With work from home (WFH) becoming the new normal and the mandate from many organizations, what if this new mandate that employees must enact is different from what they prefer? Drawing on role theory, we hypothesized that incongruence (compared to congruence) between employee enacted and preferred WFH will increase work role ambiguity, which in turn leads to poorer work in-role behavior. We also hypothesized that this positive relationship between incongruent enacted-preferred WFH and work role ambiguity will be more salience for employees with low Chinese traditionality. A moderated mediation hypothesis such that the indirect effect of enacted-preferred WFH incongruence on work in-role behaviors via work role ambiguity will be more salient when employees have low Chinese traditionality was also hypothesized. Based on survey data collected at two time points from 381 employees, we found support for our hypothesis.
