., 2004; Lewig et al., 2007).

The JD-R theory provides an integrated framework to understand the relationships among ESM communication visibility, social network ties, performance pressure, and employee resilience. On the one hand, ESM communication visibility enhances job resources such as social network ties due to its support for interpersonal interaction and knowledge sharing (Oksa et al., 2023; Treem and Leonardi, 2013; van Zoonen et al., 2017). Relying on extensive social network ties, employees can not only obtain instrumental support from colleagues to effectively deal with various unexpected problems at work, but also quickly recover from work shocks through the supplementation of psychological resources, thereby achieving higher individual resilience. On the other hand, JD-R theory emphasizes the role of job demands in the process in which job resources promote positive outcomes (Bakker et al., 2004). Further, performance pressure can drive employees’ work motivation and stimulate their work engagement, making them more likely to actively mobilize job resources (i.e., social network ties) within the organization to achieve higher job performance (i.e., employee resilience).

Research hypothesis

Communication visibility and social network ties

Communication visibility theory holds that information transparency of ESM provides employees with “clues” that enable employees to understand what expertise they possess through the communication records of their colleagues (Leonardi, 2014). This mastery of the expertise and ability of others enables employees to know which colleagues to seek help from when needed, so that they can quickly obtain professional knowledge related to tasks, and promote instrumental ties among employees (Leonardi and Vaast, 2017). Information transparency helps employees to master the interests and hobbies among colleagues, which helps like-minded colleagues to establish and develop closer expressive ties (Sun et al., 2020a). In addition, information transparency helps create a favorable online social environment by enabling employees to observe the social interaction between colleagues, thus driving more employees to involve in the social interaction with others and promoting expressive ties (Chen et al., 2020; Leonardi, 2014; Treem and Leonardi, 2013). Accordingly, we propose:

H1: Information transparency positively affects employees’ instrumental ties.

H2: Information transparency positively affects employees’ expressive ties.

Network translucence provides the ability to identify who colleagues are communicating with, which broadens the ways employees can obtain knowledge or advice from others in the organization, thus facilitating the establishment of instrumental ties (Leonardi, 2014). For this reason, ESM has even been described as a “lubricant” of interpersonal relationships in organizations (Leonardi and Meyer, 2015). In addition, identifying colleagues’ social networks helps employees find people with similar interests, which increases the likelihood of social interaction and, in turn, promotes the formation of their expressive ties (Ellison et al., 2015). Sun et al. (2020a, 2020b) showed that network translucence enables employees to reactivate those “dormant” network relationships, thereby expanding employees’ social network ties and social capital. Accordingly, we propose:

H3: Network translucence positively affects employees’ instrumental ties.

H4: Network translucence positively affects employees’ expressive ties.

Social network ties and resilience

Extant research on employee resilience has emphasized the important influence of organizational resources in developing resilience (Ahmad et al., 2021; Cooke et al., 2019b). Relying on a variety of organizational resources, employees can not only effectively resist the stress caused by adverse events and respond to these events effectively, but also quickly recover from adversity (Caniëls and Hatak, 2019; Hartwig et al., 2020). According to the JD-R theory, job resources have a positive role in improving job performance. As an important social resource, social network ties can directly help employees cope with various work problems that can enhance their resilience (Cooke et al., 2019b; Zhu et al., 2021). Further, social network ties are also important channels for the flow of organizational resources. By relying on these network ties, employees can obtain more organizational resources, which also contributes to their resilience.

Instrumental ties are known to bring a variety of instrumental resources to employees (Lynn, 2013), which can help employees better cope with problems arising from adverse environments (Cooke et al., 2019b). Expressive ties can promote mutual support and interpersonal care among colleagues and provide psychological resources necessary to resist pressure for each other to cope with unfavorable environments (Cooke et al., 2019b; Zhu et al., 2021). Thus, social network ties play a crucial role in fostering employee abilities and performance (Hartwig et al., 2020) because they can bring necessary social support to help employee better address workplace challenges (Cooke et al., 2019b; Talwar et al., 2023) and a higher sense of meaning and security to employees such that employees have better internal motivation to handle adverse situations (Cai et al., 2018; Cooke et al., 2019b). Accordingly, we propose:

H5: Instrumental ties positively affect employee resilience.

