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Researchers have long recognized that employee expectations play an important role in determining their levels of motivation. However, less is known about the relationship between newcomers’ expectations about their job and intrinsic motivation. Even more, there is limited empirical research on the underlying mechanisms that explain this relationship. Given the recent resurgence of interest concerning the construct of work-related boredom and drawing on several theoretical frameworks, the purpose of this paper is to address this gap by examining the mediating role of work-related boredom in the linkage between newcomers’ expectations and intrinsic motivation.

The current study utilized a snowball approach in order to garner a diverse sample of newcomers. To examine the present hypotheses, bootstrapping analysis and Sobel test were used.

The results showed that unmet expectations enhance work-related boredom which in turn affects intrinsic motivation.

Given the cross-sectional and mono-source design of the study, the results may suffer from causality and common method variance issues.

The present study provides novel insights into the psychological mediating mechanisms that explain the relationship between newcomers’ expectations about their job and their intrinsic motivation.

Prior studies have shown various mediating and moderating mechanisms regarding the effect of employees' perceived overqualification on intention to leave (ITL). Nonetheless, only a few empirical studies have shed light on the negative underlying processes that explain this relationship. Furthermore, less is known about the role of high-performance work systems (HPWSs) in the overqualification literature. Drawing upon relative deprivation theory (RDT), this research attempts to fill these gaps by examining the mediating role of work-related boredom and the moderating role of perceived HPWSs in the association between perceived overqualification and ITL.

Data from a sample of 188 employees working in a Greek manufacturing company were analyzed using the PROCESS macros for SPSS.

The results indicated that work-related boredom mediates the association between perceived overqualification and ITL. Moreover, HPWSs attenuated the relationship of perceived overqualification with both work-related boredom and ITL, such that their association was positive only when employees' perceptions of HPWSs were low.

This study adds to the existing literature regarding why and how perceived overqualification affects ITL. Even more, this is one of the first studies that examine the role of HPWSs in the literature of overqualification. Theoretical and practical implications were also considered.

This study seeks to examine the effect of work-related boredom and a perceived lack of external stimulation on benevolent and entitled employees' perceived inequity and discretionary workplace behaviors.

A total of 668 useable three-wave panel data were obtained via Amazon Mechanical Turk during a three-month period. The hypothesized model was tested using a latent growth curve modeling via EQS 6.4 for Windows.

This study finds the following results. First, benevolent employees who experience higher initial work-related boredom report positive inequity. Second, entitled employees who experience higher initial work-related boredom and a perceived lack of external stimulation report negative inequity. Third, increases in work-related boredom and a perceived lack of external stimulation result in a faster increase in entitled employees' perceived negative inequity. Fourth, entitled employees who perceive higher negative inequity at the initial measurement period report higher interpersonal deviance. Finally, increases in entitled employees' perceived negative inequity result in a faster increase in interpersonal deviance.

This study highlights how employees may assess their effort and rewards when experiencing boredom. This study also offers some practical recommendations that help human resource managers manage boredom in the organization effectively.

Boredom is believed to be the common cause of workers' absenteeism, accidents, job dissatisfaction, and performance variations in manufacturing environments with repetitive jobs. Effectively measuring and possibly predicting job boredom is the key to the design and implementation of appropriate strategies to deal with such undesirable emotional state. The purpose of this paper is to present new methodologies to measure and predict human boredom at work.

Two series of mathematical formulations, linear and nonlinear, to describe the variation of human boredom at work are first presented. Given the complexity of human emotions, the authors also present a probabilistic framework based on state‐of‐the‐art Bayesian networks to model employees' boredom at work.

The proposed methods centre on the prediction and measurement of human boredom at work. They enable managers to take proactive actions to deal with human boredom at work. Examples of such actions are task rotation and job redesign.

The proposed methods are verified using a number of cases describing a set of phenomena that may occur in the real world. However, further research is required to demonstrate the validity of the models using real world data.

According to accessible literature, human boredom is being measured by self reporting scales thus far. This study describes and demonstrates analytical approaches to model human boredom at work.

