Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology最新文献

This research examines the role of leaders for employee recovery. We hypothesize that leader support for recovery (empathy for recovery, respect for boundaries, and role modelling) relates positively to employees' psychological detachment from work during non-work time that, in turn, predicts well-being outcomes. We argue that leader support for recovery can only be effective when the leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship quality is sufficiently high. In a series of scale-development and scale-validation studies, we demonstrated the construct and content validity of a new measure of leader support for recovery. We tested our hypotheses with diary data collected from 152 employees. Respect for boundaries was positively related to employees' psychological detachment from work during non-work time at the person level. Psychological detachment from work was positively related to low emotional exhaustion and a high morning recovery state, both at the person and the day level. LMX moderated the relationship between leader support for recovery (overall measure), empathy for recovery, and respect for boundaries on the one hand and psychological detachment on the other hand, such that the relationships became non-significant when LMX was lower. The study suggests that leaders in high-quality relationships can contribute to employee recovery – a process that helps to maintain employee well-being.

Workplace incivility research has grown considerably over recent decades. However, this stream of research still has not adequately explained targets' attributions for experienced incivility or their potential positive responses to incivility. The present study longitudinally investigates the relationship between attributions for workplace incivility and relationship improvement responses with data from 1871 person-month observations. In contrast to expectations, we found targets' beliefs that their relationship with the uncivil coworker was the cause of the incivility (i.e., relational locus of causality) were negatively related to relationship improvement behaviours. The results also indicated that this negative relationship was attenuated by belief that the target had control over the cause of incivility (i.e., internal controllability) and task interdependence at the between-person level, and by belief that the uncivil coworker had control over the cause of incivility (i.e., external controllability) at the within-person level. Direct effects analysis indicated that internal and external controllability attributions for incivility had significant positive between-person effects on relationship improvement efforts. Frequency of interaction and task interdependence were both significant positive predictors of relationship improvement efforts at both the between- and within-person levels. Implications for research and future directions are discussed.

Habits facilitate automatic behaviours and are resource efficient. Habits at work may be beneficial because they conserve cognitive-attentional resources, thus fostering work engagement and goal progress. In a diary intervention study (2 daily assessments, 10 work days), we asked 72 employees to establish a new habit at work. Half of them additionally completed an intervention on the correct use of implementation intentions. All participants were given access to a follow-up survey. In multi-level analyses, automaticity of the new habitual behaviour predicted work engagement and goal progress at the day-level. Implementation intentions predicted frequency of the habitual behaviour and in turn increased automaticity of this behaviour. The effects of implementation intentions were still evident at follow-up. Contrary to expectations, the intervention did not increase participants' daily use of implementation intentions. The results indicate that implementation intentions might be used in everyday work to establish habits at work, thus increasing employees' efficiency and engagement.

Although mistreatment in the workplace has been widely acknowledged, the impact of coworker undermining has not been adequately explored in the literature. Using insights from the job demands–resources model, we suggest that coworker undermining is a job demand that is associated with negative affect and somatic complaints. In mitigation of this, we propose two personal resources (i.e. forgiveness and revenge cognitions) as buffers of the positive relationship between coworker undermining and somatic complaints via negative affect. We explore these relationships in a time-lagged study involving 229 participants who responded to three surveys over a month-long period. Our findings show that coworker undermining is related to high levels of negative affect in the following week, and that this spills over to somatic complaints. However, this is only true for victims of undermining who do not forgive their colleagues.

Prior research has suggested that employees who take leave from work experience backlash – with some authors describing backlash to deviations from gendered norms and others to deviations from an ‘Ideal Worker Norm’ (IWN). In this study, we investigate the degree to which backlash against leave-takers is explained by these two separate, but related, paths, and whether individual (gender of leave-taker) or organizational (family-friendly vs. competitive culture) moderators mitigate such effects. Using a pre-registered experimental design, and our newly validated Ideal Worker Evaluation measure and evaluations of agency and communion to capture perceived deviation from the norms, we find significant indirect effects of leave-taking on backlash via the IWN path and the agency portion of the gendered path, but not via the communion portion of the gendered path. We also find that family-friendly organizational cultures partially mitigate the effect of leave-taking on backlash, but predominately via the IWN path and not the gendered norms path. Whereas gender of the leave-taker was found to affect backlash via the gendered norms path (and not the IWN path), but only for the agency using the proscribed operationalization of ‘dominance’. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are then discussed.

