Recent research uses ego depletion to explain daily variation in organizational phenomena like how sleep deprivation leads to abusive supervision or how the experience of incivility leads to instigation of incivility (Barnes et al., 2015; Rosen et al., 2016). However, ego depletion is typically incorporated as the sole theoretical perspective for mediation. I propose that working memory capacity (WMC) may be a valuable additional mediator in the examination of daily variability in organizational constructs. Incivility and sleep deprivation have been tied to poorer working memory function (Porath & Erez, 2007; Maltese et al., 2015) and WMC itself has been shown to exhibit meaningful daily variability (Sliwinski et al., 2006; Brose et al., 2012). I hypothesize that daily experienced incivility, sleep deprivation, and engagement in physical activity may impact WMC, which may in turn predict daily progress towards short- and long-term academic goals. Ego depletion may also moderate the relationship between WMC and these outcomes. State achievement motivation is incorporated as a predictor of ego depletion, to distinguish antecedents of motivation and cognition (Locke & Schattke, 2018). Further, Effort and Forgetfulness are investigated as unique outcomes of ego depletion and WMC, respectively. Several motivational and cognitive individual differences are also examined to explore the independence of the effects of daily variation in WMC and ego depletion. Analyses of data provided by university students in an experience sampling study reveal that daily variation in WMC is systematic and can be predicted by physical activity and caffeine consumption. Little evidence is provided for the consequences of variation in WMC or its interplay with self-regulatory resources. Further investigation of the nature of within-person variation in WMC would be fruitful.
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