Patterer et al.: Self-Leadership and Remote Work Engagement
Summary: Daily diary study (N=101, 514 observations) showing that employees use more self-leadership strategies on home days than office days, and that most strategies positively predict same-day work engagement — with self-punishment as the detrimental exception.
Sources: raw/Daily_use_of_self-leadership_strategies_and_employ.pdf
Last updated: 2026-05-10
What the study did
Patterer, Keller, Woharcik, and Kühnel (University of Vienna / Groningen, Scientific Reports 2024) recruited 101 employees in hybrid arrangements to complete daily questionnaires on both home and office days, yielding 514 day-level observations. Multilevel analysis allowed within-person comparisons across work locations.
Five strategies under examination
Following Neck & Houghton’s (2006) self-leadership taxonomy:
- Self-goal setting — establishing meaningful daily goals
- Self-reward — recognising and rewarding task completion
- Self-punishment — self-critical responses to underperformance
- Self-cueing — checklists and physical reminders for focus
- Visualization of successful performance — mentally rehearsing desired outcomes
What they found
Home days vs. office days: Self-goal setting, self-reward, and visualization were used significantly more on home days. Self-cueing and self-punishment showed no significant location difference.
Work engagement: Self-goal setting, self-reward, and visualization all positively predicted day-level work engagement. Self-cueing had no effect. Self-punishment was detrimental.
Location moderation: No support found — the strategies were equally effective in both home and office settings. The benefit of self-leadership is not location-specific.
The self-punishment finding
Self-punishment reduces engagement regardless of where you work. This aligns with self-determination theory: self-criticism undermines autonomy and competence needs rather than motivating. Productive self-management relies on positive construction — goals, rewards, mental imagery — not aversive control. Compare kahneman-thinking-fast-and-slow on how focusing on failure amplifies its psychological cost.
JD-R framing
The study applies the Job Demands-Resources model: the home office removes external resources (supervisor presence, structured routines, spatial separation of work and life), creating a self-regulatory gap that employees fill with proactive strategies. This directly connects to han-workplace-digitization, which applies JD-R to show that environmental shifts in demands and resources propagate through to well-being outcomes.