The current study examines complexities in relationships between need satisfaction at work, need satisfaction at home, work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and well-being (in terms of positive affect). Competing theoretical perspectives are offered regarding relationships between need satisfaction and WFE. The first perspective, based in a domain specificity approach focused on the directional nature of WFE, suggests that need satisfaction at work is what matters for employees' WFE, irrespective of their need satisfaction at home. Alternatively, a second perspective proposes that both need satisfaction at work and need satisfaction at home represent important factors in employees' experiences of WFE and that congruence (i.e. similarity) between these two constructs is what matters for WFE. Competing hypotheses are tested in a sample of 204 full-time employees who completed both a work and home survey and were rated on well-being at home by a significant other. Results support the first perspective for competence need satisfaction and relatedness need satisfaction, while the second perspective is supported for autonomy need satisfaction. For all three needs, indirect relationships are found with well-being, both at work and at home, via WFE. Relevant theoretical and practical implications are discussed as well as suggestions for future research.

Recruiters routinely use LinkedIn profiles to infer applicants' individual traits like narcissism and intelligence, two key traits in online network and organizational contexts. However, little is known about LinkedIn profiles' predictive potential to accurately infer individual traits. According to Brunswik's lens model, accurate trait inferences depend on (a) the presence of valid cues in LinkedIn profiles containing information about users' individual traits and (b) the sensitive and consistent utilization of valid cues. We assessed narcissism (self-report) and intelligence (aptitude tests) in a sample of 406 LinkedIn users along with 64 LinkedIn cues (coded by three trained coders) that we derived from trait theory and previous empirical findings. We used a transparent, easy-to-interpret machine learning algorithm leveraging practical application potentials (elastic net) and applied state-of-the-art resampling techniques (nested cross-validation) to ensure robust results. Thereby, we uncover LinkedIn profiles' predictive potential: (a) LinkedIn profiles contain valid information about narcissism (e.g. uploading a background picture) and intelligence (e.g. listing many accomplishments), and (b) the elastic nets sensitively and consistently using these valid cues attain prediction accuracy (r = .35/.41 for narcissism/intelligence). The results have practical implications for improving recruiters' accuracy and foreshadow potentials and limitations of automated LinkedIn-based assessments for selection purposes.

Career inaction, or failing to act adequately for a period of time to make a desired change in one's career, is quite common in the workplace. Despite this, research regarding how it affects employees at work is very limited. Using attribution theory and stress research, we propose an integrated view of how employees interpret and respond to career inaction differently. Specifically, we establish the idea of blame attributions for career inaction (i.e., self- and other-directed blame attribution) and investigate how they relate to employees' emotional and behavioural responses to career inaction. We conducted three studies to address the research questions: a scenario-based experiment with 315 workers, a three-wave survey with 302 full-time employees and a daily diary study of 123 hospital nurses across five consecutive working days. The findings revealed that when faced with career inaction, employees who blame themselves are more likely to experience anxiety, while those who blame others tend to experience anger. Anxiety and anger are further linked to work withdrawal and interpersonal deviance respectively. Overall, we contribute to the advancement of career inaction theory and career management practices.

Previous studies have explored the effects of trait regulatory focus on routine performance and proactive behaviour yet failed to reveal the underlying motivational mechanisms and investigate how these effects may operate in uncertain environments. To fill this gap, our study first draws upon regulatory focus theory to examine the motivational mechanisms linking trait regulatory focus with routine performance and challenge-seeking behaviour (i.e., a type of proactive behaviour). We hypothesize that trait prevention focus improves routine performance but reduces challenge-seeking behaviour via avoidance motivation, whereas trait promotion focus increases routine performance and challenge-seeking behaviour through approach motivation. Incorporating trait activation theory, we further theorize that uncertainty that threatens individuals' security needs (i.e., quantitative job insecurity) strengthens trait prevention focus effects, while uncertainty that threatens individuals' growth needs (i.e., qualitative job insecurity) weakens trait promotion focus effects. Analysing two-wave data from 275 employees and 58 supervisors, we found that (a) trait prevention focus had an unconditional positive indirect effect on employee self-reported routine performance via increased avoidance motivation and (b) trait promotion focus had positive indirect effects on employee self-reported and supervisor-rated routine performance and challenge-seeking behaviour via enhanced approach motivation, with these effects stronger at lower levels of qualitative job insecurity.

Leader–follower relationships are a cornerstone of leadership research. Considering recent developments that point to emotions as key determinants of dyadic relationships, we shift the focus of this literature to the episodic interplay of leader emotional expressions and follower emotional reactions for the emergence of high-quality interactions. Specifically, we develop an emotional entrainment perspective stating that the trajectory of leader emotional expressions and corresponding follower emotional reactions over the course of a day gives rise to follower perceptions of their interaction quality with their leader. We glean additional insights by examining follower attachment styles as a moderator. Results of an experience sampling study (N_employees = 72, N_days = 479) demonstrate that emotional entrainment of high-activated emotions (joy and fear) predicts end-of-day interaction quality contingent on followers' (avoidant and anxious) attachment styles. Future avenues for research on the emergence of high-quality leader–follower relationships are discussed.