The Relationship Between Work-related Electronic Communication During Off Hours And Emotional Exhaustion

With the popularity of the Internet and electronic communication technologies in the workplace,modern organizations have become a super-connected workplace.These convenient communication technologies have changed the established working hours and workplaces,making it normal for employees to work in non-working hours.Objectively,the organization does not want employees to reduce their work efficiency and influence their work status due to their role conversion between the work and family field.Therefore,the organization will expect and even require their staff to keep the communication smoothly during nonworking time and be ready to enter the work state.This kind of organizational atmosphere and hidden work requirements have intensified the tense and exhausted working conditions of employees because of the internal and external competition and the burden of family responsibilities,which triggered a series of negative effects such as emotional exhaustion.Studying emotional exhaustion as a consequence variable can manage employee psychology and behavior from the initial stage of negative experience,so we can avoid more serious negative consequences.In the Chinese context,work is more important than life,it's a common view of a large part of people.Hard work becomes a manifestation of family responsibility and pay for the family,so the behavior of work-related electronic communication during off hours may be more frequent in China.Undoubtedly,frequent work contacts in family situation will lead to resource conflicts between work and family,increase employee resource consumption and role stress perception,finally lead to negative experiences.In addition,for individuals with different working family boundary management preferences,the impact of work-related electronic communication during off hours is not the same.It is worth noting that,work-related electronic communication during off hours is also beneficial to improve work flexibility and work efficiency.Given its widespread existence and potential benefits,it is unrealistic and undesirable to completely ban this behavior.Therefore,the purpose of this study is examine the negative impact of electronic communication during off hours and explore organizational and individual governance strategies to alleviate the negative effects such as emotional exhaustion.This study constructs a model of work-related electronic communication during off hours affecting emotional exhaustion from the perspective of resourceconservation theory and work-family boundary management,including the mediating role of role stress and the moderating role of work-family segmentation preferences.We use the questionnaire survey method to analyze the valid questionnaires filled out by 312 employees who have adopted standard hour plan.The results show that:(1)work-related electronic communication during off hours positively affects emotional exhaustion,positively affects role stress,role stress partial mediating the relationship between work-related electronic communication during off hours and emotional exhaustion;(2)work-family segmentation preference has a positive moderating effect on relationship between work-related electronic communication during off hours and emotional exhaustion.The innovations are as follows:(1)Expanding the impact of work-related electronic communication during off hours,research confirms the positive impact of this behavior during off hours on emotional exhaustion and role stress,and constructs the conduction path of role stress as a mediator variable.(2)From the perspective of work-family boundary management,introduces the work-family segmentation preference as a context variable,and explores the moderating effect of individual preference difference.And then from the matching of organizational and personal boundary management preferences,we provide relevant practical enlightenment,enrich the countermeasures of work-related electronic communication during off hours.