The Effect Of Work Connectivity Behavior After-hours On Employee Task Performance And Organizational Citizenship Behavior:a Daily Diary Study

With the rapid development of information technology and the popularity of various electronic communication devices in the workplace,modern organizations have become a hyper-connected workplace.It not only breaks the constraints of time and space in the workplace,but also changes the way employees work.As a result,it has gradually become normal for employees to use portable communication devices to participate in work or contact with work-related individuals at anytime and anywhere during non-working hours(e.g.,before work,during lunch break,after work,etc),which is referred to work connectivity behavior after-hours(WCBA).In recent years,given the recurring outbreak of Corona Virus Disease2019(COVID-19),online office has increasingly become a common form of office for organizations.On the one hand,online office improves employee job autonomy and flexibility,helps managers to keep up with employee work progress,facilitates work communication with employees,and ensure the normal operation of organizations in special periods.On the other hand,online office raises the organizations’ expectation that employees can be connected at anytime and anywhere to improve work efficiency.On the premise of not having to pay extra for employees’ “invisible overtime”,in order to maximize economic benefits,organizations believe that allowing individuals to remain connected can improve work output during non-working hours.Therefore,organizations gradually start to misuse online office,making individuals in state of “24-hour on-call”.It increases workload and intensifies work pressure,which leads to negative emotions and turnover intention.When faced with the increasingly common phenomenon of WCBA in organizations,people cannot help thinking: Dose this extra effort to connect with work during non-working hours really benefit employee performance as much as the organization expects? Does it have a negative impact on employee performance? What are the internal mechanisms of its effect? What are the boundary conditions for this effect to occur? Therefore,a clear understanding of the impact of WCBA on employee performance is conducive to guiding the organization to rationally view this kind of behavior,and reasonably avoiding the negative effects of WCBA,so that the organization and employees can achieve a win-win situation.Currently,scholars have made some progress in studying the consequences of WCBA,but most studies have focused on the negative effects of this behavior on employees’ physical,mental,and family domains.Little is known about its impact on employee performance(i.e.,task performance and organizational citizenship behavior).Integrating the above practical and theoretical backgrounds,this paper constructs a moderated serial mediation model based on conservation of resources(COR)theory to investigate the linking mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationship between WCBA and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior,introducing ego depletion and work alienation as mediators as well as core self-evaluations(CSE)and job complexity as moderators.Using the experience sampling methodology,the survey data were collected from employees of three internet companies at three time points(i.e.,morning,afternoon,and evening)each day for 10 consecutive workdays.The questionnaires were distributed in two main phases.In the first phase,demographic information and moderating variables(i.e.,CSE and job complexity)were collected.In the second phase,daily questionnaires were distributed for two consecutive weeks to collect the within-person level main variables(i.e.,WCBA,ego depletion,work alienation,task performance,and organizational citizenship behavior)and the within-person level control variables(i.e.,sleep quality and negative affect).This study finally obtained 94 betweenperson questionnaires and 714 within-person questionnaires.SPSS 20.0,Mplus 7.4and R software were used for data analysis and hypothesis testing.The results showed the following:(1)WCBA has a negative impact on employee performance.Specifically,WCBA is negatively associated with task performance and organizational citizenship behavior.(2)Ego depletion and work alienation play serial mediating roles in the relationship between WCBA and employee performance.Specifically,WCBA contributes to the formation of work alienation through enhancing ego depletion,which in turn affects task performance and organizational citizenship behavior.(3)CSE moderates the positive relationship between WCBA and ego depletion,such that the positive relationship is weaker when CSE is high rather than low.(4)Job complexity moderates the positive relationship between WCBA and ego depletion,such that the positive relationship is stronger when job complexity is high rather than low.(5)CSE moderates the serial mediating effect between WCBA and employee performance.That is,the serial mediating effects between WCBA and task performance as well as organizational citizenship behavior are weaker when CSE is high rather than low.