1. Introduction
In the modern, highly competitive business environment, organizational performance is influenced by several internal and external factors [
1], such as infrastructure and facilities, financial stability, and human capital [
2]. A number of researchers, for example, Pinto and He [
3] and Habib et al. [
4], have termed human capital as the most important element in the success or failure of any business. Organizations are established to achieve specific goals, and human resource is a driving force to achieve those goals [
5,
6]. With the emergence of information and communication technology (ICT), particularly the internet, the working environment of businesses has transformed a lot [
7,
8]. Technological development has also reshaped the needs and demands of customers [
9,
10].
For this reason, to meet or exceed customers’ expectations, it has become imperative for businesses to perform better than their competitors by getting the maximum output from the available resources [
5,
11]. In the present era, businesses face massive competition [
12] and, to efficiently compete in the market, they have to review their strategies continuously [
13]. The objective isn’t just to set its grounds but to remain competitive and ensure advancement in the field [
14].
Similar to several other non-profit and for-profit businesses, the higher education sector has been subject to fundamental challenges in the last two decades [
12]. Earlier, education was a public good by non-profit institutions with clear social purposes without commercial pressures. However, this sector has become a global service that is delivered by quasi-companies in an ever-more complex and competitive marketplace [
15]. To cope with these challenges, higher education institutions need to develop an appropriate strategy to remain a competitive player in the marketplace, a necessity that is reflected in numerous calls for research on strategy in the higher education sector.
The review of the literature indicates that among all the factors, human resources has been proven as of the utmost importance and is assigned the highest value as it plays a central role in enhancing the efficiency and quality of operations [
16]. An organization’s ultimate success or failure depends on its human resource. For this reason, it has become imperative for firms to investigate the factors boosting or hindering workers’ performance [
17]. The literature identifies a number of factors, such as work stress, dissatisfaction with the job, lack of facilities and infrastructure, etc., that directly or indirectly impact the workers’ job performance. Sleep is another factor that can disturb the performance of individuals. According to the National Sleep Foundation [
18] and Schmitt et al. [
19], the role of sleep deprivation has largely been ignored by academicians and researchers concerning its impact on workers’ job performance.
The authors could not identify any study that operationalized such a hypothetical model relating to the lack of sleep, workplace deviance, and job performance of working mothers, particularly in Pakistan, where the concept of mothers as working women is rarely explored. Working mothers are the women who can combine their career with the added responsibility of raising a child and taking care of home responsibilities. They can be divided into two groups: (1) mothers working from home or (2) those who work away from home while managing to fulfill their maternal duties.
Another reason for choosing working mothers as the target population is that along with professional commitments, they have to take care of their home and family (children and spouse) irrespective of the time and situation. Both parents are frequently compelled to work because of their material aspirations and daily life needs. A well-qualified woman may demand that she be able to work and earn her own money at the same time. The single working mother is a combination of these entities, working not only to run the family but also maintaining her position as a financially independent head of the family.
Likewise, undeniably, the role of working women has changed throughout the world due to economic conditions and social demands. This has resulted in a scenario where working women have tremendous pressure to develop a professional career while sustaining active engagement in their healthy personal lives. Therefore, ever-increasing work pressure is taking a toll on working women, leaving them with less time for themselves, leading to their sleep deprivation, which can eventually destroy their performance at the workplace. For this reason, the current research aims to investigate the effect of sleep deprivation on the job performance of mothers that are working in educational institutions (schools, colleges, and universities) that are located in Pakistan. The authors took the working environment deviance as the mediating variable to examine if workplace deviance mediates the relationship between the two variables.
4. Data Analysis
The collected data were subjected to statistical and structural analyses. To ensure the appropriateness of the data for analysis, the authors investigated the missing values, and zero missing values were found. For detecting any aberrant values or outliers, two different steps were followed. In the first step, the cases outside the scale of 1–5 were eliminated. In the second step, the multivariate outliers were detected using the Mahalanobis distance measuring method. This process indicated 19 cases with multivariate outliers as their values were less than 0.001 and, therefore, were removed from the analysis. The final analysis was carried out with 340 cases/observations.
