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Promoting Effectiveness or Suppressing Energy? The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Mobile Work on Chinese Lawyers’ Family Role Performance

Home Promoting Effectiveness or Suppressing Energy? The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Mobile Work on Chinese Lawyers’ Family Role Performance

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Abstract

Mobile work behaviors are frequently observed in the daily lives of attorney practitioners, resulting in a range of both positive and negative effects. Based on the job demand-resource model, this paper employs a questionnaire to collect and analyze data from 1015 married law firm practitioners across northwest, southwest, and southeast China at three distinct time points. The research indicates that mobile work positively influences family role performance by enhancing perceived job autonomy, while simultaneously hindering family role performance by diminishing psychological detachment. This suggests that managers should be vigilant regarding the potential adverse effects of attorney practitioners’ daily mobile work behaviors and should assist attorneys in achieving family role performance by actively designing work environments that foster their autonomy. The study highlights the dual impact of daily mobile work on the family role performance of attorney practitioners and investigates its diverse pathways, thereby contributing to the literature on work-family relationships among legal service professionals.

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  • Anthropology of Work
  • Family Business
  • Mobile Computing
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The data associated with this study will be made available from any party upon reasonable request.

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Author notes

  1. Baoyan Yang and Zhaobiao Zong contributed equally to the manuscript and are co-corresponding authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for the Educational Development of Minorities, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, 730070, People’s Republic of China

    Shaoqing Su & Baoyan Yang

  2. College of Educational Sciences, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, 730070, People’s Republic of China

    Shaoqing Su

  3. School of Educational Science, Anhui Northwest University, Wuhu, 241000, People’s Republic of China

    Baoyan Yang

  4. College of Education, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, 235000, People’s Republic of China

    Zhaobiao Zong

  5. School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, People’s Republic of China

    Zhaobiao Zong

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Correspondence to Baoyan Yang.

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Su, S., Yang, B. & Zong, Z. Promoting Effectiveness or Suppressing Energy? The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Mobile Work on Chinese Lawyers’ Family Role Performance. Psychol Stud (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-025-00840-7

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  • DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-025-00840-7

Keywords

  • Double-edged sword
  • Family role performance
  • Job autonomy
  • Chinese lawyer
  • Mobile work
  • Psychological detachment

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