(6)Job complexity moderates the serial mediating effect between WCBA and employee performance.That is,the serial mediating effect between WCBA and task performance as well as organizational citizenship behavior are stronger when job complexity is high rather than low.The implications of this study include bot theoretical and practical aspects.In terms of theoretical implication,first,this study explores the negative effect of WCBA on employee performance,enriching the research on the consequences of WCBA.Second,this study investigates the mediating roles of ego depletion and work alienation in the serial mediated relationships between WCBA and task performance as well as organizational citizenship behavior,opening the “black box”between them.Third,by introducing CSE and job complexity as moderators,this study broadens the understanding of boundary conditions of the effects of WCBA.Finally,this study uses the experience sampling methodology to expand the methodology for exploring WCBA.In terms of practical implications,first,since WCBA seriously damages employees’ work output,organizations need to pay attention to the hazards of this behavior.Second,organizations should adopt multiple ways to supplement resources as well as fully understand employee psychological and work state through the one-to-one communication channels between supervisors and subordinates,so as to prevent employee ego depletion and work alienation.Third,organizations should focus on examining applicants’ CSE as well as improving existing employees’ CSE through training courses.Fourth,organizations should optimize job design,appropriately decompose the amount of tasks,reasonably match job complexity according to employee abilities.This research’ innovations are mainly reflected in the following four aspects:First,this study explores the relationship between WCBA and employee performance,providing new empirical evidence to expand the research on outcomes of WCBA.Although previous scholars have begun to be interested in the effects of WCBA,the outcome variables on this topic are still relatively scarce.To be specific,prior studies on the effects of WCBA mainly focused on exploring whether this behavior has spillover effect,that is,its impact on employee family.Little attention has been paid to whether such “invisible overtime” behavior would damage employees’ work output.For employees and organizations,work output(task performance and organizational citizenship behavior)is not only one of the vital factors for individual career development and promotion,but also related to the success or failure of the organization and sustainable development.Therefore,this study takes a new approach to explore the impacts of WCBA on task performance as well as organizational citizenship behavior,which is innovative in the reality of the topic selection.At the same time,this study responds to the call for expanding the consequences of WCBA.Second,according to COR theory,this paper explains the serial mediating mechanism of the relationship between WCBA and employee performance,which provides a new theoretical perspective of understanding the internal mechanism between them.At present,Studies on the negative effects of WCBA are mainly discussed from the perspective of work-family boundary.The series of studies suggest that such behavior undermines work-family balance by forcing employees frequently switch between their work and family roles.However,these studies ignore that the characteristics of WCBA are consistent with the features of job demands mentioned in COR theory,requiring employees to pay limited resources to cope with stress.In this way,this behavior as a specific job demand will cause employees to fall into a state of resource exhaustion.Therefore,this paper applies a new perspective(i.e.,COR)to explore the whole process of how WCBA causes resource depletion and promotes resource defense,which ultimately affects employee performance.In this process,by introducing ego depletion and work alienation as mediators,this study opens the “black box” between WCBA and employee performance.Third,this study comprehensively considers the moderating roles of individual and job characteristics,identifying new boundary conditions under which the effects of WCBA.Previous studies have rarely shown which situations affect the implementation of WCBA.Strengthening this relevant research can not only fill the gap in this aspect,but also enhance the understanding of the relationship between and job characteristics,namely CSE and job complexity,to examine how these factors influence the relationship between WCBA and employee performance.In addition,different from prior research exploring the direct effects of CSE or job complexity on job performance(i.e.,task performance and organizational citizenship behavior),this study regards the two as moderators,which to some extent broadens the application scope of CSE and job complexity.Fourth,this study uses the experience sampling methodology to explain the dynamic process of WCBA.Previous studies on WCBA have mainly focused on using static cross-sectional data.These studies assume that some individuals engage in WCBA while others do not.However,this assumption excludes the possibility that each individual will exhibit different frequencies of WCBA depending on the the actual daily work situation.In addition,it is difficult for static research methods to truly reflect the immediate psychological state,attitude and behavior of employees who exhibit WCBA,which affects the accuracy of model testing.Therefore,this research adopts the experience sampling methodology to repeatedly measure daily WCBA.It can not only truly capture this behavior caused by the instantaneous psychological state,attitude and behavior,but also make it relatively accurate to infer the causal relationship among variables,so as to effectively guarantee the stability of the findings.