The researchers computed a Cronbach’s alpha value to analyze the reliabilities of the scales. The coefficient, which reflects homogeneity among items, varies from 0 to 1. The more the coefficient gets closer to 1, the better the reliability. However, the value of a coefficient of less than 0.60 is considered a poor one. According to Hair et al. [
67], good reliability should produce a coefficient value of 0.70 or above. The analysis of Cronbach’s alpha for workplace deviance indicated a value of 0.849 and for employee performance indicated a value of 0.913, respectively. These results fully complied with the minimum 0.7 value that Hair et al. [
67] recommended. A Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated to assess the relationship between sleep deprivation, workplace deviance, and employee performance. The prediction about the value of employee performance that was based on sleep deprivation and workplace deviance as the mediating variable was assessed through structural equation modeling (SEM) using IBM SPSS AMOS v.25 (IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, USA).
To proceed further, the adequacy of the sample was assessed using the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test. The KMO test presented a value of 0.877, which adequately complied with Kaiser and Rice’s [
68] lowest suggested value of 0.6. The correlation matrix in
Table 3 displays the correlation coefficient between the measured variables. A coefficient is considered significant if the
p-value is less than 0.05. The
Table 3 indicates that sleep deprivation has a significant positive correlation with workplace deviance (r = 0.386,
p < 0.01) and has a negative relationship with employee performance (r = −0.354,
p < 0.01). On the other side, workplace deviance is negatively correlated with employee performance (r = −0.475,
p < 0.01).
4.1. Analyzing the Measurement and Structural Model
To test the stated hypotheses, the SEM technique was followed using IBM SPSS AMOS v.25. The SEM technique empowers researchers to build the hierarchy of latent constructs and eliminate the biases that are produced by measurement errors. The variance inflation factor (VIF) technique was used to examine the multi-collinearity issue, which indicated a value of 2.223 and matched with Hair et al.’s [
67] suggested value of below 4.0 or less. To ensure the appropriateness of the data for measurement and structural analyses, Harman’s single factor test was used to examine the common method bias (CMB) issue, which indicated a value of 35.05% for a single factor. This value adequately complied with Podsakoff and MacKenzie’s [
62] and Abbas and Sağsan’s [
69] maximum single factor loading of 50% or less.
The authors performed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the latent variables’ link and determinants. CFA also helps the researchers to confirm the validity and one-dimensionality of the measurement model. As stated earlier, Cronbach’s alpha analysis for workplace deviance and employee performance were 0.849 and 0.913 values, respectively, and fully complied with the minimum 0.7 value that was recommended by Hair et al. [
67]. To build reliability and validity, authors need to focus on composite reliability (CR), average variance explained (AVE), maximum shared squared variance (MSV), and average shared squared variance (ASV). The thresholds for these values are: reliability: CR > 0.7, convergent validity: CR > (AVE), AVE > 0.5, discriminant validity: MSV < AVE, ASV < AVE, (see the results of validities and reliabilities in
Table 4). Based on the above-defined thresholds, it can be concluded that both constructs have composite reliability as their CR values are greater than 0.7 (workplace deviance = 0.851, employee performance = 0.951).
On the other hand, both constructs also meet the threshold criteria to establish discriminate validity as the identified values of given AVE are greater than the values of both MSV and ASV (workplace deviance = 0.453 > 0.251 & 0.210, employee performance = 0.830 > 0.251 & 0.206). Convergent validity is the only concern in the case of workplace deviance, as its given values do not perfectly meet the required threshold criteria, i.e., the value of CR should be greater than the value of AVE, which, in turn, should be greater than 0.5 (workplace deviance = 0.851 > 0.453 > 0.5). Although the value of CR is greater than the values of AVE, the value of AVE is very close to the standard of 0.5. Thus, the convergent validity of the constructs cannot be dismissed altogether. However, in the case of the “employee performance” construct, the value of CR is greater than the value of AVE, which is also greater than 0.5. As the given construct meets the desired threshold criteria to build the convergent validity thus, it can be concluded that the scale is valid and reliable.
