Staying in touch, yet expected to be? A diary study on the relationship between personal smartphone use at work and work–nonwork interaction

Abstract

The present study challenges the prevalent negative view of personal smartphone use at work and advances our understanding of its effects on the work–nonwork interface. Drawing on border theory, we focus on the social and instrumental feature of smartphones that allows employees to be connected with their private contacts (e.g. friends and family members) while at work and, thereby, test the influence of day‐level personal smartphone use at work on positive and negative work–nonwork interaction (WNI). In considering social experiences of smartphone‐enabled communication, we propose underlying explanatory mechanisms, namely, the social benefits (i.e. feeling in touch with private contacts) and social costs (i.e. feeling expected to respond to private contacts) of communication. One hundred and twenty‐seven employees participated in a diary study. They completed online questionnaires three times a day over ten working days, resulting in a total of 1,066 days of data. Multilevel structural equation modelling indicated that on the day‐level of analysis, personal smartphone use at work promoted positive WNI through the perceived social benefits of communication and increased negative WNI through the perceived social costs of communication. We discuss our findings and extend current research on personal smartphone use at work by acknowledging this widespread workplace behaviour as both beneficial and detrimental for successfully managing the daily interplay of the work and nonwork domains. Practitioner points Personal smartphone use at work should not be classified as exclusively detrimental workplace behaviour, as it can help employees attend to personal responsibilities more easily. For a more comprehensive evaluation of the consequences of personal smartphone use at work, social experiences of communication should be considered when compiling workplace guidelines. Educating employees on how to make the most of personal smartphone use at work and understanding the underlying social mechanisms may help them to better manage work and nonwork responsibilities.

Looking forward or backward: A temporal lens to disentangle adaptive and maladaptive reactions to daily goal-performance discrepancy.

“…We illustrated how after-work cognitions (i.e., adaptive thinking and rumination) prompted by daily GPD spilled over to shape next-day goal-pursuit outcomes (i.e., next-day GPD). In so doing, we joined the emerging literature on work–nonwork interface (Gabriel et al, 2021; Liu et al, 2017; Patterer et al, 2021) by revealing the implications of daily work GPD for after-work cognitions.…”

I can do good even when my supervisor is bad: Abusive supervision and employee socially responsible behaviour

“…), and occupations (e.g., marketing, finance, operations, human resources). Convenience sampling is the dominant form of recruitment for Experience Sampling (i.e., diary) studies, and helps to facilitate a more heterogeneous sample of participants, which is associated with greater generalizability of the findings (Ma et al., 2022; Patterer et al., 2021). Participants were not reimbursed for completing the surveys, but to incentivize their continued participation in the weekly surveys, they were given the option to opt‐in for a personalized feedback report after the data collection was concluded.…”

Staying connected and feeling less exhausted: The autonomy benefits of after‐hour connectivity

“…Research suggests that after‐hour connectivity may yield positive and negative outcomes for organizations and individuals (Büchler et al, 2020; Hu et al, 2021; Ten Brummelhuis et al, 2021). For example, Patterer et al (2021) demonstrate that connectivity in terms of personal smartphone use at work may have instrumental and social benefits and drawbacks. Although research has paid considerable attention to the implications of information and communication technology (hereafter; ICT) use for employee well‐being (see Hu et al, 2021), more work is needed to understand how and why after‐hour connectivity may affect well‐being.…”