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Double-edged sword effect of informal status on work procrastination: the roles of career calling and workload

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Abstract

Informal status has strong positive implications in the field of organizational behavior, but it also has some harmful effects on individuals. Based on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study constructs a model to explore the double-edged sword effect of informal status on employees’ work procrastination behavior. A questionnaire survey of 202 employees was conducted at two time points, and analysis found that informal status can reduce work procrastination by enhancing employees’ career calling, but it will also increase the workload of employees and in turn, increase work procrastination. In addition, the moderating effect of Zhongyong thinking was not significant, but, its pluralistic dimension of thinking strengthened the relationship between informal status and career calling. Contrariwise, the harmony dimension weakens the relationship between informal status and career calling and workload. The findings not only broaden and complement existing research in the field, but also have certain practical implications.

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Some or all data, models, or codes generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.

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Acknowledgements

All authors sincerely thank the reviewers and editors for their enthusiastic and patient work during the review procedure.

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This work was supported by National Social Science Fund of China (Grant numbers 22BGL133).

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All authors were involved in the conceptualisation and design of the study. All authors were involved in the conception and design of the study. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were done by Bo Li and Wei He. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Zheng Zhang and Wei He, and subsequent revisions were mainly by Zheng Zhang and Bo Li, all authors commented on the previous version of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Bo Li.

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Zhang, Z., Li, B. & He, W. Double-edged sword effect of informal status on work procrastination: the roles of career calling and workload. Curr Psychol 43, 15633–15648 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05552-7

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