As recommended by Kaynak [
70], The authors examined the goodness of fit of the measurement and structural models using chi-square to the degree of freedom (CMIN/DF), TLI, CFI, and RMSEA indicators. As per Bagozzi and Yi [
71], the maximum value for CMIN/DF is 3. Bentler and Bonett [
72] and McDonald and Marsh [
73] have suggested that the values of fit indices should be above 0.9. Moreover, Browne and Cudeck [
74] proposed that the ideal value of RMSEA is lower than 0.08. The analysis of measurement and structural models presented X
2/DF values 2.59 and 2.684, respectively, which is sufficiently less than the 3 value that is recommended by Bagozzi and Yi [
71]. Similarly, the TLI and CFI values for both models were above 0.9, meeting the 0.9 or above ideal requirement by Browne and Cudeck [
74]. Finally, the RMSEA values for measurement and structural models were 0.068 and 0.070, respectively, which significantly meets McDonald and Marsh’s [
73] recommended value of less than 0.08.
4.2. Hypothesis Testing
The structural analysis indicated that sleep deprivation significantly negatively impacts mothers that are working in different educational institutions, with −0.8488 standardized estimates and 0.0000
p-values. Hence, the first hypothesis (H1), i.e., sleep deprivation has a significant negative impact on the job performance of working mothers, is accepted (see
Figure 1). The analysis of the relationship between sleep deprivation and workplace deviance indicated a significant and positive relationship with a standardized estimated value of 0.6229 and 0.000
p-value. For this reason, the second hypothesis, (H2) sleep deprivation has a significant positive impact on workplace deviance, is also accepted. A significant negative relationship was identified while examining the link between workplace deviance and employee performance. The relationship between these two variables indicated a
p-value of 0.0000 and a −0.4510 standardized estimate value. This leads to the acceptance of the third hypothesis, i.e., workplace deviance has a significant negative impact on the job performance of working mothers in the educational sector of Pakistan. See
Table 5 for items loading and direct effect results.
The researchers analyzed the meditation effect of workplace deviance in the relationship between sleep deprivation and job performance through bootstrapping on 5000 bootstrap samples. The indirect effect analysis indicated significant results, as the 95% confidence interval does not include 0 (−0.4361 to −0.1645 in the case of WD). Since a “×” b “×” c (0.1077) is positive, it is a complimentary mediation (see
Table 5). After examining the potential mediator, it can be concluded that workplace deviance is likely an important mediator. The computation of the confidence intervals for each indirect effect can be done in the usual way. The SPSS version of the macro has been used to bootstrap the indirect effects of sleep deprivation on employee performance.
Table 6 presents a 95% confidence interval (percentile, BC, and BCa). In compliance with the results of the product-of-coefficients, it can be concluded that workplace deviance acts as a significant mediator between sleep deprivation and employee performance.
Further, the authors took age as the control variable. They examined whether it makes any difference in the relationship between sleep deprivation and individual performance and sleep deprivation and workplace deviance. The authors divided the data into two groups, i.e., mothers with below 35 age and mothers above 35 age. However, an insignificant difference was found in both cases with beta 0.118 and p-value 0.062 and 0.139 beta and 0.69 p-values, respectively. This means that if a person is under or above 35 years, their performance will be lower than normal life if they are deprived of sleep.
5. Discussion
The empirical results indicate that inadequate sleep in terms of quality and quantity is one of the main causes of working mothers’ deviant behavior and poor job performance. The findings relating to the sleep quality of working mothers and their job performance confirm the results of Swanson et al. [
37] that poor sleep quality negatively affects employees’ attentiveness to the assigned tasks. It also validates Heider’s [
75] idea, given in the attribution theory, that humans are motivated to assign causes to their actions and behaviors to external or internal factors.
Sleep deficiency also negatively impacts working mothers’ ability to complete the specified job in the prescribed manner. It diminishes their potential to comply with the changing demands of their current job. The ability to deal with the issues at hand is likewise low ebb. These working mothers need time to adapt to their new surroundings and learn to tolerate others’ opinions. Individuals are more prone to explosive emotional outbursts, harming their job relationships. Sleep-deprived working mothers also tend to put little effort into their work.
