When daily home-to-work transitions are not all bad: a multi-study design on the role of appraisals

What if I like it? Daily appraisal of technology-assisted supplemental work events and its effects on psychological detachment and work engagement

“…First, we found no relationship between daily TASW event occurrence and daily work engagement which is in line with previous diary studies (e.g., van Laethem et al, 2018;Darouei et al, 2023). However, as hypothesized, when TASW events occurred, a positive appraisal was associated with higher levels of daily work engagement.…”

“…Although meta-analytic results suggest a positive relationship between TASW and work engagement when considering both the person and day level (Kühner et al, 2023), diary studies could not confirm this positive association between TASW and work engagement at the within-person level. Whereas some diary studies found a negative relationship between daily TASW and work engagement the next day (Ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012;Lanaj et al, 2014), other diary studies did not find significant associations between the two variables (Derks et al, 2015;van Laethem et al, 2018;Darouei et al, 2023). Hence, we assume that TASW event appraisal-rather than the mere TASW event occurrence-may provide valuable insights into these inconsistent results.…”

“…However, they may have perceived the events as regular work, resulting in fewer TASW event occurrence and influencing the reported TASW event appraisal. Indeed, working from home has been found to be positively related to the extent of TASW and the positive appraisal of TASW on the day level (Darouei et al, 2023). This needs to be taken into account when interpreting and generalizing the findings.…”

“…Research on the effects of TASW has recently evolved from a feature-oriented approach (e.g., frequency or duration of TASW) to an event-oriented approach that focuses on the daily occurrence of TASW events (e.g., Reinke et al, 2016;Braukmann et al, 2018) and takes the appraisal of TASW into account (e.g., Reinke and Ohly, 2021;Darouei et al, 2023). As the appraisal of TASW events may vary between events (cf.…”

Why and when does multitasking impair flow and subjective performance? A daily diary study on the role of task appraisals and work engagement

“…This theoretical model posits that reactions to work stressors, such as fragmentation of work time due to multitasking, depend on (1) how we appraise those stressors (i.e., as opportunity or threat) and (2) the resources we possess to cope with those stressors. Recent research on interruptions has indeed shown that the (positive or negative) appraisals of employees shape reactions (Hunter et al, 2019;Darouei et al, 2024). We go one step further and argue that a work stressor can also shape the appraisal of other, more neutral job characteristics.…”