Do illegitimate tasks destroy employees’ life satisfaction, psychological detachment and work engagement?

Abstract

Illegitimate tasks (IT) are work tasks that violate identity role norms about what can reasonably be expected from an employee in a given position. This common work-related stressor as a cause for various negative behavioral outcomes in the workplaces had been overlooked all the time before it was introduced into the literature from the last decade. Although illegitimate tasks have been linked to employee well-being in the previous work, we have little knowledge of the influence mechanism of illegitimate tasks on life satisfaction (LS) – a general non-work well-being through psychological detachment (PD) and work engagement (WE). Based on stress-as-offense-to-self (SOS) theory and bottom-up theory of life satisfaction, the present study aims to explore the influencing path of IT on LS, as well as the mediation role of PD and WE on this path. Using a sample of 279 employees in Ho Chi Minh City from a mix of industries and a cross-sectional design, the study reveals the following findings: IT have a strong and significant negative impact on PD and WE, but its impact on LS is weak; However, the indirect impact of IT on LS through PD and WE is strong and significant in a negative direction, suggesting that PD and WE play a mostly partial mediation role on the relationship of IT and LS. In other words, LS is affected by IT almost only when there is the appearance of PD and WE between them.