Journal of Vocational Behavior最新文献

This study focused on the relationship of employees' career growth with high-performance work systems (HPWS), how and the conditions under which HPWS enhance organizational career growth. It considered job crafting as part of the mechanism, the idea being that employees actively exploit the resources provided and demands imposed by HPWS to craft their jobs. Using a multi-level, three-wave time-lagged design with 663 employees and 67 human resource managers from 67 companies, we found that (a) organization-level HPWS were positively related to individual employees' career growth; (b) task and relational job crafting mediated the relationship; (c) the organizational innovation climate moderated the relationship between organization-level HPWS and job crafting; and (d) the moderating effect had an impact on employees' career growth through job crafting. The implications of the study for the advancement of knowledge and practice are discussed.

Existing research with gay dads has focused almost exclusively on those in the upper middle-class. Given the financial barriers to gay fatherhood and that parenting and work experiences often differ based on class, research at the work-family interface with working-class gay dads holds promise for advancing the field of vocational psychology. Using the Psychology of Working Theory (PWT) as a framework, the present study explored work and family experiences with working-class gay dads living on the West Coast of the United States. We collected and analyzed data using a narrative inquiry methodology, which involved a three-stage interview process, co-construction of narratives with participants, and generation of seven themes (e.g., Importance of Both Structural Economic Support and Structural LGBTQ+ Support, Many Valid Ways to Form Families). Situating these findings within the PWT model, we demonstrate how economic constraints and marginalization shaped these dads' experiences of decent paid (and unpaid) work, and how their adaptability and volition buffered these impacts and offered pathways to meaningful roles as workers and fathers. The stories of working-class gay dads and related themes counter the grand career narrative and provide helpful guidance for structural recommendations that attend to LGBTQ+ inclusion and more equitable access to decent work.

In this paper, we investigate the risks and side effects of workplace friendships for coworkers. Combining the dialectical perspective on workplace friendships with a self-regulatory perspective, we argue that workplace friendships can lead to incivility directed toward coworkers because employees experience inter-role conflict between their role as “employee” and their role as “friend”, and subsequent resource depletion. We further suggest that employees with higher workplace friendship self-efficacy are better able to manage these risks and side effects. We tested our hypotheses in two studies with time-lagged data (Study 1: 451 employees, Study 2: 499 employees) using structural equation modeling. Study 1 showed that workplace friendships are positively related to incivility via inter-role conflict and subsequent resource depletion. Workplace friendship self-efficacy buffered the indirect relation between workplace friendships and incivility. Study 2 partly replicated and extended the findings from Study 1. We found support for the serial mediation effect of workplace friendship on incivility via inter-role conflict and resource depletion and we were able to extend Study 1 by disentangling the targets of incivility. In particular, employees instigated incivility toward other coworkers rather than their workplace friends. However, the moderating effect of workplace friendship self-efficacy did not replicate. Our findings contribute to the literatures on workplace friendships and role conflicts.

In a workforce marked by telecommuting, decentralization, and automation, the need for employees to take personal initiative (PI) is greater than ever before. The model of proactive motivation suggests that people need to experience proactive motivational states to engage in PI. Self-determination theory suggests that people must have their needs satisfied to engage in PI. In this work, we combine these two perspectives by considering if sometimes needs thwarting can improve the relationship between proactive motivational states and PI. Analyses of multi-source and multi-wave data indicated that individuals with high “can do” proactive motivation in the form of self-efficacy took more PI when their need for competence was not met. Likewise, individuals with high “energized to” proactive motivation in the form of activated positive affect took more PI when their need for relatedness was not met. Further, PI mediated the relationships between individual proactive motivation states and individual promotability (which benefits the self) and OCB towards coworkers (which benefits others). This reinforces the important role of PI as a constituent of individuals' in-role and extra-role performance at a time of increasing flexibility and collaboration at work.

With the increase of remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, it can be expected that soon a great number of households will consist of more than one teleworker. This raises the question of how to manage work and nonwork boundaries for the collective of household members who work from home. To better understand the adjustment to collective work from home, we examined the experiences of 28 dual-income households with school-age children residing in five countries. In doing so, we found specific strategies that families used to manage boundaries between two or more household members' work, learning, and home domains. We identified four strategies to define boundaries in the collective (i.e., repurposing the home space, revisiting family members' responsibilities, aligning family members' schedules, and distributing technology access and use) and five strategies to apply boundaries to accommodate the collective (i.e., designating an informal boundary governor, maintaining live boundary agreements, increasing family communication, incentivizing/punishing boundary respect/violation, and outsourcing). Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for remote work and boundary management.

