The Dynamic Control of Work Behavior: The Influence of Velocity and Self-Regulation on Affect and Job Performance

Employees often must dynamically monitor and regulate their work behavior to effectively perform their current tasks while also managing their workload across the whole workday. Here, I propose that examination of the dynamic performance self-regulation enacted by employees can provide insights into when and why employees enact one form of job performance versus another. Specifically, I suggest that employees regulate their work behavior by comparing their episodic velocity (i.e., their rate of progress at the end of a performance episode) to their daily velocity referent (i.e., their expected or required rate of progress for their entire daily workload). Perceived discrepancies should give rise to affective reactions that inform subsequent work behavior, including task performance, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). To test this study’s hypotheses, I conducted an experience sampling study over one workweek and collected 960 within-day observations from 115 employees. Using multilevel polynomial regression with response surface analysis and mediation, I found that positive discrepancies gave rise to positively valenced affect (i.e., activated and deactivated) and, in turn, higher OCB and higher task performance. Negative discrepancies gave rise to negatively valenced affect (i.e., activated and deactivated) and, in turn, higher CWB. These findings bear a number of implications related to control theory, the role of affect, and within-person job performance, and in discussing these implications I also present several future research directions. In summary, perceptions of work-related velocity throughout the workday seem to play a pivotal role in driving affective reactions and performance outcomes at the within-person level.

Author

• Aitken, John Anthony

• activation
• affect
• control theory
• job performance
• self-regulation
• velocity

Identifier

hdl:1920/13818

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:MARS:1920/13818