Research has shown that recovery processes in general and psychological detachment in particular are important for work engagement. We argue that work engagement additionally benefits from ...reattachment to work in the morning (i.e., mentally reconnecting to work before actually starting to work) and that the gains derived from psychological detachment and reattachment are stronger in the morning than in the afternoon. We tested our hypotheses in a daily diary study with a sample of 167 employees who completed 2 surveys per day over the period of 2 workweeks. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that work engagement was higher in the morning than in the afternoon. Evening psychological detachment and morning reattachment positively predicted work engagement throughout the day. The association between reattachment and work engagement was stronger in the morning than in the afternoon. This study demonstrates that not only psychological detachment from work during leisure time, but also reattachment to work when coming back to work are crucial for daily engagement at work.
In European countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a demanding work situation for office employees who have been required to work from home (hereinafter referred to as remote workers). ...Due to curfews, school closures, and leisure restrictions in Austria, remote work circumstances have changed compared to before the pandemic. By combining event system theory with transactional stress theory, we aim to identify the most important resources for maintaining remote workers' well-being, perceived productivity, and engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected daily data (five working days for each remote worker) once from March to May 2020 (2222 employees) and again from November 2020 to January 2021 (1268 employees) and explored the role of personal (self-goal setting, self-efficacy, home-office experience), external (equipment at home), and organizational (work-related and social) resources for changes in well-being, perceived productivity, and engagement. Well-being and engagement decreased less when remote workers indicated high resources of self-efficacy and social support at the beginning of the crises. Results further reveal that an improvement in resources from the first to the second measurement was associated with a reduced decline in well-being, productivity, and engagement, respectively. We discuss implications for HRM and provide suggestions for future research.
This study investigates antecedents of procrastination, the tendency to delay the initiation or completion of work activities. We examine this phenomenon from a self-regulation perspective and argue ...that depleted self-regulatory resources are an important pathway to explain why and when employees procrastinate. The restoration of self-regulatory resources during episodes of non-work is a prerequisite for the ability to initiate action at work. As sleep offers the opportunity to replenish self-regulatory resources, employees should procrastinate more after nights with low-quality sleep and shorter sleep duration. We further propose that people’s social sleep lag amplifies this relationship. Social sleep lag arises if individuals’ preference for sleep and wake times, known as their chronotype, is misaligned with their work schedule. Over five consecutive workdays, 154 participants completed a diary study comprising online questionnaires. Multilevel analyses showed that employees procrastinated less on days when they had slept better. The more employees suffered from social sleep lag, the more they procrastinated when sleep quality was low. Day-specific sleep duration, by contrast, was not related to procrastination. We discuss the role of sleep for procrastination in the short run and relate our findings to research highlighting the role of sleep for well-being in the long run.
On the basis of self-regulation theories, the authors develop an affective shift model of work engagement according to which work engagement emerges from the dynamic interplay of positive and ...negative affect. The affective shift model posits that negative affect is positively related to work engagement if negative affect is followed by positive affect. The authors applied experience sampling methodology to test the model. Data on affective events, mood, and work engagement was collected twice a day over 9 working days among 55 software developers. In support of the affective shift model, negative mood and negative events experienced in the morning of a working day were positively related to work engagement in the afternoon if positive mood in the time interval between morning and afternoon was high. Individual differences in positive affectivity moderated within-person relationships. The authors discuss how work engagement can be fostered through affect regulation.
How long do you benefit from vacation? Kühnel, Jana; Sonnentag, Sabine
Journal of organizational behavior,
January 2011, Letnik:
32, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This study adds to research on the beneficial effects of vacation to employees' well-being and on the fade-out of these effects. One hundred and thirty-one teachers completed questionnaires one time ...before and three times after vacationing. Results indicated that teachers' work engagement significantly increased and teachers' burnout significantly decreased after vacation. However, these beneficial effects faded out within one month.Applying hierarchical regression analyses, we investigated the fade-out of vacation effects in detail. In line with the Job Demands-Resources model, job demands after vacation sped up the fade-out of beneficial effects. Additionally, leisure time relaxation experiences after vacation delayed the fade-out of beneficial effects. We conclude that reducing job demands and ensuring leisure time relaxation can prolong relief from vacation.