Additionally, it causes them to be less awake and concentrate. They find it more difficult to concentrate and pay attention, making them more easily confused. At the same time, this would impair their capacity to do activities that require logical reasoning or complex cognition. Sleepiness also hinders their judgment, making it more difficult to make the right decisions since they cannot appraise events and choose the appropriate conduct.
Moreover, they also tend to arrive late at work or take a longer break than the acceptable time limit. This, in turn, has a negative impact on an organization’s overall performance. This finding relates to Bultmann et al.’s [
36] statement that sleep-deprived individuals tend to take more leaves than others. People who have such a negative attitude toward their professions are also less productive, resulting in a lower level of job satisfaction. Due to sleep deprivation, their professional and personal life are negatively impacted.
Thus, it can be said that sleep deprivation is believed to undermine the wellbeing of working mothers from different perspectives, i.e., emotionally, physically, and mentally, making it hard for them to keep their performance consistent and steady in the long run. This status of sleep deprivation can also force these working women to engage in activities that are not considered desirable and consequently severely affect their performance at the workplace.
5.1. Managerial Implications and Recommendations
Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that the management arrange an array of rules about sleep just like every organization has concerning behaviors regarding smoking and provocation. It is essential to have rules about limited working hours, i.e., the company should not permit more than preferably eight hours of work a day and at the most, 10 hours successively. The government has a critical role in legislating and implementing such rules by coordinating with the companies.
Furthermore, offering new mothers paid maternity leaves with sufficient time serves as a very effective incentive. It will make them loyal and sincere to the company and is also an added financial benefit, improving the family’s status, and thus, dedication towards work. Female staff turnover will be at a minimum in those organizations that believe in providing maternity leave. This time off allows the mother to take care of herself and her baby. It eventually increases employee morale productivity and reduces their absenteeism at the workplace when moms would resume back to their work.
Adjustable or flexible working hours can also serve as a driving force for employed mothers to perform enthusiastically. The management can also provide on-site daycare facilities to bring their children and a caretaker to take care of the baby during office hours. The presence of such a facility would let the mother work at peace, knowing that she can visit her baby during breaks or free hours. However, as stated earlier, to translate implications into action, the role of government is pivotal.
5.2. Theoretical Contribution to Academicians
Over different periods, researchers have studied sleep deprivation and employee performance from different perspectives. However, the relationship between sleep deprivation and employee performance by considering the role of workplace deviance as a mediator, particularly in the context of working mothers in Pakistan, could not be found yet in the existing literature. Subsequently, researchers have observed a need to fill this research gap.
This study offers a significant contribution to the organizational literature by integrating research from the social, psychological, sleep, and neurocognitive literature to develop and test a theoretically- and empirically driven model of the effects of sleep deprivation on the performance of working mothers. Moreover, this study is not only contributing to the literature by concurrently studying the direct effects of sleep deprivation on the performance of working mothers, but also takes into account other psychological factors, such as how sleep deprivation can make an employee indulge in deviant acts, such as are these working mothers coming late to their work without taking permission or are they leaving their work for someone else to finish, which in turn can also ultimately deteriorate their performance at the workplace.
Additionally, as with the changing trends, Pakistani culture is now promoting gender diversity to bring more creativity and diverse thinking within the organizational settings. Hence, the number of working mothers in the workplace is increasing rapidly. Undoubtedly, these working mothers face many challenges in coping with their professional and personal duties. These working mothers need to strike a balance between their personal and professional lives, which has been a matter of growing concern for managers of the organizations. Therefore, the current research’s findings will be a significant value addition to the existing literature on sleep deprivation, which can be helpful for the managers to uplift the performance of working mothers at the workplace. All these above-discussed factors have distinguished this study from the previous empirical research, which has been conducted in the past decade. Hence, it can be summed up that this empirical study will give more in-depth insights, mainly for the educational sector of Pakistan.
Moreover, as discussed above, in recent times, women have become more career-oriented and are more actively taking part in jobs across the globe. Thus, a considerable shift has been observed in women’s attachment in serving different positions for which they are paid within the organizations. This highly popular trend has brought two questions of concern: (1) should young children’s mothers be given the liberty and permission to work in the corporate world? and (2) if they do so, who will be accountable for ensuring that the children back at home are being taken care of? Hence, it follows that the management of the organizations where the mothers are employed should be considerate enough to facilitate them in the best possible manner. Therefore, they can have a balanced healthy, and happy life. To provide them with a work-life balance and encourage more mothers to continue working after a baby, some parent-friendly policies that serve as a support system for the mother post-pregnancy are a must. This will eventually lead to greater job satisfaction, productivity, and enhanced performance at the workplace.
