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Extant scholars identified negative workplace gossip as a social stressor that negatively influences employees’ behavior and attitude. Despite the burgeoning interest in workplace stressors, limited studies have explored how the detrimental consequences of targets’ perceived negative workplace gossip spur their emotions and behaviors. Grounding on conservation of resources and ego depletion theories, this study aims to investigate why and how targets’ negative workplace gossip may contribute to trigger knowledge hiding. Specifically, the authors explore the underlying mechanism of personal ego depletion and boundary conditions of organizational justice to shed new light on the above process.

Using two time-wave survey, the authors collected 340 sample data from employees working in high-tech companies of China. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine hypothesized relationships of moderated mediation model.

The empirical results revealed that negative workplace gossip exacerbates knowledge hiding by increasing personal ego depletion. Furthermore, through testing moderated mediation model, the results showed that organizational justice (i.e. distributive and procedural justice) with the low presence moderates the stronger strength of the linkage between negative workplace gossip and personal ego depletion, and likewise, it also moderates the stronger effect of negative workplace gossip on knowledge hiding via personal ego depletion.

This study recommends several guidelines for managers and practitioners to mitigate negative gossip by strengthening organizational justice.

This study first enriches novel understanding in the literature between negative workplace gossip and knowledge hiding by using a new emotional mechanism (i.e. personal ego depletion). This research also contributes new insights by incorporating contextual boundary conditions (i.e. organizational justice) that have not been yet researched on negative gossip and knowledge hiding linkage.

This study aims to examine the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace incivility using a dual theoretical framework. First, it draws on the ego depletion theory to investigate the relationship between abusive supervision and incivility by exploring the mediating role of ego depletion. Second, it integrates the job demands–resources model with the ego depletion theory to examine how perceived co-workers’ support functions as a buffer in mitigating the effects of ego depletion on incivility.

The authors tested our moderated mediation model using hierarchical linear modeling through an experience-sampling study based on data collected from a participants across five consecutive workdays.

The findings reveal employees subjected to abusive supervision are more likely to experience a depletion of self-regulatory resources. Moreover, the authors found a positive association between ego depletion and workplace incivility, suggesting that diminished self-control resulting from abusive supervision contributes to a higher likelihood of engaging in uncivil workplace behaviors. In addition, perceived coworkers’ support emerged as a significant moderating factor that attenuates the indirect impact of abusive supervision on workplace incivility through ego depletion. Specifically, when perceived coworkers’ support is high, the negative influence of abusive supervision on ego depletion, and subsequently, on workplace incivility, is mitigated.

By exploring ego depletion as the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions imposed by perceived coworker support on the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace incivility, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of the intricate dynamics of this relationship. Based on the research findings, the authors advocate that organizations should establish and integrate support services, such as counseling and employee assistance programs, to reduce the emotional turmoil caused by abusive supervision.

The authors investigated how and when work connectivity behavior after-hours (WCBA) spilled over to cyberloafing, considering ego depletion as a mediator and motivations and workaholism as moderators. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

In Study 1, 380 employees participated in a scenario experiment with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Studies 2 and 3 involved 483 and 406 employees, respectively in two two-wave surveys.

WCBA was indirectly linked to cyberloafing via ego depletion. However, when WCBA was driven by high autonomous and low controlled motivation, it exerted less influence on ego depletion, thus weakening the mediating effect of ego depletion. Moreover, the association between WCBA and ego depletion was not significant among employees accustomed to excessive work. The indirect effect of ego depletion also operated contingently on the level of excessive work.

The findings shed light on the spillover effects of WCBA, suggesting that WCBA may lead to cyberloafing by depleting resources. However, the influence of WCBA on ego depletion is concealed when employees engage in WCBA autonomously or are habituated to excessive work.

While integrating resource drain theory with ego depletion theory, this paper aims to understand the mechanism underlying the relationship between research supervisors’ interrole conflicts and their supervisees’ reactions. Specifically, this paper makes a case for supervisors’ ego depletion and supervisees’ perception of abusive supervision to mediate the relationship between supervisors’ work and family conflicts and supervisees’ satisfaction with research supervision.

The study uses data collected in three waves from 306 research supervisees (Level 1) nested in 100 research supervisors (Level 2), involved in MS/PhD research theses at different Pakistani universities.

Based on multilevel modeling, the study finds that supervisors’ interrole conflicts negatively predict supervisees’ satisfaction with supervision. Moreover, supervisors’ ego depletion and supervisees’ perception of abusive supervision mediate the above relationship, both singly and serially. Notably, supervisors’ family–work conflict predicts supervisees’ satisfaction with supervision more negatively than work–family conflict.

This study is unique in that unlike previous research studies on abusive supervision which used victimization approach the present study uses the perpetration approach.

This study aims to explore whether and how workplace loneliness leads to cyberloafing and the role of leader problem-focused interpersonal emotion management in buffering this relationship.

Drawing on ego depletion theory, the authors propose that employees' workplace loneliness leads to cyberloafing via ego depletion, while leader interpersonal emotion management (i.e. leadership behavior targeted at managing employees' negative emotions) can help to alleviate the situation. To test this study’s predictions, the authors collected multisource data at three time points from a sample of 219 employee–colleague dyads.

The results show that workplace loneliness is positively related to cyberloafing and that ego depletion mediates this relationship. Leader problem-focused interpersonal emotion management weakens the relationship between workplace loneliness and ego depletion and the indirect relationship between workplace loneliness and cyberloafing via ego depletion such that the above relationships are weak (versus strong) when leader problem-focused interpersonal emotion management is high (versus low).