H6: Expressive ties positively affect employee resilience.

Social network ties as a mediator

Communication visibility theory suggests that information transparency and network translucence help enhance interaction and collaboration among employees by helping develop employees’ meta-knowledge and eventually their social network ties (Ellison et al., 2015; Sun et al., 2020). Relying on these social network ties, employees can more easily obtain the necessary social support to handle unexpected problems or pressures due to unfavorable environments, thereby enhancing resilience (Cooke et al., 2019b). Accordingly, we propose:

H7: Instrumental ties mediate the association between information transparency and employee resilience.

H8: Expressive ties mediate the association between information transparency and employee resilience.

H9: Instrumental ties mediate the association between network translucence and employee resilience.

H10: Expressive ties mediate the association between network translucence and employee resilience.

Performance pressure as a moderator

Performance pressure reflects the individual perception of “the urgency to achieve high job performance”, which has been considered a ubiquitous phenomenon in today’s enterprises (Mitchell et al., 2018a; 2018b). Performance pressure is generally regarded as an external stress exerted by the organization, which may cause employees’ physiological and psychological reactions (Mitchell et al., 2018a; 2018b). The JD-R theory holds that an environment with high job demands can better transform job resources into high job performance, because high job demands can stimulate and promote employees’ work engagement, enabling employees to actively mobilize their resources to solve job problems (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Bakker et al., 2004). While performance pressure promotes employees’ work motivation and engagement, it also leads to psychological stress such as intimidation and discomfort, which stimulates employees to actively mobilize and use various social, psychological, and instrumental resources to deal with it (Eisenberger and Aselage, 2009; Gardner, 2012; Zhu et al., 2023). Employees can fully obtain necessary resources through social ties to better cope with pressures and challenges (Zhu et al., 2021).

Therefore, instrumental ties and expressive ties yield a stronger effect on employee resilience when performance pressure increases. Positive performance benefits depend on the alignment of organizational performance demands with resource support (Cooke et al., 2019b). When performance pressure is low, employees do not need to obtain various resources from their social networks (Zhu et al., 2023), even if they possess extensive social networks, such that the influence of social network ties on employee abilities may be extremely weak. As Cooke et al. (2019b) pointed out, performance pressure is a key boundary condition for working resources to improve employee resilience. Accordingly, we propose:

H11: The influence of instrumental ties on employee resilience becomes stronger when performance pressure becomes higher.

H12: The influence of expressive ties on employee resilience becomes stronger when performance pressure becomes higher.

Control variables

We considered individual characteristics such as gender, age, education, tenure and position that may influence employee resilience as control variables (Huang et al., 2016). Considering the essential difference between the ESM use and the ESM communication visibility (Chen and Wei, 2019; Engelbrecht et al., 2019; Pitafi, 2025; Rasheed et al., 2023), we also controlled for ESM use consistent with prior research (Sun et al., 2025a, 2025b; Sun et al., 2025). The theoretical model is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Theoretical model.

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Methodology

Sample and data collection

We adopted a three-wave, survey-based design to collect data from a large hotel group in Hubei Province, China. The company simultaneously deployed WeCom, an ESM platform developed by Tencent.com and a self-developed ESM platform for daily operations and office. Employees were required to perform all work communication, information sharing, and task implementation using these two ESM platforms. In contrast to prior studies on ESM usage topics (Ma et al., 2024a, 2024b; Talwar et al., 2023; Zheng and Davison, 2022), we collected data through a three-wave longitudinal survey design to reduce potential common method variations and predict the causal effects between ESM communication visibility and employee resilience. With the support of company executives and HR managers, we recruited respondents through an announcement letter on the company’s ESM platform, which detailed the purpose and process of the survey. The recruitment lasted two weeks, and a total of 502 respondents were recruited.

Before the investigation officially started, the HR managers provided us with their employee ID, departments, telephone number, and e-mail address. The online survey link was sent via ESM platform account. In order to eliminate privacy concerns, we made a confidentiality commitment to all participants. Before the formal start of the first wave of surveys, we reintroduced the purpose of our survey and detailed the concept and typical examples of ESM platforms to reduce subjective bias.

