Exploring Boundary Conditions of the Impact of Accessibility to Mobile Networks on Employees' Perceptions of Presenteeism: from Both Individual and Social Perspectives

Mobile networks, such as Wi-Fi and networks provided by mobile operators, are present everywhere nowadays and help employees to deal with business-related issues. With accessibility to mobile networks, employees perceive that they are constantly reachable to others, which is defined as presenteeism. With the importance of presenteeism in mind, this study aims to explore under what conditions employees' perceptions of presenteeism based on accessibility to mobile networks can be increased or reduced. Based on self-determination theory and normative social influence, both individual-level (i.e., need for autonomy and need for relatedness) and social-level (i.e., norm of responsiveness) boundary conditions are indicated. Data was collected from 223 employees who use mobile technology at work. Our empirical results show that need for relatedness positively moderates the relationships between accessibility to mobile networks on employees' perceptions of presenteeism. We also found that norm of responsiveness negatively moderates the relationships between accessibility to mobile networks on employees' perceptions of presenteeism. This study contributes to the literature on presenteeism as well offers guidelines for practitioners.