The study results suggest that workplace loneliness is an important hidden danger that leads to cyberloafing because lonely employees suffer more from ego depletion. Leaders' interpersonal emotion management strategy serves as a potential buffer for such a negative effect.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of self-serving leadership on employees’ organizational deviance and its internal mechanism.

Through the data collected from 300 supervisor–employee dyads of five large enterprises in China, this research uses multilevel structural equation model to test the proposal hypotheses.

Results show that there is a positive relationship between self-serving leadership and employees’ organizational deviance, and ego depletion plays a mediating role between them. Moreover, this research also found that the relationship between self-serving leadership and ego depletion and the indirect effect of self-serving leadership on employees’ organizational deviance through ego depletion are negatively moderated by power distance orientation.

This study found a new antecedent variable of employees’ organizational deviance-self-serving leadership, and based on the ego depletion theory, deeply reveals the internal mechanism of self-serving leadership influencing employees’ organizational deviance, which has some enlightening significance for relevant theoretical research and management practice. In addition, this study also has unique advantages in data collection and analysis methods.

Drawing on ego depletion theory, this study aims to provide insights into the effect of work-family conflict on the high-speed railway (HSR) drivers’ safety performance by examining the mediating role of ego depletion and the moderating roles of work-family centrality and supervisor safety support.

In total, 243 HSR drivers from 7 railway bureaus in China were surveyed. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

Both work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict have direct and positive effects on HSR drivers’ ego depletion and indirect effects on both safety compliance and safety participation via ego depletion. Moreover, both the direct effect of work-family conflict on ego depletion and its indirect effect on safety performance are moderated by work-family centrality. Supervisor safety support plays a buffering role in the relationship between ego depletion and safety performance.

This study examined the relationship between work-family conflict and safety performance based on the perspective of ego depletion theory. The findings testify to the importance of reducing work-family conflict among HSR drivers pursuant to maximizing safety.

Leadership research is of interest to academics and practitioners in the construction industry. Based on the ego-depletion theory and authentic leadership theory, the current study aims to investigate the impact of women authentic leadership on leaders' emotional exhaustion and job engagement in the construction industry.

The data were gathered in two waves using a time lag approach. The responses of 276 women leaders-follower dyads from construction firms in China's eastern provinces were analyzed using a moderated mediation model.

Most of the proposed hypotheses were supported by the findings of this study, which showed that authentic leadership can reduce emotional exhaustion in women leaders and increase work engagement through ego depletion. Furthermore, the leader's sense of belonging, according to this study, moderates the mediating effect of ego depletion.

This study can help managers, policymakers and human resource professionals think about authentic leadership and its impact on women leaders. Furthermore, ego depletion has an impact on the psychological well-being of authentic women leaders. The sense of belongingness of a leader is critical in buffering the negative effects of ego depletion for women in authentic leadership. Thus, women leaders in construction sector should be encouraged to express a sense of belonging to their followers, since this will improve their work engagement and lessen their emotional exhaustion.

This study is unique in that it examines the authentic behavior of women leaders in the Chinese construction sector, which is a challenging profession for women to work in as site managers. This study contributes to the literature on women in leadership by demonstrating how authentic leadership behavior influences the wellbeing and engagement of leaders. In addition, the study indicated that the effect of the mediator (ego depletion) and moderator (leader sense of belongingness) on the relationship between women's authentic leadership and the leader's own psychological wellbeing and job engagement was significant.

While the rapid adoption of information communication technologies (ICT) in organizations has been linked with a higher risk of cyberbullying, research on the influence of cyberbullying on interpersonal behaviors in the workplace remains limited. By drawing on the ego-depletion theory and the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, this research investigates how, why and when workplace cyberbullying may trigger interpersonal aggression through ICT.

The authors collected data from 259 employees and 62 supervisors working in large ICT organizations in China through a multi-wave survey. The authors performed multilevel analysis and used hierarchical linear modeling to test the proposed moderated mediation model.

The results revealed that workplace cyberbullying has a significant and positive influence on interpersonal aggression in the workplace via ego depletion. The authors found that differentiation in LMX processes at group level moderates the indirect relationship between workplace cyberbullying and interpersonal aggression (via ego depletion). Furthermore, the positive indirect effect of workplace cyberbullying was found to be stronger in the presence of a high LMX differentiation condition in comparison to a low LMX differentiation condition.

The data were collected from Chinese ICT organizations, which may limit the generalization of this study’s findings to other cultural and sectoral contexts.

This paper provides the first step in understanding how, why and when workplace cyberbullying triggers interpersonal aggression by investigating the role of ego depletion as a mediator and LMX differentiation as a boundary condition. This is the first study to empirically examine the relationships between workplace cyberbullying, ego depletion, LMX differentiation and interpersonal aggression in ICT organizations using multi-level modeling.

In this paper, I synthesize the prior psychology literature on ego depletion and apply this literature to an auditing setting. Ego depletion refers to a reduced desire or ability to use self-control in task performance due to using self-control on prior tasks. I focus on the likely causes and consequences of depletion in an auditing setting, as well as means of mitigating depletion and recovering self-control resources. While ego depletion theory is prevalent in the psychology literature, little is known about whether or how ego depletion affects professionals on meaningful task performance. As a result, this synthesis is aimed at stimulating future ego depletion research in accounting, and specifically auditing, by surveying existing literature and applying this literature to an auditing setting. Further, I develop 13 questions for future research to investigate. My synthesis reveals that ego depletion likely has a pervasive effect in an auditing setting, and can hinder auditors’ judgment and decision-making (JDM) quality. Therefore, this synthesis helps to provide a greater understanding of the impact of auditing tasks on individuals, and refines both auditor JDM and ego depletion theories.