Boredom at work is associated with negative consequences, therefore it is important to investigate whether employees engage in job crafting behaviors that reduce boredom and what are the individual differences associated with these behaviors. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A questionnaire study was designed to examine the mediating role of job crafting in the relationship between conscientiousness and emotional stability and boredom among 252 employees (Study 1) and in the relationship between Machiavellianism and psychopathy and boredom among 216 employees (Study 2).

The results showed that conscientiousness is negatively related to work-related boredom. This relationship is mediated by job crafting. Neuroticism and psychopathy are positively associated with boredom at work, but these relationships are not mediated by job crafting behaviors.

The study was based on self-reported measures, which might raise questions of common-method bias, and the research samples contained mostly women and young employees, which raises questions about generalizability of our findings. At the same time, the cross-sectional design does not allow causal inferences.

Organizations can select employees based on their personality for jobs that predispose to boredom and give them enough autonomy to be able to craft them. Moreover, they can identify employees who need support to manage their boredom and include them in job crafting interventions.

Traditionally, boredom at work has been considered as resulting from characteristics of tasks and jobs. The findings indicate that some employees can make self-initiated changes to their work in order to reduce their boredom and possibly its negative consequences.

This study proposes an examination of the psychometric properties of the French version of two boredom scales (i.e. the Dutch Boredom Scale and the Boredom Proneness Scale Short Version), the antecedents of boredom at work, based on an integrative theoretical framework drawing on the Job Demand-Resources model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017) and the moderating effects of individual characteristics on the relation between contextual antecedents and boredom at work.

This study was based on a cross-sectional design with a sample of 363 Swiss workers. First, the two boredom scales were validated through a confirmatory factor analysis. Then, in order to study the relative strength of the predictors of boredom at work, a hierarchical regression model was tested. Finally, the interaction effects between individual characteristics and contextual antecedents of boredom at work were tested.

Factor analyses revealed a unidimensional structure for both instruments. Regression results showed that boredom proneness, job demands, job autonomy and social utility added a significant percentage of incremental variance to the model. Moreover, a significant interaction between contextual and individual characteristics in predicting boredom at work was observed.

Our findings stress the importance of taking into account employees' experiences at work when developing job design interventions to promote well-balanced working conditions for all, as well as targeted solutions for specific populations, in order to adequately address the issue of boredom in the workplace.

This study explores the relatively under-researched topic of boredom at work, known to be detrimental for individuals and organizations. To date, research on its antecedents has been quite fragmented and we particularly contribute to the literature by investigating this aspect.

Job boredom is an amotivational state at work, where employees lack interest in their work activities and have difficulties concentrating on them. Although recent research suggests that job boredom may concern a wide range of industries, studies investigating the experience and its emergence in white-collar work are scarce. Thereby the purpose of this paper is to contextualize job boredom by exploring the experience and its preconditions in white-collar work.

This inductive, exploratory study employed data from 13 focus group interviews (n=72) in four organizations to investigate the emergence and experience of job boredom.

Three types of job boredom was found. Each type involved distinct temporal experiences: inertia, acceleration and disrupted rhythm at work. The findings suggest that different types of job boredom involve specific conditions that hamper the activation of individual capabilities and disrupt temporal experience accordingly.

Extending the conceptualization of job boredom may enable better understanding of the variety of consequences often associated with the phenomenon.

It is also important for organizations to recognize that there are different types and various preconditions of job boredom in white-collar work, as it may have a negative impact on employee well-being and performance.

The results indicate that job boredom is a more nuanced phenomenon than earlier believed. By identifying job boredom in white-collar work as an experience with various forms and respective preconditions, this study expands the understanding of the phenomenon and its emergence.

This paper studied whether boredom at home due to social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic may motivate individuals to engage in online leisure crafting, thereby contributing to their thriving at home and career self-management. This paper aims to examine whether individuals’ growth need strength influences the impact of home boredom on online leisure crafting.

This paper performed a two-wave longitudinal study involving a group of employees from the hospitality industry (N = 340) in Mainland China. This paper evaluated home boredom, online leisure crafting and growth need strength at Time 1 and thriving at home and career self-management two months later at Time 2.

