Why and for whom cyber incivility affects task performance? Exploring the intrapersonal processes and a personal boundary condition

Abstract

Although cyber incivility (i.e., an interpersonal workplace stressor displayed through uncivil behaviors manifested in online working communication) occurs every day in the workplace, we know little about how it influences employees’ task performance at daily level, nor why and when this influence occurs. To address these limitations, we theorized and tested a model that links cyber incivility to task performance via negative affect and sleep quality at daily level and a cross-level boundary condition at the person level (i.e., self-leadership). Multilevel modeling results based on data collected from 112 full-time employees with 866 observations suggest that daily cyber incivility has a time-lagged effect on task performance of the following day after controlling for task performance the same day. This intrapersonal effect can be explained by the induced negative affect of the following workday but not sleep quality of the previous night. In addition, the relationship between cyber incivility and negative affect and the indirect effect of cyber incivility on task performance via negative affect were weaker among employees with high rather than low self-leadership.