Boxed in by Your Inbox: Implications of Daily E-Mail Demands for Managers' Leadership Behaviors

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rosen, Christopher C.; Simon, Lauren S.; Gajendran, Ravi S.; Johnson, Russell E.; Lee, Hun Whee; Lin, Szu-Han (Joanna)
• 署名单位: University of Arkansas System; University of Arkansas Fayetteville; State University System of Florida; Florida International University; Michigan State University; Michigan State University's Broad College of Business; University of Massachusetts System; University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0000343
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 19-33
• 关键词: E-mail; leadership; self-regulation; self-control

摘要

Over the past 30 years, the nature of communication at work has changed. Leaders in particular rely increasingly on e-mail to communicate with their superiors and subordinates. However, researchers and practitioners alike suggest that people frequently report feeling overloaded by the e-mail demands they experience at work. In the current study, we develop a self-regulatory framework that articulates how leaders' day-to-day e-mail demands relate to a perceived lack of goal progress, which has a negative impact on their subsequent enactment of routine (i.e., initiating structure) and exemplary (i.e., transformational) leadership behaviors. We further theorize how two cross-level moderators-centrality of e-mail to one's job and trait self-control-impact these relations. In an experience sampling study of 48 managers across 10 consecutive workdays, our results illustrate that e-mail demands are associated with a lack of perceived goal progress, to which leaders respond by reducing their initiating structure and transformational behaviors. The relation of e-mail demands with leader goal progress was strongest when e-mail was perceived as less central to performing one's job, and the relations of low goal progress with leadership behaviors were strongest for leaders low in trait self-control.