Make Time for Employees to Be Sustainable: The Roles of Temporal Leadership, Employee Procrastination, and Organizational Time Norms

Abstract

Extended work availability (EWA) captures the experience of an employee who needs to be available for job demands during nonworking hours. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon because of the prevalent use of information and communication technology (ICT) such as mobile devices and internet services for work purposes. Although it has been found to impair employee health and well-being, evidence that delineates how to mitigate employee EWA is sparse. Thus, an important research question is: How can managers alleviate employee EWA in the ICT-prevalent work environment? Given EWA has a close connection with the time-based work–nonwork conflict, the present study addresses this question by taking a temporal lens and focusing on the roles of three time-related determinants of employee EWA. Particularly, we first include temporal leadership as a predictor of employee EWA, which concerns a particular type of time management behavior in which a manager aims at helping employees to achieve effective use of time while performing job duties. Then, we incorporate both the individual tendency to delay an intended course of action (i.e., procrastination) and the time management environment in an organization (i.e., organizational time norms) into our research model to further reveal how employee EWA could be shaped. Drawing on spillover theory, the goal of the present study was to examine the effect of temporal leadership in determining employee EWA, as well as the roles employee procrastination and organizational time norms play. Analyses of cross-sectional survey data from a sample of 240 full-time employees showed that temporal leadership has a U-shaped association (β = 0.32, p < 0.001) with employee EWA. Both employee procrastination (r = 0.40, p < 0.001) and organizational time norms (r = 0.30, p < 0.001) are positively related to employee EWA, respectively. Moreover, the U-shaped association between temporal leadership and employee EWA becomes more salient when the organizational time norms is strong, with a standardized regression coefficient of 0.24 (p < 0.05) for the interaction between temporal leadership squared and organizational time norms. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive view of how managers can alleviate employee EWA in today’s ICT-prevalent work environment.

Does Psychological Contract Breach Lead to Procrastination at Work? The Mediation Function of Organizational Cynicism

“…Procrastinators mostly engage in other tasks than they are supposed to accomplish (Davis, Flett and Besser, 2002). In addition, high procrastinators mostly have difficulties fulfilling the given tasks in time (Zhang, Zhang, Liu and Chen, 2022). Zarick and Stonebraker (2009) posited that the initial costs of an action, task aversion and uncertainty lay the rationale of procrastination.…”

What about the Factor Time in Sustainable Employability Research? An Overview of Theory-Based Organizational Research

“…To facilitate new knowledge development about temporal perspectives on the topic of sustainable employability from an organizational perspective, in this Special Issue, we called for new empirical work and organizational research to provide meaningful new insights on the role of time in relation to sustainable employability. In total, eight papers were accepted [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Of these accepted papers, three studies (37.5%) were based on longitudinal survey data (2-wave panel data; [19][20][21]), whereas one study included cross-sectional survey data ( [22]; 12.5%).…”

“…In total, eight papers were accepted [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Of these accepted papers, three studies (37.5%) were based on longitudinal survey data (2-wave panel data; [19][20][21]), whereas one study included cross-sectional survey data ( [22]; 12.5%). Two studies included interview data (25%; semi-structured interviews versus life-span retrospective interviews; [23,24]).…”

“…Given that EWA has a close connection with time-based work-nonwork conflict, this cross-sectional survey study addressed the question using a temporal perspective and focused on the impact of three time-related determinants or antecedents of employee EWA, namely the influence of (a) temporal leadership or time management behaviour of leaders, (b) the individual tendency to delay an intended course of action (i.e., procrastination) and (c) the time management environment in an organization (i.e., organizational time norms) in relation to EWA. Drawing on spillover theory and using a cross-sectional survey among a sample of 240 full-time Chinese employees, Zhang et al (2022) [22] showed that temporal leadership had a U-shaped association with employee EWA, meaning that a moderately strong temporal leadership alleviates employee EWA. Furthermore, employee procrastination and organizational time norms were significantly positively related to employee EWA, respectively.…”

Academic Procrastination in College Students: Do Academic Burnout and Smartphone Addiction Matter?

“…It is a self-defeating negative habit that essentially represents a failure of self-regulation (Sirois & Pychyl, 2016). This behavior is commonly observed across various settings, for instance, among employees (Wan et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2022), leaders (Haesevoets et al, 2021), the general public (Harriott & Ferrari, 1996), educators (Hen & Goroshit, 2018), and notably, students (Shi et al, 2019;Ulya et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2021;Yang et al, 2021).…”