Examining boss phubbing and employee outcomes through the lens of affective events theory

Boss, Can't You Hear Me? The Impact Mechanism of Supervisor Phone Snubbing (Phubbing) on Employee Psychological Withdrawal Behavior

With the excessive smartphone use in the workplace, supervisor phubbing has drawn broad concerns in managerial and academic fields. Though the neglect is unintentional, this behavior can generate counterproductive working behaviors. The basic assumptions of this study are that supervisor phubbing can impact employee psychological withdrawal behavior directly and indirectly via work alienation. To provide empirical evidence for the assumptions, the two-wave online survey of 302 Chinese employees without any supervisory functions was conducted on the Questionnaire Star platform. Based on the stressor-emotion model, work alienation is proved to be the psychological path in the positive relationship between supervisor phubbing and employee psychological withdrawal behavior. Different from the current studies exploring the impact mechanism of phubbing behavior on psychological withdrawal behavior between parents and children, couples, or friends, we put this mechanism into the workplace and focus on subordinate-superior relationships. In addition, the positive indirect effects are enhanced when employees have higher interpersonal sensitivity. In practice, these findings suggest that organizations should normalize the smart devices use in the workplace, and supervisors should balance their working roles with other roles. In addition, organizations should strengthen training on adjusting to negative emotions and interpersonal sensitivity control at work. Although two rounds of the time-lagged data were collected in a one-month interval, the limitations of cross-section data still exist, so the conclusions cannot establish causality. Hence, future research may conduct experimental or longitudinal research designs to make the conclusion more rigorous.

Leader Phubbing and Employee Job Performance: The Effect of Need for Social Approval

Purpose

A workplace leader’s phubbing (snubbing by using the phone) can create social distance between the leader and employee. We tested whether this social distance might reduce trust, with a negative impact on job performance. The negative impact might be especially strong for employees with a high need for social approval (NFSA).

Methods

Full-time employees (N = 246; 51.63% male, M_age = 35.07, SD = 8.62) in Eastern China completed anonymous questionnaires. The data were collected in three waves with a 2-week interval between each wave. The SPSS macro PROCESS was used to test all research hypotheses.

Results

Regression-based analyses were used to test a moderated serial mediation model. Leader phubbing was associated with employees’ poorer job performance, and this association was mediated by social distance and in turn, low trust. The negative effects of leader phubbing were stronger for employees with a higher NFSA.

Conclusion

This study adds new evidence to the literature on phubbing by showing that employees’ perceptions of leader phubbing might hinder employee job performance. Furthermore, the boundary condition of employee NFSA was emphasized and further expanded the literature in this field. This research provides insights into how the negative impact of leader phubbing on employee job performance can be prevented or reduced.