When supportive workplaces positively help work performance

Purpose Although a supportive workplace is increasingly considered important for employees' performance, much of the evidence remains speculative, for example, it lacks offsetting mechanisms. This study addresses circumstances when perceived support helps and when it hurts work performance, depending on the mediating effects of job autonomy, intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction under the boundary conditions of perceived helpfulness of social media platforms and felt stress. Design/methodology/approach This study collected data using a questionnaire protocol that was adapted and refined from the original scales in existing studies. The sample consists of 900 employees from the public healthcare industry in Vietnam. To test the hypotheses, the partial least squares (PLS) technique was used. Findings This study finds that job autonomy, intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction are important for the perceived support and work performance relationship in which perceived helpfulness of social media platforms plays a critical confounding role. The findings also confirm that felt stress negatively moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and work performance, weakening the effect job satisfaction has on employee work performance. Originality/value This study specifies the boundary conditions under which work performance is mostly affected while enhancing the understanding of how to reinforce intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction. The findings offer organizational and human resource management (HRM) scholars and practitioners a closer look at perceived helpfulness of social media platforms and support the suggestions that autonomy-supportive workplaces are superior.