Remote work has surged in recent years, diminishing employees' visibility within the organization, and reducing workplace social interactions. Simultaneously, many managers express concerns about potential abuses of the freedom associated with working from home. Drawing on Robinson and Bennett’s model of workplace deviance and Lawler’s affect theory of social exchange, we posit that at the within-person level, remote work will be associated with time theft via workplace loneliness. This indirect relationship will be moderated by affective commitment, evidencing a cross-level mediated moderation. We collected daily diary data from 130 employees over two working weeks, resulting in 977-1058 observations at the within-person level. At this level, we found an indirect effect of remote work on time theft via loneliness. Although the cross-level interaction effect was not statistically significant, the results showed that working remotely was positively related to loneliness among employees with average and high levels of affective commitment, but not among employees with low levels of affective commitment. We discuss implications for theory, research, and practice.