We administered the first survey to gather data on information transparency and network translucence and ESM usage (Time 1), as well as demographic information, employee ID and their e-mail. To test for potential common method variance (CMV) issues, we further asked them to rate the variable “fashion consciousness” that did not have any theoretical relationship to our study. Fashion consciousness reflects an individual’s perception of the importance of dress fashion (Malhotra et al., 2006). Since fashion consciousness has no correlation with the ESM technical capability and its impact on users, it has been widely regarded as a marker variable for testing CMB issues in the research of ESM topics (Sun et al., 2025; Zhu et al., 2021; Zhu et al., 2024). We also included two screening questions in three waves of surveys to evaluate the quality of the responses. The first wave lasted for two weeks and received 455 responses. After excluding invalid responses that did not satisfy the screening questions or presented consistent or similar answers, 437 responses were retained.

Three weeks later, we administered the second wave of surveys (Time 2) targeting 437 respondents in the first wave. We asked them to report instrumental ties, expressive ties, perceived performance pressure, employee ID and their e-mail. The second wave lasted for two weeks and received 391 responses. After eliminating invalid responses that did not satisfy the screening questions or presented consistent or similar answers, 375 responses were retained.

Three weeks later, we started the third wave of surveys (Time 3) targeting 375 respondents in the previous wave. We asked them to report their resilience, employee ID and their e-mail. The third wave lasted for two weeks and received 319 responses. After eliminating invalid responses that did not satisfy the screening questions or presented consistent or similar answers, 305 valid questionnaires were retained. Finally, we matched the answers to the three waves of the 305 valid respondents based on the employee ID and their e-mail addresses they reported in each wave, and HR managers provided. Table 1 specifies the demographics of the respondents.

Table 1 Demographics of respondents (N = 305).
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We also checked the differences between the early 25% and the late 25% of the respondents to assess potential non-response bias. The t-test results showed no significant differences between the two groups, indicating that non-response bias is not a major concern in this study.

Measurement

The measures for all constructs in our model were adapted from existing literature. Since the survey was administered in China, we translated the scales from English to Chinese using the back-translation technique. Two professors and a doctoral student in ESM fields were also invited to improve the Chinese scales. The items for information transparency and network translucence were taken from Chen et al. (2020). Employee resilience was measured using a 10-item instrument adapted from Quintana et al. (2021). The scale of instrumental ties and expressive ties were adapted from Zhu et al. (2021). The items for performance pressure were sourced from Mitchell et al. (2018a; 2018b). ESM use was computed using a 6-item scale adopted from Cai et al. (2018). The items for fashion consciousness were taken from Malhotra et al. (2006). All measures used a 7-point Likert scale. All items are displayed in Appendix A.

Data analysis and results

Common method variance and multicollinearity

We used two methods to assess CMV concerns. Harman’s single-factor method indicated that the first factor that has not been rotated only explains 32.091% of variance, indicating that CMV is not a major concern. Moreover, our marker variable “fashion consciousness” was not related to any observed variable (the average correlation value r = 0.041, t = 0.651), further confirming that there are no serious CMV problems in our study (Lindell and Whitney, 2001).

We measured the variance inflation factors (VIF) to evaluate multicollinearity. The test result shows that the maximum value of VIF is 3.2, which is lower than 5, suggesting that multicollinearity is not a serious problem (Mason and Perreault, 1991).

Measurement model

We first conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in Mplus 8.3 to evaluate model fit. The 7-factor model yielded good fit: χ2 = 692.63, df = 573, χ2/df = 1.21, CFI = 0.98, TLI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.03, SRMR = 0.04. The results for reliability and validity are shown in Table 2. Cronbach’s alpha, ranging from 0.756 to 0.883, and composite reliability, ranging from 0.73 to 0.88, of all constructs were larger than 0.7. The factor loadings of all items, ranging from 0.61 to 0.87, significantly exceed the threshold of 0.6, and the average variance extracted (AVE) of each construct, ranging from 0.51 to 0.74, was higher than 0.5, indicating convergent validity.

Table 2 Item descriptive statistics.
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We compared the square root of AVE of each construct with the correlations between itself and others for measuring discriminant validity. The results showed good discriminant validity (shown in Table 3). Further, we compared the model fit of the hypothesized 7-factor model with other alternative models. As shown in Table 4, the hypothesized 7-factor model shows the best model fit, which further confirms discriminative validity.

