Email represents a useful organizational tool that can facilitate rapid and flexible communication between organizations, managers, and employees regardless of their physical location (e.g., office, home, on vacation). However, despite the potential benefits of email, its usage is a double-edged sword that also has the potential to negatively affect its users. To advance knowledge and inform both researchers and practitioners of such negative outcomes, we integrate the job demands-resources model with spillover theory to investigate email as a potential job demand and explore how it may relate to employees’ job tension and work-family conflict. Using an interval-contingent experience sampling methodology with respondents from two separate organizations (n = 134) providing 704 observations across 6 days of surveys, we hypothesize that, as a job demand, email can have negative consequences on the job that can spill over into the home. Furthermore, we also examine an individual trait (i.e., trait self-regulation) as a potential boundary condition that moderates the extent to which experienced tension from email demands spills over into home life. Finally, theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

电子邮件代表了一种有用的组织工具，它可以促进组织、经理和员工之间的快速和灵活的通信，而不管他们的实际位置（例如，办公室、家、度假）。然而，尽管电子邮件有潜在的好处，但它的使用是一把双刃剑，也有可能对其用户产生负面影响。为了提高知识并告知研究人员和从业人员此类负面结果，我们将工作需求-资源模型与溢出理论相结合，以调查电子邮件作为潜在的工作需求，并探索它与员工的工作紧张和工作家庭冲突的关系。对来自两个不同组织的受访者（n= 134）在 6 天的调查中提供 704 次观察，我们假设，作为工作需求，电子邮件可能会对工作产生负面影响，并可能蔓延到家中。此外，我们还将个人特质（即特质自我调节）作为一种潜在的边界条件来研究，该条件可以缓和电子邮件需求带来的紧张情绪蔓延到家庭生活的程度。最后，还讨论了理论和实践意义。