Title
Threatening relatedness while boosting social interactions: the inconsistent effect of daily task ambiguity on daily relatedness satisfaction among remote workers
Author
... show all
Abstract
Contemporary workplaces are characterized by ambiguity. Next to implications for performance, ambiguity has been negatively associated with employees’ satisfaction of the need for relatedness. In this study, we investigate the implications of daily fluctuations of task ambiguity among remote workers and hypothesize that increased daily task ambiguity negatively relates to remote workers’ daily relatedness satisfaction. However, drawing on uncertainty management theory and relational coordination theory, we argue that task ambiguity may also encourage the coordination of work activities with colleagues and supervisors, which, in turn, contributes to relatedness satisfaction. Paradoxically, task ambiguity should, thus, have a direct negative and an indirect positive relationship with relatedness satisfaction via increased coordination activities. We found support for our hypotheses in a daily diary study among 795 experienced remote workers, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results confirm that daily task ambiguity is a work stressor with negative implications for daily relatedness satisfaction that experienced remote workers manage by seeking clarification from social sources. Moreover, we identify coordination activities as valuable for relatedness satisfaction. We critically discuss organizational policies on task clarity and provide ways to encourage coordination activities in remote work contexts.
Keywords
Remote workself-determination theoryneed satisfactioncoordinationambiguity
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
Appeared in
Title
The International Journal of Human Resource Management
Volume
36
Issue
1
ISSN
0958-5192
Issued
2024
From page
56
To page
79
Publication
Informa UK Limited
Version type
Date issued
2024
Access rights
Rights statement
© 2024 The Author(s)
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