When the social fabric of organizations limits individual autonomy, new ideas are needed that satisfy a person’s will as well as the constraints imposed by the social context. To explain when people ...achieve this synthesis and display creativity under low job autonomy, we examine the influence of their action-state orientation. The theory of action versus state orientation contrasts two responses people display when faced by a situation that conflicts with their will. An action-oriented response entails that people readily disengage from processing the situation and initiate goal-striving, while a state-oriented response entails that people remain focused on the situation. We argue that creativity under low job autonomy requires the integration of the competing processes underlying action and state orientation and is most frequently displayed by people in the midrange of the action-state orientation continuum. We test this theorizing with three studies. In a constrained laboratory setting, we induced a focus on an unwanted situation and demonstrated an inverted-U-shaped relationship between action-state orientation and creativity. A field study showed that the inverted-U-shaped relationship between action-state orientation and daily self-reports of creativity was strongest under low job autonomy and disappeared under high job autonomy. A multisource study replicated and extended these relationships using managerial ratings of creativity.
The current work seeks to identify factors that support action initiation from the theoretical lens of self-regulation. Specifically, we focus on factors that reduce procrastination, the delay of the ...initiation or completion of activities. We draw from action control theory and propose that positive affect operates as a personal and time pressure as a situational factor that unblock routes to action. High positive affect makes people less prone to procrastination because positive affect reduces behavioral inhibition and facilitates the enactment of intentions. By contrast, when positive affect is low, people depend on time pressure as an action facilitating stimulus. We present results of a daily diary study with 108 participants that support our hypotheses. We replicate the findings in the context of work in a second daily diary study with 154 employees. We discuss benefits and drawbacks of the enactment of intentions under time pressure and implications of the results for how to reduce procrastination.
This diary study adds to research on the Job Demands‐Resources model. We test main propositions of this model on the level of daily processes, namely, additive and interaction effects of day‐specific ...job demands and day‐specific job and personal resources on day‐specific work engagement. One hundred and fourteen employees completed electronic questionnaires three times a day over the course of one working week. Hierarchical linear models indicated that day‐specific resources (psychological climate, job control, and being recovered in the morning) promoted work engagement. As predicted, day‐specific job control qualified the relationship between day‐specific time pressure and work engagement: on days with higher job control, time pressure was beneficial for work engagement. On days with lower job control, time pressure was detrimental for work engagement. We discuss our findings and contextualize them in the current literature on dynamic and emergent job characteristics.
This daily diary study investigates the phenomenon of bedtime procrastination. Bedtime procrastination is defined as going to bed later than intended, without having external reasons for doing so. We ...highlight the role chronotype (interindividual differences in biological preferences for sleep-wake-times) plays for bedtime procrastination. Moreover, we challenge the view that bedtime procrastination is the result of a lack of self-regulatory resources by investigating momentary self-regulatory resources as a predictor of day-specific bedtime procrastination.
One-hundred and eight employees working in various industries completed a general electronic questionnaire (to assess chronotype and trait self-control) and two daily electronic questionnaires (to assess momentary self-regulatory resources before going to bed and day-specific bedtime procrastination) over the course of five work days, resulting in 399 pairs of matched day-next-day measurements.
Results of multilevel regression analyses showed that later chronotypes (also referred to as evening types or 'owls') tended to report more bedtime procrastination on work days. Moreover, for late chronotypes, day-specific bedtime procrastination declined over the course of the work week. This pattern is in line with expectations derived from chronobiology and could not be explained by trait self-control. In addition, on evenings on which employees had less self-regulatory resources available before going to bed-compared to evenings on which they had more self-regulatory resources available before going to bed-employees showed lower bedtime procrastination. This finding contradicts the prevailing idea that bedtime procrastination is the result of a lack of self-regulatory resources.
The findings of this study provide important implications for how bedtime procrastination should be positioned in the field of procrastination as self-regulatory failure and for how bedtime procrastination should be dealt with in practice.
This study extends research on work engagement by examining how a short respite and general job involvement contribute to work engagement. We gathered questionnaire data from 156 nurses before and ...after a short respite. Results indicated an increase of work engagement after the respite. Structural equation modelling showed that nurses who experienced psychological detachment from work during the respite showed a higher increase of work engagement. Moreover, nurses who indicated higher job involvement also showed a higher increase of work engagement. Contradictory to this direct positive effect job involvement had on change in work engagement, job involvement exerted a negative indirect effect on change in work engagement by impaired psychological detachment during the respite. Hence, job involvement acted as a double‐edged sword for the increase of work engagement. Practical implications for the organization of short respites and suggestions for future research on recovery processes are discussed.
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