Unraveling the temporal dynamics of employee sustainable performance: Psychometric properties and exploratory longitudinal insights

Over the past two decades, the concept of employee sustainable performance (ESP) has garnered mounting attention in both academia and practice. Despite advancements in its conceptualization and theoretical underpinnings, empirical investigations have remained scarce. Most importantly, as yet no longitudinal studies have been conducted to explore its temporal dynamics. The present study addresses this gap using a three-wave panel design aimed at (1) examining the psychometric properties of a previously developed measure of ESP (called E-SuPer), and (2) exploring the associations between ESP on the one hand, and task performance (TP) and contextual performance (CP) on the other. The sample consisted of 406 Chinese employees holding various occupations. Longitudinal results supported the presumed factorial structure of ESP and showed that it can be distinguished from other types of performance measures. Furthermore, findings confirmed the reciprocal causal relations between ESP and both TP and CP for six-month and eighteen-month time intervals. Results further indicated that ESP, TP, and CP positively affected each other across time. Our findings contribute to the current body of knowledge by revealing a temporal dynamic relation between longer-term and momentaneous work performance, thereby providing greater insight into the relations among different forms of work performance.