The dark side of phubbing in the workplace: Investigating the role of intrinsic motivation and the use of enterprise social media (ESM) in a cross-cultural setting

Abstract

Despite the increasing phenomena of supervisor phubbing (a counterproductive workplace behaviour of managers), very few studies have explored its outcomes in organisations. This study aims to bridge this gap by investigating the relationships between supervisor phubbing and key employee outcomes. We conducted two studies in cross-cultural settings. In Study 1, which was conducted in Pakistan (a collectivistic culture), we collected 370 useable responses through an online survey from the employees working in the service sector organisations. Study 2, which was conducted in the United States of America (an individualistic culture), utilised the Prolific data collection service to gather 352 responses. Our results from both studies reveal that supervisor phubbing is negatively related to employee job performance and work engagement via intrinsic motivation. Further, enterprise social media (ESM) usage in organisations moderates the relationships between supervisor phubbing and its outcomes such that these relationships are weaker for employees whose ESM usage is higher. Our work offers significant contributions to the literature on technology use at workplace as it discusses a counterproductive workplace behaviour of managers (phubbing) and that behaviour’s association with key employee outcomes in organisations while also considering the moderating role of ESM usage in organisations.