Table 3 Descriptive statistics and correlations matrix.
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Table 4 Comparison of alternative path models.
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Structural model

We applied the structural equation modeling (SEM) method in Mplus 8.3 to validate the hypotheses. The structural model showed good fit: χ2/df = 1.350, RMSEA = 0.034, GFI = 0.966, TLI = 0.963, SRMR = 0.065. The research model explained 48.3%, 29.7% and 22.2% of the variance, respectively, in employee resilience, instrumental ties, and expressive ties. Further, information transparency significantly influenced instrumental ties (γ = 0.41, p < 0.001) and expressive ties (γ = 0.32, p < 0.001); network translucence significantly influenced instrumental ties (γ = 0.22, p < 0.01) and expressive ties (γ = 0.23, p < 0.001); and both instrumental ties (γ = 0.42, p < 0.001) and expressive ties (γ = 0.19, p < 0.01) significantly influenced employee resilience. For the control paths, ESM use (γ = 0.22, p < 0.001) and employee tenure (γ = 0.15, p < 0.05) significantly affected employee resilience.

We examined mediation by conducting the bootstrapping sampling technique with 5000 resamples. The results (Table 5) suggest that both two types of social network ties mediated the positive influence of information transparency and network translucence on employee resilience.

Table 5 Results of mediation test.
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We also tested the moderating effect of performance pressure on the relationship between social network ties and employee resilience. Performance pressure positively moderated the association between instrumental ties and employee resilience (γ = 0.23, p < 0.001) and the association between expressive ties and employee resilience (γ = 0.16, p < 0.05), which confirms our hypothesis. Figures 2 and 3 depict the moderating effect of performance pressure. Figure 4 shows the structural model results.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Moderating effect of performance pressure on the relationship between instrumental ties and employee resilience.

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Fig. 3
figure 3

Moderating effect of performance pressure on the relationship between expressive ties and employee resilience.

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Fig. 4
figure 4

Results of hypothesis.

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Robustness check

We conducted robustness checks to ensure that the results were not caused by the specific methods or variables used. The test results are shown in Appendix B. We first deleted the control variables that significantly influenced employee resilience (Model 1) and did not significantly influence employee resilience (Model 2). The results of the re-test were consistent with our main results. Further, we deleted all control variables in our study (Model 3) and retested the structural model. The test results indicate that all paths after excluding control variables remain highly consistent with our main results.

Discussion and implications

Discussion

By adopting the JD-R theory, we developed a research model of communication visibility and employee resilience. The results indicate that both information transparency and network transparence significantly facilitate instrumental ties and expressive ties of employees, which confirms prior findings (Rasheed et al., 2023; Sun et al., 2020). Moreover, our results show that both employees’ instrumental ties and expressive ties contribute to their resilience, underscoring the value of employee social network ties as they provide employees with a variety of resources to enhance their abilities (Chen et al., 2019; Zhu et al., 2021). Further, instrumental ties and expressive ties mediate the influence of communication visibility on employee resilience. Finally, performance pressure moderates the influence of social network ties on employee resilience, which emphasizes the positive role of performance pressure in developing employee resilience in ESM contexts.

Implications for theory

First, our study enriches the existing literature on communication visibility and also provides new insights into the value of communication visibility. Prior studies recognized the importance of communication visibility and revealed its positive influence on meta-knowledge (Engelbrecht et al., 2019; Leonardi, 2015), knowledge transfer (Leonardi, 2014; Pitafi et al., 2023), employee creativity (Chen et al., 2020), and employee agility (Pitafi et al., 2023; Rasheed et al., 2023). However, the role of communication visibility in employee resilience has not received enough attention. This study confirms the positive role of communication visibility on employee resilience, effectively enhancing our knowledge of the consequences of communication visibility.

Second, our study deepens the understanding of the drivers of employee resilience by exploring the impact of communication visibility and employee social network ties on their resilience. Although prior studies offer a consensus on the importance of employee resilience and revealed the potential impact of various factors such as leadership style (Ahmad et al., 2021), work resources (Cooke et al., 2019b), and job stressors (Crane and Searle, 2016), few studies directly linked ESM and employee social network ties to employee resilience. By integrating the theoretical perspectives of communication visibility and social network ties, our findings extend the antecedents of employee resilience to the fields of ESM and social network ties.