5.3. Research Limitations and Future Recommendations
Despite the unwavering and concrete efforts of the researcher to provide enough proof and evidence to support the study, the need to highlight certain limitations remains a necessity so that they can be avoided in future research.
The targeted population of this particular study is the part of a selected segment (educational sector), which, in turn, is a part of the service sector that is located in Pakistan. Thus, it should be borne in mind that the results may not be generalized to all services organizations of Pakistan. Although, the impact of sleep deprivation on the job performance of working mothers would be different from the ones in other sectors due to their environmental and contextual differences. The basic difference lies in the demand of profession, i.e., eternal, post-work hours engagement with various stakeholders (co-teachers, parents, school management, and students) coupled with pressure to timely complete the administrative tasks such as lesson planning, maintenance of attendance, etc. makes teaching a 24/7 job [
76]. Whereas, in other sectors, the workload ends with the working day. We assume that the case of other segments of service sector employees is marginally better than the education sector employees. Hence, we can assume that there wouldn’t be such severely negative results. However, to understand the phenomenon in other segments in the service sector, a concentrated study on the phenomenon’s impact is needed. Therefore, to further study the relationship between sleep-deprived individuals and their performance, other service industry segments can also be considered in future research. These sectors may include health, transportation, construction, tourism, etc. On the other side, the population for the current research study comprised of working mothers (female staff), so in the future, along with female staff, male staff can also be considered for the more generalized result.
Another limitation of this research is that only one variable has been taken into account as a mediator to establish a relationship between sleep deprivation and employee performance, which is workplace deviance. A few other variables can also be researched to understand better the correlation and association between sleep deprivation and employee performance. These dimensions have also been identified in the past literature, i.e., mood, stress, emotions, physical health, mental health, etc. These can also be included in future research as mediators. Additionally, the future authors should consider other variables such as socioeconomic status, the number of children, single-parent status, etc., that could affect the outcomes.
Additionally, future researchers can extend the scope of the given model by studying the causes of sleep deprivation among working mothers. However, to bring more insightful results, the issue of attribution needs to be elaborated to reflect how employees will attribute their sleep deprivation due to caring responsibilities at home to the institutions where they work, leading to deviance and subsequently reducing their performance. Therefore, it should be kept in mind that future researchers should aim to use objective-based measures to gain more reliable and valid results.
This study focuses only on employees as the source of data for analysis. Any discrepancy in their feedback may manipulate the measures, leading to imprecise findings. Thus, to mitigate such discrepancy, future studies are suggested to be performed by collecting data from diverse sources. Moreover, the given constructs are measured based on an individual’s perception and can serve as deterrence in achieving valid results. For this reason, future studies should emphasize objective-based measurements more than subjective measures since they are more trustworthy and accurate.
Moreover, in the current research, the authors report that sleep duration depends on the number of hours that are spent sleeping in the previous days, particularly the night before the survey. Although, the consensus has emerged in several reviews of the sleep literature that sleeping six or fewer hours leads to cognitive impairment, whereas sleeping seven or more does not. Many renowned researchers have used the given scale in their studies, such as Barnett [
64] and Chen et al. [
65] also have used the same approach for their studies. However, this is also confusing since sleep deprivation the night before the survey may alter responses to survey questions. Therefore, future researchers suggest assessing the average sleep duration rather than the sleep duration just the night before the survey as poor job performance is usually related to long-term sleep deprivation. They are also required to have more details in the survey such as average bedtime, average wake up time, and average sleep duration will probably provide more details.
The fairly low number of respondents is a further limitation of the study, even with an acceptable minimum number (300). Even though the results that were found are significant and considerable, the small size of the sample is expected to lack the component of generalizability and statistical power. This issue can be rightly addressed by increasing the size of the researchers’ sample in future research.