Motivator or Depletor? Unraveling the Double-Edged Effects of Peer Monitoring on Employee Job Performance

Peer monitoring, as a type of organizational control, is increasingly important in managing employee performance. However, extant research primarily focuses on the benefits of peer monitoring on job performance, while largely ignoring its potential negative consequences. We advance the literature to theorize and test the double-edged effects of peer monitoring on job performance by examining its self-regulatory consequences. Specifically, we propose that peer monitoring can simultaneously increase both work engagement and ego depletion, which in turn exert positive and negative impacts on job performance, respectively. Furthermore, we theorize that trait self-control is a critical contingent factor that moderates both the positive and negative pathways from peer monitoring to job performance. We test our model through a two-wave, multisource field survey study involving 203 employees and their 49 direct supervisors in China, as well as through an experimental study with 149 full-time working employees in the United States. We find consistent evidence for the negative consequences of peer monitoring on job performance via ego depletion, while the positive pathway through work engagement is only supported by the field survey study. Furthermore, both studies show that there is a positive indirect effect of peer monitoring on job performance via work engagement when employees have lower trait self-control and a negative indirect effect via ego depletion when employees have higher trait self-control. Such examination helps elucidate the positive and negative effects of peer monitoring on job performance and has important theoretical and practical implications.