The respondents’ experience of home boredom had a time-lagged effect on their thriving at home and career self-management via online leisure crafting. Additionally, their growth need strength amplified the positive impact of home boredom on online leisure crafting.

Hospitality managers can motivate employees to engage in crafting online leisure activities at home when they experience home boredom during the outbreak of COVID-19, which may further allow them to experience thriving at home and engage in career self-management. Additionally, managers can develop managerial interventions to improve the growth need strength of employees with low growth needs, which may, in turn, render these employees less likely to tolerate home boredom, thereby increasing the positive impact of home boredom on their online leisure crafting.

This paper offer insights for the boredom literature regarding how individuals’ home boredom caused by social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic might lead to their thriving at home through online leisure crafting. This paper also provides insights for the leisure crafting literature regarding the role of online leisure crafting in individuals’ thriving at home. This paper reveals the role of growth need strength in the impact of home boredom on thriving at home through online leisure crafting.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how people cope with boredom at work, and whether differences in “boredom coping” effectiveness are associated with differences in employee well‐being, and safety behaviour.

The authors used two methods to gather information for this paper. Employees in a chemical processing organisation (n=212) completed a survey of individual boredom coping levels, self‐reported safety compliance, and a range of well‐being variables. Also, critical incident interviews with a sub‐sample of survey respondents (n=16) elicited strategies that employees use to cope with boredom at work.

High boredom‐copers reported better well‐being and greater compliance with organisational safety rules compared with low boredom‐copers. Relative to low boredom‐copers, high boredom‐copers tended to cope with boredom in ways that were more functional for themselves and the organisation.

Because the research was exploratory and cross‐sectional conclusions are necessarily tentative. However, the findings add to the scant body of knowledge about workplace boredom and serve as a useful guide to future research.

This approach offers new insights into how the negative effects of boredom might be managed in future, both individually and organisationally. Training in boredom coping skills, in conjunction with job redesign initiatives, may help to reduce the frequency and impact of boredom at work.

Boredom at work is an important yet neglected area of human resource management research. The present study is the first to examine the construct of “boredom coping” at work and to demonstrate a potential link between differences in boredom coping tendency and employee health and safety outcomes.

The study's objective is to examine the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) social media news (SMN) on work boredom (WB) and task performance (TP). The study proposes that psychological well-being (PWB) and depression mediate the relationship between COVID-19 SMN, WB and TP.

The data for this research was collected from white-collar employees of two Asian countries, Pakistan (study 1, n = 167) and Malaysia (study 2, n = 118), was collected using an online survey during strict movement control order (MCO), work from home, at the beginning of the year 2020.

In both studies, the PWB of employees mediated the relationship between COVID-19 SMN and their WB. On the other hand, depression only mediated the relationship between COVID-19 SMN and WB in Pakistan. PWB only mediated the relationship between COVID-19 SMN and TP in study 2. Depression only mediated the relationship between COVID-19 SMN and TP in study 1.

A couple of limitations worth noting are that the study adopted a cross-sectional approach. Thus, the sample size is not large in both counties. Because of the outbreak, limited employees agree to be part of an online survey. The scope of the study also restricts the authors to collect data during MCO, when employees were forced to work from home. In Pakistan, MCO began on 20th March and ended on 30th April, while in Malaysia, MCO started on 18th March and ended on 12th May. This also limits the study's claim of generalizability.

The practical implication of the study is to guide practitioners of both Pakistan and Malaysia in developing strategies that help them understand that employees having PWB look for growth and challenging opportunities even during pandemic situations; employers can leverage it to deal with external threats like COVID-19 because improving the PWB can improve TP and reduce WB. The interesting results highlighted the fact that high TP not necessarily means everything is fine with employees, when the uncertainty level is high, employees may be performing well due to fear and depression instead of work motivation. Thus, employers should be more vigilant during a pandemic situation. This study also helps policymakers understand that the overall economic situation affects the individual employee’s state of mind and work behavior.

The paper contributes to scare literature on COVID-19 and SMN and illustrates employees' work behavior when forced to work from home during the MCO.