Does After‐Hours Telepressure Increase Next‐Day Emotional Exhaustion or Cognitive Flexibility? The Role of Different Work‐Related Rumination Processes

Abstract

The increasing use of information communication technology (ICT) has made telepressure, the urge to reply quickly to work‐related messages, a common experience among today's employees. By integrating theoretical underpinnings of conservation of resources with rumination literature, we posit that after‐hours telepressure leads to a resource‐loss process via evening affective rumination, as this type of rumination increases next‐morning emotional exhaustion. In the meantime, after‐hours telepressure enables a resource‐gain process via evening problem‐solving pondering, as this type of rumination promotes next‐morning cognitive flexibility. Moreover, we argue that leader path‐goal facilitation, leader behaviors that facilitate employees' goal achievement by providing guidance and removing obstacles, alleviates the impact of after‐hours telepressure on employees' next‐morning emotional exhaustion by reducing their evening affective rumination and strengthens the positive effect of after‐hours telepressure on employees' next‐morning cognitive flexibility by increasing their evening problem‐solving pondering. Through a 10‐day experience sampling investigation of 81 employees working in various industries in China (i.e., Study 1) and a 5‐day experience sampling investigation of 95 employees in an e‐commerce company in Singapore (i.e., Study 2), we find support for most of our hypotheses. As a whole, by providing a more balanced account of the consequences of after‐hours telepressure from the COR perspective, our work advances extant management literature and offers novel practical insights in terms that companies can help employees suffer less and even benefit from telepressure by enhancing leaders' levels of path‐goal facilitation.