Technology has drastically reshaped the workplace over the past decades. While it provides organizations and their employees a variety of benefits, there is also a growing perception that technological advancements (e.g., the evolution from telephone to smartphone) in the workplace may have a negative impact on employees' mental health. Using a diary approach, we examined the direct effect of workplace telepressure during off-job hours on psychological detachment from work and the potential mediating role of work-related smartphone use during off-job hours in this relation. In addition, employees' individual differences in empathy was proposed to act as a cross-level moderator of the relation between workplace telepressure and work-related smartphone use. A sample of 80 employees, representing a wide range of occupations and organizations, completed a daily survey on five successive workdays (N = 337-400 day-level observations). Results of multilevel analyses yielded no direct effect of workplace telepressure on psychological detachment on a day-to-day basis. Yet, the results supported a negative indirect effect of daily workplace telepressure during off-job hours on daily psychological detachment, mediated via daily work-related smartphone use during off-job hours. Additionally, the relation between workplace telepressure and work-related smartphone use was not strengthened by the affective component nor the cognitive component of other-oriented empathy. Our study highlights the importance of a clear organizational policy regarding work-related smartphone use during off-job hours and provides valuable input for strategies aiming to ameliorate employees' psychological detachment and proper smartphone use.

Organizations increasingly follow agile management frameworks (e.g., Scrum), to implement practices that aim to enable continuous change. Currently, it is unclear how agile work practices (AWPs) are best conceptualized and measured. The present study draws from the taskwork-teamwork distinction to develop a new theoretical framework and measurement instrument of AWPs. We outline potential mechanisms of AWPs in terms of (a) temporality, (b) managerial control, (c) team processes, and (d) work design. Based on this framework, we validate measures of agile practices with data collected from 269 different teams, including multisource and multiwave data (n = 1664 observations). We first establish the factorial validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and measurement invariance of the instrument. Subsequently, we show that AWPs diverge from centralized bureaucracy and converge with measures of emergent team planning, autonomy, and feedback. The pattern of relationships with variables in the nomological network supports the taskwork-teamwork model. Results of multilevel regression analyses indicate that the use of AWPs is associated with favorable team planning behaviors and enriched work design experiences. By disentangling the AWP concept from software development and popular management frameworks, this study broadens the scope of research on agility.

Personal smartphone use at work stretches the boundary between professional and personal life, leading to a more fragmented workday. This study investigates how interruptions from personal smartphone use during work hours affect employees’ performance and well-being. Our primary aim is to clarify the pathways through which personal smartphone interruptions impact employee well-being, as reflected in work-related rumination after work (affective rumination, problem-solving pondering, and psychological detachment). Integrating propositions of social role theory and action regulation theory, we hypothesize that such interruptions undermine task accomplishment, which, in turn, increases feelings of frustration. Furthermore, we propose that frustration explains the link between reduced task accomplishment and increased work-related rumination after work. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a quantitative daily diary study with 91 employees from diverse occupations, collecting data over five consecutive workdays, including between 354 and 399 observations per day. Multi-level analyses revealed that interruptions from personal smartphone use indirectly increased frustration by undermining task accomplishment. Additionally, frustration fully mediated the relationship between task accomplishment and work-related rumination in the evening. These findings highlight the importance of managing personal smartphone use at work to protect employee performance and well-being. We conclude by critically examining the broader theoretical significance and practical applications of our findings.