Browsing by Author "Mitropoulos, Tanya Elise"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Ego Depletion-Induced Aberrant Driving in the Post-Work Commute
    Mitropoulos, Tanya Elise (Virginia Tech, 2020-12-11)
    Spillover research has shown that workday stress hampers commuting safety, while ego depletion research has demonstrated that prior self-regulation leads to performance decrements in subsequent tasks. This study sought to unite these two lines of research by proposing that ego depletion-induced alterations in attention and motivation are the mechanisms by which workday experiences spill over to the commute and impair driving safety. To examine the daily influences of these within-person processes on driving behavior in the post-work commute, this study adopted a daily survey design, wherein participants took an online survey immediately before and after each post-work commute across one work week. In these daily surveys, fifty-six participants (N = 56; n = 250 day-level observations) reported their workday self-regulatory demands; pre-commute levels of attention, motivation, and affective states; and driving behavior during the commute home. Using multilevel path analysis to isolate within-person effects, the current study found no evidence to suggest that workday self-regulatory demands lowered pre-commute attention and motivation, nor did it detect associations of attention and motivation with post-work aberrant driving. Results indicated that an ego depleted state might impair attention and motivation but not driving safety in the commute. Instead, the results pointed to the person-level factor of trait self-control as potentially having a greater impact on post-work aberrant driving than daily experiences.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Teleworker Well-Being in COVID-19 as a Function of Change in the Work/Home Boundary: A Multilevel Response Surface Approach
    Mitropoulos, Tanya Elise (Virginia Tech, 2023-12-06)
    This dissertation explored how a change in the work/home boundary stemming from a mandatory switch to full-time telework influenced employee well-being. Organizational scholars have called for more investigations into how crisis events impact employees, and the COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to examine a change in employees' work and home domains as it unfolded. Additionally, as full-time telework becomes a more common way of work, understanding how this once rare work arrangement affects employee well-being holistically is important. Using boundary theory, I hypothesized that a switch to full-time telework would increase the level of integration between employees' work and home domains, and that a greater change in integration level would associate with worse daily well-being outcomes. To explain this association, I turned to recovery theorizing and proposed daily work-related rumination and lack of psychological detachment as linking mechanisms. Additionally, I expected that teleworkers whose current level of integration was closer to their preferred level would experience better well-being. Using multilevel response surface analysis (MRSA), which enabled illustration of these complex associations in a more nuanced manner than is possible via either change scores or moderation analyses, I found that maintaining higher work/home integration both before and after telework co-varied with worse holistic well-being through work-related rumination and lack of psychological detachment. I also found that having higher integration than preferred and even high integration when preferred associated with worse well-being through work-related rumination and lack of psychological detachment. Based on these results, I point to boundary work and its facilitation of segmentation as a potential means of protecting employee well-being in the event of a future crisis that moves work into the home.