Death reflection and employee work behavior in the covid-19 new normal time: The role of duty orientation and work orientation

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a destructive affair for both workplace and com-munity. However, with the strengthen of global anti-pandemic measures, COVID-19 becomes the norm and there is an increased trend for people to reflect on life or death. Moreover, regardless of its facilitating role in advancing organizational behavior (OB) study, very few studies empirically examine the effects of death reflection in the work domain. Drawing on the generativity theory, we identify how death reflection influences employees’ in-role and extra-role performance under the COVID-19 pandemic. A longitudinal study is performed by using multi-source data from 387 employees in China. Our results reveal that the COVID-19-triggered death reflection is associated with the stronger in-role performance and organizational citizenship behaviors. We find that duty orientation is the mechanism that can explain the effects of the COVID-19-triggered death reflection on employees’ work behaviors. Furthermore, employees who reflect on death with high (vs. low) career and calling orientations tend to have higher in-role and extra-role performance, while employees who reflect on death with low (vs. high) job orientation are likely to have lower in-role and extra-role performance.