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Boxed In by Your Inbox: Implications of Daily Email Demands for Managers' Leadership Behaviors

American Psychological Association
Journal of Applied Psychology
Authors:
Christopher C. Rosen
Christopher C. Rosen
Christopher C. Rosen
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Lauren S Simon at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Lauren S Simon
Ravi Gajendran at Florida International University
Ravi Gajendran
Russell E. Johnson at Michigan State University
Russell E. Johnson
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Abstract

Over the past 30 years, the nature of communication at work has changed. Leaders in particular rely increasingly on email to communicate with their superiors and subordinates. However, researchers and practitioners alike suggest that people frequently report feeling overloaded by the email demands they experience at work. In the current study, we develop a self-regulatory framework that articulates how leaders’ day-to-day email demands relate to a perceived lack of goal progress, which has a negative impact on their subsequent enactment of routine (i.e., initiating structure) and exemplary (i.e., transformational) leadership behaviors. We further theorize how two cross-level moderators — centrality of email to one’s job and trait self-control — impact these relations. In an experience sampling study of 48 managers across 10 consecutive workdays, our results illustrate that email demands are associated with a lack of perceived goal progress, to which leaders respond by reducing their initiating structure and transformational behaviors. The relation of email demands with leader goal progress was strongest when email was perceived as less central to performing one’s job, and the relations of low goal progress with leadership behaviors were strongest for leaders low in trait self-control.
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Boxed in by Your Inbox: Implications of Daily E-Mail Demands for
Managers’ Leadership Behaviors
Christopher C. Rosen and Lauren S. Simon
University of Arkansas
Ravi S. Gajendran
Florida International University
Russell E. Johnson and Hun Whee Lee
Michigan State University
Szu-Han (Joanna) Lin
University of Massachusetts
Over the past 30 years, the nature of communication at work has changed. Leaders in particular rely
increasingly on e-mail to communicate with their superiors and subordinates. However, researchers and
practitioners alike suggest that people frequently report feeling overloaded by the e-mail demands they
experience at work. In the current study, we develop a self-regulatory framework that articulates how
leaders’ day-to-day e-mail demands relate to a perceived lack of goal progress, which has a negative
impact on their subsequent enactment of routine (i.e., initiating structure) and exemplary (i.e., transfor-
mational) leadership behaviors. We further theorize how two cross-level moderators— centrality of
e-mail to one’s job and trait self-control—impact these relations. In an experience sampling study of 48
managers across 10 consecutive workdays, our results illustrate that e-mail demands are associated with
a lack of perceived goal progress, to which leaders respond by reducing their initiating structure and
transformational behaviors. The relation of e-mail demands with leader goal progress was strongest when
e-mail was perceived as less central to performing one’s job, and the relations of low goal progress with
leadership behaviors were strongest for leaders low in trait self-control.
Keywords: E-mail, leadership, self-regulation, self-control
“Stop Letting E-mail Control Your Work Day”
—Harvard Business Review (Argenti, 2017)
“At the Mercy of Your Inbox? How to Cope With E-Mail Overload”
—The Guardian (Seeley, 2017)
“The Problem with E-Mail Overload”
—Financial Times (Roy, 2017)
These headlines reflect a growing concern among many man-
agers that work-related e-mail is overwhelming and out of control.
A recent Wall Street Journal article about key worries facing
organizational leaders reported that “E-mail overload is a wide-
spread problem, stress levels are reaching new heights, the ‘urgent’
crowds out the ‘important’” (Hertz, 2014). The unpredictable,
uncontrollable, and ongoing nature of day-to-day e-mail demands
in terms of volume, importance, and urgency contribute to leaders’
experiences of e-mail overload (Alvarez, 2005;Barley, Meyerson,
& Grodal, 2011). Day-to-day variations in e-mail demands mean
that leaders have to make choices between allocating time and
attention to dealing with e-mail versus other work activities. More-
over, these daily variations may have downstream implications,
such that on days when e-mail demands are high, the resources
devoted to dealing with e-mail may interfere with other important
matters. Especially for leaders in organizations, dealing with
e-mail could mean that their time and attention are siphoned away
from critical behaviors (e.g., setting goals and creating develop-
mental opportunities for employees) that drive effectiveness
(Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004;Piccolo et al., 2012).
Despite the availability of a wide variety of communication
channels, e-mail is a prevalent and preferred form of communica-
tion at work. Recent estimates suggest that employees spend over
two hours each day exchanging approximately 100 e-mails (Chui
et al., 2012;Radicati & Hoang, 2011). A McKinsey study further
indicated that knowledge workers spend around 28% of their
workweeks reading and responding to e-mail (McGregor, 2012).
E-mail’s pervasiveness as a form of organizational communication
can be attributed to its advantages such as asynchrony and flexi-
bility, which facilitate rapid and widespread information sharing
among employees (Barley et al., 2011;Byron, 2008). Yet, these
This article was published Online First September 17, 2018.
Christopher C. Rosen and Lauren S. Simon, Department of Manage-
ment, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas; Ravi
S. Gajendran, Department of Management and International Business,
Florida International University; Russell E. Johnson and Hun Whee Lee,
Department of Management, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan
State University; Szu-Han (Joanna) Lin, Department of Management,
University of Massachusetts.
A version of this article was presented at the 2017 meeting of the
Southern Management Association in St. Pete Beach, Florida. We thank
Jooyeon Son and Majib Ghorbani for their assistance and support.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christo-
pher C. Rosen, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkan-
sas, Fayetteville, AR 72701. E-mail: crosen@uark.edu
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Applied Psychology
© 2018 American Psychological Association 2019, Vol. 104, No. 1, 19–33
0021-9010/19/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000343
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