The effect of apathetic motivation on employees' intentions to use social media for businesses

Businesses benefit when employees use social-media technologies to connect with stakeholders, but extant evidence indicates mixed results in getting employees to do it. We propose part of the explanation stems from apathetic motivation among employees; we investigate whether apathetic motivation appears at the other end of the spectrum of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, or whether it varies independent of other motivations. We find evidence that apathetic, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivations appear as distinct motivations and can all coexist at times-that some individuals who report high intrinsic or extrinsic motivations also report high apathetic motivation, and there are significant interaction terms. Furthermore, the relationship between intention to use and actual usage appears to be amplified in the case of individuals in marketing/sales versus diminished in the case of individuals in other departments, consistent with the idea that the customer-facing nature of some jobs impacts intention to use social media technologies.