It's a Matter of Time: The Role of Temporal Perceptions in Emotional Experiences of Work Interruptions

Abstract

Work interruptions are now ubiquitous in organizational life. However, our knowledge about how individuals experience work interruptions remains incomplete. Prior research has linked work interruption events to negative emotions, but scholars have yet to consider if—and when—such events might generate positive emotions. To explore this possibility, we adopted a temporal lens. Conceptualizing interruptions as emotionally charged events that involve changes to people’s time use, we conducted a qualitative field study of 251 work interruptions. Our inductive analysis revealed that many interruptions are experienced positively rather than negatively and that some are experienced neutrally (i.e., with no emotion). We found that this variation can be explained, in part, by four subjective temporal perceptions: time worthiness, timing, duration, and task expectedness. We also identified two contextual factors— relational context and work context—that moderate the effects of these temporal perceptions. Overall, our study underscores that emotional experiences of work interruptions vary far more widely that prior research suggests, identifies subjective temporal perceptions as key drivers of differing interruption experiences, and adds contextual richness to theories of interruptions.