Increasingly dynamic labor markets have caused a steep increase in nonstandard workers. This study focuses on agency temps who work via labor market intermediaries at client organizations. The short-term and frequently changing nature of their jobs creates uncertainty about their employment and personal stability. Based on an explorative qualitative interview study among 27 agency temps, we studied how agency temps self-manage their careers. Our study reveals that the precarious career environment and financial dependence on agency work make agency temps' career self-management different from existing depictions of career self-management in the literature. Specifically, we reveal that agency temps' career self-management engagement is relatively short-term and primarily reactive. We find that they focus on survival and stability as career goals, and they engage in four career behaviors: (1) moonlighting, (2) self-profiling, (3) compensatory career behavior, and (4) job search behavior. Subsequently, we identify two negative long-term outcomes of these career behaviors: (1) being locked-in and (2) experiencing resource loss during unemployment. Accordingly, this study contributes to the nascent literature on temporary agency work and career self-management by identifying career behaviors and consequences in a precarious and volatile context. Our findings can help career counselors and policy-makers safeguard the career self-management of agency temps.

Biodata inventories are standardized questionnaires about a person's history (past behaviors and events in one's life). They are among the most predictive pre-employment assessment methods to hire job applicants, and their use extends beyond just in work settings. Biodata inventories have also been used for high stakes school admissions, and if strongly related to school success, may be useful measures to supplement other assessment methods within larger admissions programs. However, there are limits to knowledge regarding the criterion-related validity of biodata scores. This study examined the validity of biodata inventory scores in the prediction of school success according to two major moderators: scoring method (e.g., rational, or empirical) and construct domain. Isolating to studies that met strict requirements for inclusion, there were a total of 38 independent effects of the relationship between biodata scores and school success (grade point average or teaching ratings). Results showed that the relationship between biodata inventory scores and academic success was strong, with an average validity coefficient of 0.45 for academic achievement scales. Furthermore, validity varied as a function of scoring method. Empirical biodata scores correlated 0.50 with school success, whereas validity was .26 when rationally scored. These results make empirically scored biodata one of the most predictive admissions tools available, exceeding even the validity of grade point average and standardized test scores. Given these findings, biodata inventories should be more frequently considered for use as supplementary additions to existing admissions procedures, though as we discuss, there may be challenges to implementation in applicant settings.

This paper examines whether employees' strategies to recognize (through self-recognition) and regulate (through job crafting, work-family management, and recovery) their internal and external demands and resources help them retain their well-being and performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also examines whether an online self-training intervention can stimulate the use of these strategies. A randomized control trial with a waitlist control group and pre-post measure (N intervention group = 62, N control group = 77) was executed, consisting of four modules with videos, exercises, and three assignments. Participants of the intervention group reported improved self-recognition (noticing, self-focused emotional intelligence), job crafting (seeking resources and challenges), recovery (psychological detachment and relaxation), and reduced work-family conflict. Moreover, the intervention group reported reduced fatigue and increased happiness with life and task performance after the intervention. Improvements in self-focused emotional intelligence, relaxation, and reduced work-family conflict could explain the progress of these distal outcomes. This study reveals the strategies that can help employees to maintain high levels of well-being and performance while working from home and how to improve them using an evidence-based self-training intervention.

Pregnancy loss is often stigmatized and is considered to be a taboo topic in the workplace, causing employees to suffer in silence. Yet, pregnancy loss is unequivocally a workplace issue – it can occur at work and influence work outcomes, such as performance, job attitudes, and employee wellbeing. Unfortunately, there is little research examining the intersection between work and pregnancy loss, leaving employers with little evidence-based guidance on how to support employees during and after pregnancy loss. The purpose of this qualitative study of working women (N = 29) is to provide insight into the ways by which work influences, and is influenced by, employees' physical and psychological experiences of loss. We utilized a phenomenological approach which revealed 12 themes that were temporal in nature and represented the interconnectedness of work and pregnancy loss. Themes related to the pre-loss experience (pregnancy experiences), loss experience (healthcare; physical health; psychological health; partner's experiences; loss disclosure; memorialization), short-term post-loss experience (work leave; workplace support; stigma), and long-term post-loss experience (return-to-work; shifts in perspective and identity). These results revealed that pregnancy loss experiences unfold over extended periods of time and across domains, involving the interaction between work, family, and healthcare systems. Findings are interpreted through the lens of bioecological systems theory and boundary theory, and illustrate the criticality of supportive workplace practices, such as return-to-work accommodations, bereavement support, and leave options, in supporting employee health and work outcomes.

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employee job performance trajectories, and further examines the moderating effects of different sources of status. Drawing from event system theory (EST), we propose that employee job performance decreases upon COVID-19 onset, but gradually increases during the postonset period. Furthermore, we argue that status from society, occupation, and workplace functions to moderate such performance trajectories. We test our hypotheses with a unique dataset of 708 employees that combines survey responses and job performance archival data over 21 consecutive months (10,808 observations) spanning the preonset, onset, and postonset periods of the initial encounter with COVID-19 in China. Utilizing discontinuous growth modeling (DGM), our findings indicate that the onset of COVID-19 created an immediate decrease in job performance, but such decrease was weakened by higher occupation and/or workplace status. However, the postonset period resulted in a positive employee job performance trajectory, which was strengthened for employees with lower occupational status. These findings enrich our understanding of COVID-19's impact on employee job performance trajectories, highlight the role of status in moderating such changes over time, and also provide practical implications to understand employee performance when facing such a crisis.