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Home  >  All Issues  >  2022  >  No.07  >  Article Details
Double-edged Sword Effect of Work-related Electronic Communications during Non-working Time on Work-related Well-being
Pan Qingquan1, Wei Huimin2
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Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 44, Issue 07, pp. 64 - 81 (2022)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20220429.304
First published at:Jul 20, 2022
Summary
References
Summary

With the development of information technology, great changes have taken place in the pattern of work communications. Supervisors increasingly rely on E-mail, Wechat and QQ to communicate with their subordinates. As a typical kind of work-to-nonwork boundary-spanning behavior, supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time will incur what kind of reaction from subordinates is still uncertain. Therefore, based on the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion, this paper examines the double-edged sword model of supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time, involving promoting path and weakening path, so as to explain why and to what extent supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time affects subordinates’ feelings more clearly.

By using the questionnaire survey, this paper adopts the procedure controlling method to avoid the impact of common-source bias, and obtains a total of 449 valid questionnaires. Then, the hypothesis is empirically tested by common-source bias testing, confirmatory factor analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, and structural equation model. The results indicate that: On the one hand, supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time can advance subordinates’ work-related well-being via feeling trusted. On the other hand, supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time can result in the decline of subordinates’ work-related well-being via role overload. In addition, subordinates’ work identity can intensify the promoting effect of supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time on subordinates’ work-related well-being via feeling trusted, and buffer the weakening effect of supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time on subordinates’ work-related well-being via role overload. When subordinates’ work identity is stronger, supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time will improve subordinates’ work-related well-being via feeling trusted more greatly. When work identity is weaker, supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time will weaken work-related well-being via role overload more greatly. The study helps to understand the influencing effect of work-related electronic communications during non-working time comprehensively, and provides some implications for management practices about work-related electronic communications during non-working time.

The contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it examines the oppositive influencing effect of supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time on subordinates’ work-related well-being, which leads to comprehensively understand the differential effect of work-to-nonwork boundary-spanning on subordinates’ work domain. The literature on the impact of work-related electronic communications during non-working time on work domain is scarce, and a little pays more attention to the possible positive impact on work. This study is a remedy for this deficiency. Second, it examines the moderating effect of work identity within the influencing effect of work-related electronic communications during non-working time, which helps to reconcile the contradictory findings of existing studies on the impact of work-related electronic communications during non-working time. From the view of role identity, this paper focuses on work identity that is more directly related with self-role definition in work domain and examines the boundary role of work identity on the influencing mechanism of supervisors’ work-related electronic communications during non-working time in work domain.

Keywords
work-related electronic communications during non-working time; feeling trusted; role overload; job identity; work-related well-being
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Cite this article
Pan Qingquan, Wei Huimin. Double-edged Sword Effect of Work-related Electronic Communications during Non-working Time on Work-related Well-being[J]. Foreign Economics & Management, 2022, 44(7): 64-81. 
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