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Is Someone Looking Over My Shoulder? An Investigation into Supervisor Monitoring Variability, Subordinates’ Daily Felt Trust, and Well-being

Zheng, Xiaotong (Janey); Nieberle, Karolina W.; Braun, Susanne; Schyns, Birgit

Is Someone Looking Over My Shoulder? An Investigation into Supervisor Monitoring Variability, Subordinates’ Daily Felt Trust, and Well-being Thumbnail


Authors

Birgit Schyns



Abstract

Remote working has become the new norm in organizations. However, little is known about how supervisors’ monitoring affects their relationships with subordinates in remote work settings. Our research aims to enhance the understanding of the daily dynamics of monitoring and trust between supervisors and subordinates. Based on self-determination theory, we propose a multilevel theoretical model predicting that supervisors’ daily monitoring affects the extent to which subordinates feel trusted by their manager (‘felt trust’) and their subsequent daily exhaustion and vigor. Further, we develop the novel concept of supervisor monitoring variability and test its role in these relationships. We conducted two Experience Sampling Method (ESM) studies (N=191, 1,417 data points for Study 1; N=257, 2,244 data points for Study 2) in different hybrid work contexts. Multilevel analysis findings confirmed that daily monitoring was negatively associated with daily felt trust, which in turn had a negative impact on subordinates’ daily well-being in both contexts. Furthermore, we found that monitoring variability intensified the negative relationship between daily supervisor monitoring and subordinates’ daily felt trust in the newly introduced remote working context, although not in a more stable context. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and derive a research agenda to study the daily dynamics of monitoring and its implications for organizations.

Citation

Zheng, X. (., Nieberle, K. W., Braun, S., & Schyns, B. (2023). Is Someone Looking Over My Shoulder? An Investigation into Supervisor Monitoring Variability, Subordinates’ Daily Felt Trust, and Well-being. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 44(5), 818-837. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2699

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 9, 2023
Online Publication Date Feb 15, 2023
Publication Date 2023-06
Deposit Date Feb 21, 2023
Publicly Available Date Apr 17, 2023
Journal Journal of Organizational Behavior
Print ISSN 0894-3796
Electronic ISSN 1099-1379
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 44
Issue 5
Pages 818-837
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2699
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1180337

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Organizational Behavior published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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Advance Online Version


Published Journal Article (742 Kb)
PDF

Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in anymedium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Organizational Behavior published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd





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