Does sleep help or harm managers’ perceived productivity? Trade-offs between affect and time as resources

Résumé En

Managers often do not get the recommended amount of sleep needed for proper functioning. Based on conservation of resources theory, we suggest that this is a result of sleep having both resource gains (improved affect) and losses (less time) that compete to determine managers’ perceived productivity the next day. This trade-off may, in turn, determine the amount of investment in sleep the next night. In a diary study with hotel managers, we found support for sleep as resource loss. After nights with more sleep than usual, managers reported lower perceived productivity due to fewer hours spent at work. In fact, for every hour spent sleeping, managers reported working 31 min, 12 s less. Further, when perceived productivity is reduced managers withdraw and conserve their resources by getting more sleep the next night (12 min, 36 s longer for each scale point decrease in perceived productivity), consistent with loss spirals from conservation of resources theory. Exploratory analyses revealed that sleep has a curvilinear effect on affect, such that too little or too much sleep is not beneficial. Overall, our study demonstrates the often-ignored trade-offs of sleep in terms of affect and work time, which has downstream implications for managers’ perceived productivity.