Virtual Work as a Job Demand? Work Behaviors of Public Servants during Covid-19

Abstract

The study models the abrupt introduction of virtual work during the COVID-19 pandemic as a job demand within the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. Using survey data from 1,173 public servants collected during the second national lockdown in Germany, we assess the relationships between several job and personal resources with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and the relationship between virtual work and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Additionally, we analyze the moderating role of virtual work for the relationship of resources and OCB, as well as the moderating role of resources for the relationship of virtual work and CWB. Our results show that the direct effects of the resources and the demand for virtual work on workplace behaviors point in the expected direction, while only one out of ten hypothesized interaction effects could be found. These results contribute to theoretical insights about the multiplicative or additive nature of the JD-R model. In addition, virtual work relates positively to both CWB and OCB, which informs the debate about virtual work being a hindrance demand or a positive challenge in the public sector.