Third, our study adopted social network ties theory to reveal the influence of communication visibility on employee resilience, thus providing an effective theoretical perspective on how theoretical ESM affects employee resilience. Although prior studies applied social network ties theory to discuss the potential association between ESM and job performance (Chen et al., 2019) and employee agility (Talwar et al., 2023), it is still unclear whether the social network ties of employees mediate the effects of communication visibility on their resilience. By confirming the mediating roles of two types of social network ties, our study generates new insights for understanding the connection between ESM and employee resilience.

Finally, our study explored the moderating effect of performance pressure for the association between employee social network ties and employee resilience in ESM contexts, so as to complement existing research on performance pressure in the ESM research field. Although prior research emphasized the influence of performance pressure on work motivation, job engagement, and performance (Mitchell et al., 2018a; 2018b), few studies focused on the role of performance pressure in ESM contexts. It is helpful to reconsider the influence of various stressors on employees in today’s digital organizational context, as ESM technology is considered an important means for employees to manage stress (Pitafi et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2022). Our study shows that performance pressure can actually promote the influences of two kinds of social network ties on employee resilience, which not only develops the research on the impact of performance pressure in the context of ESM but also provides deeper insights into the relationship between ESM and employee resilience.

Implications for practice

First, our research shows that social network ties are key to improving employee resilience. To promote resilience, managers should encourage employees to build their social ties within the organization. Specifically, managers should encourage employees to utilize the ESM platform to actively collaborate with colleagues inside and outside the team, so as to develop their instrumental ties. At the same time, managers should also advocate or empower employees to utilize ESM platforms to find like-minded friends or engage in social interactions with colleagues after work to develop their expressive ties. Moreover, managers should strive to create a good organizational atmosphere to encourage employees to actively participate in collaboration or social interaction between colleagues on the ESM platform, so as to expand social network ties.

Second, our research shows that communication visibility afforded by ESM can significantly promote employees’ social network ties. Therefore, in order to play the role of an ESM platform in employee social network ties, it is necessary for enterprise managers to strengthen the information transparency and network transparency of ESM platforms. For example, managers can ask ESM designers to specifically enhance those features that enable information transparency and network transparency of the ESM platform. At the same time, managers can also encourage open communication between employees and others on the ESM platform, so that others can more easily view this communication content.

Finally, our research shows that performance pressure positively moderates the influences of employees’ two kinds of social network ties on their resilience. This demonstrates the necessity of appropriately enhancing employees’ performance pressure to enhance their resilience in ESM contexts. Therefore, enterprise managers should appropriately manage employees’ performance pressure according to their personal abilities or work efficiencies. For example, managers can increase the workload or shorten the working hours of employees with outstanding abilities or alter work standards for others.

Conclusions, limitations and future research

Conclusions

The prevalence of ESM technology in organizations presents an opportunity to improve employee resilience in response to volatile market environments, which is of interest to both managers and scholars. Based on the perspective of communication visibility and social network ties, our research discusses the potential role of ESM communication visibility in enhancing employee resilience. Our findings indicate that information transparency and network transparency help promote two kinds of employee social network ties, thereby enhancing employee resilience. Moreover, performance pressure moderates the effect of employees’ social network ties on employee resilience. Our research not only expands the existing literature on communication visibility and employee resilience, but also provides guidance for companies on using ESM to enhance employee resilience.

Limitations and future research

First, our research was carried out in China, and it is possible that our conclusions may not extend well to other cultural contexts. For instance, the behaviors and effects of ESM used by enterprises and their employees in Eastern and Western cultures may be quite different (Sun et al., 2025). Therefore, future research can collect data and test the model in both Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds to assess generalizability. Second, our research used a single data source to empirically examine the theoretical models. Although our study demonstrates that CMV is not an issue, our model could be retested using data from multiple sources or methods in future research. For example, leaders can be asked to rate subordinates’ resilience. Third, our research analyzed the influence of communication visibility on employee resilience based on the social network ties lens. In view of the extensive use of ESM and the important value of developing resilience, future research can further discuss the mechanisms of communication visibility influencing employee resilience from other theoretical lenses. Finally, considering the “dark side” of ESM communication visibility (Chen et al., 2020), future research can further investigate its double-edged sword effect on employee resilience, so as to advance the understanding of the relationship between ESM and employee resilience.