You want me to do what? Two daily diary studies of illegitimate tasks and employee well-being

Illegitimate tasks, a recently introduced occupational stressor, are tasks that violate norms about what an em-ployee can reasonably be expected to do. Because they are considered a threat to one’s professional identity,we expected that the daily experience of illegitimate tasks would be linked to a drop in self-esteem and to im-paired well-being. We report results of two daily diary studies, one in which 57 Swiss employees wereassessed twice/day and one in which 90 Americans were assessed three times/day. Both studies showed thatillegitimate tasks were associated with lowered state self-esteem. Study 1 demonstrated that high trait self-esteem mitigated that relationship. Study 2 showed that illegitimate tasks were associated with not onlylowered state self-esteem but also lower job satisfaction and higher anger and depressive mood, but not angeror job satisfaction remained elevated until the following morning