Does witnessing multitasking impact turnover and conflict? The influence of employee dark core

Abstract

This paper explores the dark core’s role in an employee’s evaluations of coworkers electronic multitasking behaviors. Using an experimental vignette design collected via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 485), we demonstrate that employees high in the dark core report higher turnover intentions and more interpersonal conflict, regardless of the multitasking behavior relevance. A three-way interaction between multitasking relevance, perceived intentionality, and the dark core when predicting turnover intentions emerged. Perceived coworker intentions played the largest role in impacting turnover and interpersonal conflict. Implications for theory and practice are discussed below.