Abstract: In today’s competitive workplace, employees are faced with more and more stressors and workload, which can lead to employee workplace procrastination. Procrastination refers to delaying the initiation or the completion of work assignment. Prior studies have shown that procrastination not only causes employees’ emotional problems but also decreases their well-being. Given the negative consequences of procrastination, it is of particular importance to explore its predictors and prevention methods. To data, some studies have revealed the antecedents of workplace procrastination, but they have mainly focused on the roles of individual and situational factors, resulting in the overlooking of the role of illegitimate tasks. Illegitimate tasks refer to those tasks that violate the norm about what can reasonably be expected from a given person. The purpose of this study is to explore the negative impact of this particular stressor (i.e., illegitimate tasks) on employees’ procrastination as well as its underlying mechanism and boundary condition. Drawing from conservation of resource, we develop a theoretical model explaining why and when illegitimate tasks lead to procrastination. Specifically, we expect that illegitimate tasks would be indirectly related to procrastination through ego depletion. Moreover, proactive personality might weaken the relationship among illegitimate tasks, ego depletion, and subsequent procrastination. To test our theoretical hypotheses, we recruited 196 employees from Chinese enterprises in different industries to complete questionnaires using a two-wave research design. Employees were invited to report their perceived illegitimate tasks questionnaire, ego depletion and proactive personality in the first data collection. Then, those participants who completed time 1 surveys were invited again to report their procrastination at work. We employed SPSS 24.0 and Mplus 7.0 to test our hypotheses. The results of regression analyses show that illegitimate tasks is positively related to procrastination. Ego depletion mediates the relationship between illegitimate tasks and procrastination. Proactive personality negatively moderates the direct relationship between illegitimate tasks and ego depletion, such that the relationship between illegitimate tasks and ego depletion is stronger for employees who have low proactive personality than who have high proactive personality. Proactive personality moderates the indirect relationship between illegitimate tasks and procrastination via ego depletion, such that the indirect relationship is stronger for employees who have low proactive personality than who have high proactive personality. Thus, our theoretical model was empirically supported. Our findings provide some theoretical and practical implications. First, by examining how the illegitimate tasks induce employees’ workplace procrastination, this study extends our knowledge about the antecedents of procrastination. Secondly, by identifying the mediating role of ego depletion in the relationship between illegitimate tasks and procrastination, this study opens the black box between illegitimate tasks and procrastination. Thirdly, this study reveals the boundary conditions of the above relationship (i.e., proactive personality), which helps alleviate the negative relationship between illegitimate tasks and procrastination. In addition, there are a number of practical strategies for organizational management practice. First, managers should reasonably assign tasks to their employees to avoid employees’ workplace procrastination. Second, it is necessary to create an environment that allows effective communication between managers and employees so as to reduce employees’ ego depletion. Finally, organizations should recruit employees with high proactive personality or train employees to be proactive.

Key words: workplace procrastination, illegitimate tasks, ego depletion, proactive personality

摘要： 工作拖延是当今职场人士面临的普遍困扰之一。基于资源保存理论，本研究从不合规任务视角探究工作拖延行为的成因。对196位员工的两时点调查数据进行层次回归分析，结果表明：不合规任务正向预测员工工作拖延行为，自我损耗在不合规任务与工作拖延行为之间起着中介作用，主动性人格负向调节不合规任务与自我损耗的正向关系以及自我损耗的中介效应。以上结果对预防或降低工作拖延行为具有启发意义。

关键词: 工作拖延行为, 不合规任务, 自我损耗, 主动性人格