After-hours work-related technology use and individuals' deviance: the role of interruption overload, psychological transition and task closure

The information and communication technologies have made it progressively practical for employees to remain associated with work, even when they are not in the workplace. However, prior studies have provided very little understanding of the implications for the deviant behavior aspect. The current study aims to investigate the association between after-hours work-related technology usage and interpersonal, organizational and nonwork deviance through psychological transition, interruption overload and task closure. The authors draw upon the theory of conservation of resource (COR) to examine the research model.

The primary data for the study has been collected in two waves from the sample of 318 employees who were working in diverse organizations in the Anhui province of the People's Republic of China for empirical testing of the authors’ research model.

This study's findings have revealed the positive association of after-hour work-related technology use with individuals' deviance in its entire three forms through psychological transition and interruption overload and have negative associations with all forms of deviance through task closure.

The significant contribution of this study is in the literature on technology use and employee outcomes, by identifying the consequences of technology use in both work (interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance) and outside work domain (nonwork deviance) and exploring the underlying mechanisms for these relationships in detail. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that investigates a relationship between after-hours technology use and all three kinds of deviance while exploring both the positive and negative perspectives in one study.