Virtual Work as a Demand? Employees’ Work Behavior in the Public Sector During COVID-19

Abstract

The need for rapid digitalization during the COVID-19 pandemic poses an ongoing challenge for the public sector and recent research reveals mixed effects of virtual work. This study models the abrupt introduction of virtual work during COVID-19 as a demand within the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. Using survey data from 1,173 public employees collected during the second national lockdown in Germany, we assess how virtual work as a demand moderates the relationship between a number of organizational and personal job resources on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Our results show that virtual work only moderates the relationship between self-discipline and CWB, while all other studied relationships between job resources and OCB and CWB are unaffected. These results contribute to the theoretical debate regarding the multiplicative or additive nature of the JD-R model and the practical debate around virtual work being a hindrance or a positive challenge in the public sector.